***************************************************************** 09/26/06 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 14.228 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 [NYTr] Paul Craig Roberts: Why Bush Will Nuke Iran 2 [NYTr] Russia: Negotiation, Not Confrontation, with Iran 3 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI initiated active diplomacy in UN 4 AFP: Iran denies key nuclear demand on agenda in crunch talks - 5 AFP: Russia, Iran agree power station launch date 6 AFP: US insists any Iranian enrichment suspension must be verified - 7 UPI: Rice: Iran's ambitions challenge region 8 Guardian Unlimited: Russian Fuel to Be Sent to Iranian Plant 9 At UN Debate, Dpr Korea Accuses UN States Of Encouraging Nuclear Ten 10 N Korea hits out at US sanctions 11 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL] Media nuclear jitters 12 Reuters: S.Korea to buy 1,000 tonnes of Australian uranium 13 Korea Times: Nuke Test to Trigger Retaliation 14 AFP: Rice gives North Korea nuclear talks effort six weeks to resume 15 AFP: Rice gives North Korea nuclear talks effort six weeks to resume 16 AFP: US offers NKorea new concession in bid to restart nuclear talks 17 AFP: NKorea says nuclear weapons 'self-defense', blasts US - 18 UPI: At U.N. North Korea denounces U.S. actions 19 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Open to New Approaches on N. Korea 20 Guardian Unlimited: N. Korea Rejects Talks on Nuke Program 21 US: Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear deterrent not the solution, says Cla 22 THE HINDU: `Climate change a serious issue' 23 IAEA: IAEA Board Elects Officers for Next Two Years 24 IAEA: IAEA General Conference Adopts Resolutions in Key Areas 25 UPI: Paper insists on Saudi-Israel contacts 26 UPI: Analysis: Rumors of Saudi-Israeli meeting 27 Guardian Unlimited: 40 Labour MPs demand trident debate NUCLEAR REACTORS 28 US: [NukeNet] How safe is your nuclear plant? 29 HindustanTimes.com: Nuke deal: Vote unlikely this weekend 30 THE HINDU: Milestone ahead 31 THE HINDU: Cooperation first, then safeguards 32 US: NRC: Florida Power and Light Company; Turkey Point Nuclear Plant 33 Interfax: Russia will honor its obligations in Bushehr project - 34 BBC: Earlier check for nuclear 35 US: Platts: Nearly seven of 10 Americans support nuclear power: Surv 36 Platts: Germany's RWE applies to extend life of 1,223-MW Biblis-A nu 37 US: NRC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company; Notice of Acceptance fo 38 US: American Spectator: Dispelling Nuclear Phantoms 39 US: MSN Money: Linking business and diplomacy with nuclear energy 40 US: Atlanta Journal-Constitution: CDC study: Nuclear plant no danger 41 US: Secrecy News: NRC Rescinds Secrecy Surrounding HEU Fuel Exports NUCLEAR SECURITY 42 UN Atomic Watchdog Calls For Financial And Technical Support To Figh NUCLEAR SAFETY 43 US: IEER update: Los Alamos and plutonium; Depleted uranium; 44 [southnews] Maralinga marks atomic test anniversary 45 [NYTr] Maralinga marks atomic test anniversary 46 AU ABC: Maralinga marks atomic test anniversary. NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 47 US: Bradenton Herald: Tallevast plume investigation ends 48 US: AU ABC: Suzuki criticises NT uranium push 49 US: Deseret News: A time of change — Industry plans cause discord in 50 US: Times of India: Indo-US nuclear deal faces new roadblock 51 RIA Novosti: Russia, Serbia sign spent fuel removal contract 52 US: Platts: Areva proposes "two-stage" reprocessing-recycling plant 53 reviewjournal.com Opinion - LETTERS: Safe waste disposal 54 US: The Hindu: Australia mulling civilian nuclear deal with India 55 US: Sarasota Herald-Tribune: State ends Tallevast toxic groundwater 56 US: AFP: Australia may match US deal, supplying uranium to India - F 57 US: San Bernardino County Sun: Rialto, county square off again PEACE 58 Non-Proliferation: Critical Analysis on the Hill Today US DEPT. OF ENERGY 59 Tri-City Herald: Audit shows DOE offered incentives for unrealistic 60 Tri-City Herald: DOE's looking for more feedback 61 Hanford News: DOE official visiting Hanford to meet cleanup companie 62 HDTV - Pantex Says NO Contamination 63 KnoxNews: Nuclear facility call line on blink ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [NYTr] Paul Craig Roberts: Why Bush Will Nuke Iran Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:42:06 -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 Antiwar.com - Sep 26, 2006 http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid--49 Why Bush Will Nuke Iran by Paul Craig Roberts The neoconservative Bush administration will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, because it is the only way the neocons believe they can rescue their goal of U.S. (and Israeli) hegemony in the Middle East. The U.S. has lost the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Generals in both war theaters are stating their need for more troops. But there are no troops to send. Bush has tried to pawn Afghanistan off on NATO, but Europe does not see any point in sacrificing its blood and money for the sake of American hegemony. The NATO troops in Afghanistan are experiencing substantial casualties from a revived Taliban, and European governments are not enthralled over providing cannon fodder for U.S. hegemony. The "coalition of the willing" has evaporated. Indeed, it never existed. Bush's "coalition" was assembled with bribes, threats, and intimidation. Pervez Musharraf, the American puppet ruler of Pakistan, let the cat out of the bag when he told CBS' 60 Minutes on Sept. 24, 2006, that Pakistan had no choice about joining the "coalition." Brute coercion was applied. Musharraf said Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage told the Pakistani intelligence director that "you are with us" or "be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age." Armitage is trying to deny his threat, but Dawn Wire Service, reporting from Islamabad on Sept. 16, 2001, on the pressure Bush was putting on Musharraf to facilitate the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, stated: "'Pakistan has the option to live in the 21st century or the Stone Age' is roughly how U.S. officials are putting their case." That Musharraf would volunteer this information on American television is a good indication that Bush has lost the war. Musharraf can no longer withstand the anger he has created against himself by helping the U.S. slaughter his fellow Muslims in Bush's attempt to exercise U.S. hegemony over the Muslim world. Bush cannot protect Musharraf from the wrath of Pakistanis, and so Musharraf has explained himself as having cooperated with Bush in order to prevent the U.S. destruction of Pakistan: "One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that's what I did." Nevertheless, he said, he refused Bush's "ludicrous" demand that he arrest Pakistanis who publicly demonstrated against the U.S.: "If somebody's expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views." Bush's defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel's defeat by Hezbollah in Lebanon have shown that the military firepower of the U.S. and Israeli armies, though effective against massed Arab armies, cannot defeat guerillas and insurgencies. The U.S. has battled in Iraq longer than it fought against Nazi Germany, and the situation in Iraq is out of control. The Taliban have regained half of Afghanistan. The king of Saudi Arabia has told Bush that the ground is shaking under his feet as unrest over the American/Israeli violence against Muslims builds to dangerous levels. Our Egyptian puppet sits atop 100 million Muslims who do not think that Egypt should be a lackey of U.S. hegemony. The king of Jordan understands that Israeli policy is to drive every Palestinian into Jordan. Bush is incapable of recognizing his mistake. He can only escalate. Plans have long been made to attack Iran. The problem is that Iran can respond in effective ways to a conventional attack. Moreover, an American attack on another Muslim country could result in turmoil and rebellion throughout the Middle East. This is why the neocons have changed U.S. war doctrine to permit a nuclear strike on Iran. Neocons believe that a nuclear attack on Iran would have intimidating force throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran would not dare retaliate, neocons believe, against U.S. ships, U.S. troops in Iraq, or use their missiles against oil facilities in the Middle East. Neocons have also concluded that a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran would show the entire Muslim world that it is useless to resist America's will. Neocons say that even the most fanatical terrorists would realize the hopelessness of resisting U.S. hegemony. The vast multitude of Muslims would realize that they have no recourse but to accept their fate. Revised U.S. war doctrine concludes that tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons cause relatively little "collateral damage" or civilian deaths, while achieving a powerful intimidating effect on the enemy. The "fear factor" disheartens the enemy and shortens the conflict. University of California Professor Jorge Hirsch, an authority on nuclear doctrine, believes that an American nuclear attack on Iran will destroy the Nonproliferation Treaty and send countries in pell-mell pursuit of nuclear weapons. We will see powerful nuclear alliances, such as Russia/China, form against us. Japan could be so traumatized by an American nuclear attack on Iran that it would mean the end of Japan's sycophantic relationship to the U.S. There can be little doubt that the aggressive U.S. use of nukes in pursuit of hegemony would make America a pariah country, despised and distrusted by every other country. Neocons believe that diplomacy is feeble and useless, but that the unapologetic use of force brings forth cooperation in order to avoid destruction. Neoconservatives say that America is the new Rome, only more powerful than Rome. Neoconservatives genuinely believe that no one can withstand the might of the United States and that America can rule by force alone. Hirsch believes that the U.S. military's opposition to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has been overcome by the civilian neocon authorities in the Bush administration. Desperate to retrieve their drive toward hegemony from defeat in Iraq, the neocons are betting on the immense attraction to the American public of force plus success. It is possible that Bush will be blocked by Europe, Russia, and China, but there is no visible American opposition to Bush legitimizing the use of nuclear weapons at the behest of U.S. hegemony. It is astounding that such dangerous fanatics have control of the U.S. government and have no organized opposition in American politics. [Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com] * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 2 [NYTr] Russia: Negotiation, Not Confrontation, with Iran Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:14:36 -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 Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Russia Supports Negotiation, Not Confrontation, with Iran Moscow, Sep 26 (Prensa Latina) Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov asserted that the issues related to the Iranian nuclear program should and can be solved within the negotiation process and through a dialogue. After a meeting with Iranian Vice President Gholam-Reza Aghazadeh, Ivanov championed agreements that respect Iran4s right to peaceful nuclear energy, and clear up all worries about validity of the non-proliferation regime. He said he was convinced that there could be a commitment on the negotiation table, starting from the approaches of the sextet (Russia, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States) and Iran4s proposals. Ivanov asserted that Russia will fulfill its promises by the end of Busher station in Iranian territory, in the periods and terms established, he stated. The two-day meeting in Moscow between who is also head of the Atomic Energy Agency and his Russian counterpart Serguei Kirienko (of RosAtom) concluded with an agreement signed by both sides for the construction of the Busher station. The first block of the station is supposed to start at full capacity in November 2007, and Russia is expected to supply nuclear fuel to Iran in March, Atomstroiexport company head Serguei Shmatko reported. hr/iom/oda * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 3 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI initiated active diplomacy in UN 2006/09/26 Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Sayed Muhammad- Ali Husseini said on tuesday that IRI has initiated active diplomacy in the United Nations General Assembly this year. "IRI would not like to pursue a vacant seat policy in the UN General Assembly," he said. "Presence of Foreign Minister during Bush's address to the General Assembly was in line with the principles of Iranian foreign policy which calls for IRI's active role in the world body and international fora," the spokesman said. "Iranian Foreign Ministry officials attend all meetings to hear statements of even the enemies except for delegates of the Zionist regime which IRI does not recognize," Husseini said. IRI does not follow other countries in practicing its own foreign policy principles in the General Assembly. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a keynote address to the General Assembly on how to deal with international issues. M/D Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir ***************************************************************** 4 AFP: Iran denies key nuclear demand on agenda in crunch talks - by Hiedeh Farmani Tue Sep 26, 11:57 AM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran " /> Iranhas ruled out discussing a key international demand over its nuclear programme in talks between its top atomic negotiator and the EU's foreign policy chief set to be held this week. Diplomats told AFP the talks between Iran's Ali Larijani and the EU's Javier Solana -- already the subject of numerous postponements -- were due to take place on Wednesday although this still risked changing. But the deputy head of Iran's atomic energy organisation ruled out discussing a suspension of uranium enrichment activities in the talks, a move European and US leaders have said is crucial for resolving the standoff. Such issues will not be addressed in the next negotiations," Atomic Energy Organization deputy head Mohammad Saeedi told the Iranian student news agency ISNA in Moscow. His comments underline the obstacles that could yet block attempts to find an agreement despite positive noises from both sides that the momentum is heading in the right direction. At their last talks in Vienna earlier this month, diplomats said that Iran offered to suspend uranium enrichment for two months although this has never been officially confirmed by the Islamic republic. The Washington Times reported Tuesday that Iran was close to agreeing to a secret deal that would have it suspend uranium enrichment for 90 days in order for additional talks to take place with several European nations. The suspension of its enrichment program would be kept secret while the additional negotiations take place, unidentified US officials told the daily, adding that Washington strongly opposed such a clandestine deal. The crunch EU-Iran talks are seen as a last chance for Tehran to accept a package of economic and diplomatic incentives in exchange for it freezing enrichment work the West fears could be chanelled into producing nuclear arms. "As Mr Larijani has said, the 5+1 proposal will be the basis for future talks with the 5+1 representative" Solana, Saeedi said while on a visit to Moscow. The so-called 5+1 group comprises permanent UN Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany. Uranium enrichment can be used to make the fuel for a nuclear power station but in highly enriched form can also be employed to make the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. Iran insists that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful energy needs, vehemently rejecting US allegations that it is seeking to manufacture nuclear weapons. Diplomats told AFP that Larijani and Solana were tentatively set to meet on Wednesday but warned that this date could change, as has happened in recent weeks for several EU-Iran meetings. They are set to meet tomorrow (Wednesday) in Brussels, a senior Europe an Union said. They are set to meet tomorrow (Wednesday) in Brussels,&quot; a senior European Union diplomat said." "Related information on European Union">European Uniondiplomat said. But he added, in comments echoed by a second diplomat, this "can change. The deputies are meeting today (Tuesday)" and the two sides would "play it by ear after that". The US has threatened that Iran could face immediate international sanctions if it does not halt enrichment. The negotiations were given a last chance after Washington, under pressure from Europe and China, backed down on its demand for immediate sanctions against Iran for failing to meet an August 31 UN deadline to freeze enrichment. According to European diplomats, Western powers have set the start of October as a final deadline for Iran to give its definitive response to the 5+1 offer. The moves came as Russia and Iran signed an agreement setting next September as the deadline for the long-delayed launch of the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power station, the Islamic republic's first. Iran has bitterly complained of Russian delays in the construction of the reactor, which Moscow is building in the teeth of US objections that it should not be involved in the project. The plant will produce electricity from November next year, Russian officials said, while the nuclear fuel for the plant will be delivered no later than next March. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 5 AFP: Russia, Iran agree power station launch date by Conor Humphries Tue Sep 26, 12:39 PM ET MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia and Iran " /> Iranhave signed an agreement setting next September as the deadline for the launch of the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power station. The deal reaffirmed Russia's commitment to the controversial project in the face of strong US objections, but marked a climbdown by the Iranians, who wanted the project completed in half the time. After a second day of talks between Russian and Iranian officials, "an additional agreement in the contract to build the Bushehr station was signed, which fixes September 2007 as the launch date," Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for Russia's atomic energy agency, told AFP. The plant will actually produce electricity from November next year, he said, while the nuclear fuel for the plant will be delivered no later than March. The agreement was signed at talks between the head of Russian atomic energy agency Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, and Iranian vice-president Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who heads the country's nuclear energy agency. On Monday Aghazadeh had said that six months was sufficient to complete the station rather than the 12-month time-frame suggested by the Russians and he threatened to cut the Russians out of the project, RIA Novosti reported. But on Tuesday he climbed down, describing the agreement to finish the project in one year's time as a "good agreement," the agency reported. Under the deal, all 80 tonnes of fuel will be delivered to the station in March, said Sergei Shmatko, the head of state-run company Atomstroiexport, which is building Bushehr, RIA Novosti reported. Rosatom head Kiriyenko is to visit Iran on an economic mission in late November, his spokesman Sergei Novikov announced Tuesday, although he described it as a routine economic mission. It is unclear whether the Iranians would be capable of completing the plant without the Russians once the fuel is received -- as they have said they might. "I don't think the Iranians can complete the project, even if they had the fuel," said Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the USA and Canada Institute. "They need enough personnel to operate the plant, and people to manage those personnel. I don't think the Iranians have that expertise." A Russian official speaking on condition of anonymity on Monday told AFP that the station was "practically complete," but efforts were first needed to ease the concerns of the international community, which is worried that Iran is using its nuclear power plans as a front for a covert nuclear weapons program. Tuesday's agreement suggests that Russia has decided that the contract, worth an estimated one billion dollars, is worth risking the ire of the United States, which has applied heavy pressure on Moscow to suspend the program. The United States has led calls at the United Nations " /> United Nationsfor the Security Council to take enforcement action against Iran after it failed to heed an end of August deadline to halt uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for reactors or, in extended form, the core of an atom bomb. Russia and China, both of which have major economic interests in Iran, have rebuffed the US pressure, while France has demanded that more talks be held. In an effort to assuage Western concerns, Russia early last year secured Iran's agreement to an amendment of the Bushehr deal, requiring that all spent nuclear fuel from the reactor be returned to Russia for reprocessing. Speaking during a trip to Los Angeles on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Finister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia would not deal with the Iranian problem by joining other countries in issuing an ultimatum over its nuclear program, RIA Novosti news agency reported. "We cannot endorse an ultimatum that will force everyone into a dead end and produce a new crisis in an already destabilized region," he said, insisting that compromise was the only way forward. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 6 AFP: US insists any Iranian enrichment suspension must be verified - Tue Sep 26, 3:40 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States reiterated that Iran " /> must verifiably suspend uranium enrichment before it would negotiate with Tehran, deflecting a US newspaper report of a secret suspension deal being struck by Iran and several European nations. prepared for talks expected this week on Tehran's disputed nuclear program, the State Department insisted that Iran must comply with a suspension as outlined by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency " /> , and the UN Security Council. "The United States will not be at the table for any negotiations absent a suspension as outlined by the IAEA and the Security Council," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a news briefing. "That means it has to be a verifiable suspension. And suspension means suspension means suspension," he emphasized. McCormack sidestepped a question about the accuracy of a report published Tuesday in The Washington Times, citing unnamed US officials, that Iran was close to agreeing a secret deal with several European nations to suspend uranium enrichment for 90 days in exchange for additional talks. "An accurate answer to that question would involve having very clear and accurate insight into the decision-making process of the Iranian regime, which we don't have," he said. "We certainly hope that the answer is, 'Yes, we will suspend; we will verifiably suspend, in order to get to negotiations.' ... That's certainly our preferred course of action here." The crunch EU-Iran talks are seen as a last chance for Tehran to accept a package of economic and diplomatic incentives in exchange for it freezing enrichment work the West fears could be channelled into producing nuclear arms. Diplomats told AFP the talks between Iran's top atomic negotiator, Ali Larijani, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana -- already the subject of numerous postponements -- were due to take place on Wednesday although this still risked changing. The talks are aimed at getting Iran to accept a package of economic and diplomatic incentives -- including the first direct diplomatic contacts with the US in 27 years -- in exchange for the suspension of its uranium enrichment program. The negotiations were given a last chance to succeed after the US, under pressure from Europe and China, backed down on its demand for immediate sanctions against Iran for failing to meet an August 31 UN deadline for freezing the enrichment activities. At a meeting on the sidelines of last week's UN General Assembly session in New York, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice " /> did however convince her counterparts from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia to set a new deadline for imposing sanctions if the Solana-Larijani talks fail. According to Tuesday's report in The Washington Times, US officials opposed to the secret deal said that allowing Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities for 90 days would be giving in to Tehran in its continued defiance of the United Nations " /> . Keeping the agreement secret, they added, would provide Iran with a face-saving measure, but would be difficult since any halt in the nuclear program would have to be verified by the IAEA. But State Department officials supporting the deal see it as a step toward achieving a complete halt to Iran's enrichment activities, the conservative daily said. US President George W. Bush " /> is reportedly unhappy with the secrecy demand, officials said. Asked to comment on the possible agreement, State Department spokesman Tom Casey sent the newspaper an e-mail saying that Iran faces clear UN Security Council conditions. "Iran needs to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, and it needs to do so in a verifiable way. If it does, we can start negotiations. If it doesn't, we move to sanctions. It is a clear and unambiguous standard," Casey said. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 7 UPI: Rice: Iran's ambitions challenge region United Press International - NewsTrack - 9/26/2006 8:56:00 AM -0400 WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said recent fighting in Lebanon helped to clarify that the challenge in that region is Iran's ambitions. Rice said she did not envision a return to Cold War policies of deterrence because of Iran's potential nuclear capability, The Wall Street Journal said Tuesday. Rice spoke with editorial boards of several newspapers, including the Journal, The New York Times and the New York Post, covering a range of diplomatic issues in the Middle East, Latin America, China and North Korea. The war in Lebanon was a "very big wakeup call" because moderates and extremists in the region now recognize the challenge from Iran isn't nuclear, isn't internal but "literally on Iran's ambitions for the region as a whole." During the next several months, perhaps years, emerging democratic moderate forces must withstand a "substantial push" by extremists and by Iranian-led extremism, Rice said. She said she didn't believe a Cold War situation would arise today because "I don't think that Iran currently has that level of capability but we have to accept that level of capability." Overall, though, "trends are moving in the right direction in the Middle East," she said. © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 8 Guardian Unlimited: Russian Fuel to Be Sent to Iranian Plant From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday September 26, 2006 7:46 PM AP Photo MOSB102 By MIKE ECKEL Associated Press Writer MOSCOW (AP) - Russia will ship fuel to a controversial atomic power plant it is building in Iran by March under an agreement signed Tuesday - a deal that should allay Iranian suspicions that Moscow is dragging its feet and add to Western fears over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. With the European Union's foreign policy chief slated to meet Iran's top nuclear negotiator soon for talks on a six-nation incentive package, the agreement signed by senior Russian and Iranian nuclear officials represents a small victory for Iran, which insists its nuclear efforts are peaceful and aimed solely at generating electricity. Iran says it needs enrichment to produce fuel for electricity-generating nuclear reactors. Enrichment can also create weapons-grade material, however, and the United States and other nations have accused Tehran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Britain, France, Germany, the United States, China and Russia are hoping Tehran will agree quickly to suspend uranium enrichment after it missed an Aug. 31 Security Council deadline and return to negotiations. But they are considering U.N. sanctions if it does not. Russian news agencies reported that Sergei Shmatko, head of the state-run company Atomstroiexport, and Mahmoud Hanatian, vice president of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, signed an additional protocol setting out a time frame for starting up the $800 million Bushehr plant - Iran's first. ``The document provides for supplying Russian fuel for the atomic energy plant in March, physical startup in September 2007 and electric generation by November 2007,'' Hanatian was quoted as saying by ITAR-Tass. Shmatko said about 80 tons of fuel would be supplied, according to Interfax and ITAR-Tass. Western nations fear Tehran could try to divert nuclear fuel used at the Bushehr plant and seek to enrich it further for potential use in a weapon. To try to ease Western concerns over Bushehr, Russia has agreed with Iran that Tehran will ship spent fuel back to Russia. However, Iran has resisted Russia's proposal to conduct all of Iran's uranium enrichment on Russian soil. Later, at a meeting with Russian Security Council secretary Igor Ivanov, Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh said Tehran was satisfied with the agreement. ``We reached a good agreement ... on completing construction of the atomic energy plant at Bushehr, including agreement on a concrete date for directing atomic fuel to Iran,'' said Aghazadeh, who is head of Iran's nuclear organization. Ivanov insisted again on a diplomatic solution to international concerns over Tehran's nuclear program and said Moscow would comply with its terms of the deal for the Bushehr plant. ``We will strictly fulfill our obligations,'' he said. ``We consider it necessary that Iran should be guaranteed the right to peacefully develop nuclear energy ... and also to remove the concerns of the international community regarding obligations under the nonproliferation regime,'' Ivanov told Aghazadeh. Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, and Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, are scheduled to hold another round of talks soon over a package of incentives put forward by the six key nations if Tehran agrees to suspend its enrichment program and return to full-scale negotiations. Anton Khlopkov, a nonproliferation analyst and deputy director of the Moscow-based PIR Center, said Tuesday's agreement was most important from Iran's perspective - both for reasons of prestige but also because it had long pushed Russia to agree on a firm date to supply the fuel. He said once the fuel is delivered to Bushehr, new International Atomic Energy Agency requirements will come into force, including greater surveillance of the reactor operations. That would make an attack of Bushehr - for example, by U.S. or Israeli forces - much less likely, he said, since IAEA inspectors would have more access to the facilities. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 9 At UN Debate, Dpr Korea Accuses UN States Of Encouraging Nuclear Tensions Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:00:50 -0400 AT UN DEBATE, DPR KOREA ACCUSES UNITED STATES OF ENCOURAGING NUCLEAR TENSIONS New York, Sep 26 2006 4:00PM The United States is promoting tensions on the Korean peninsula to justify its desire to strengthen its military presence in the region, the Chairman of the Delegation from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) told the United Nations General Assembly today. Choe Su Hon said “it is crystal clear” that Washington does not support either the denuclearization of the peninsula or the Six-Party Talks between the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US. “The US policy towards the DPRK has gone further beyond the mere hostility, so far as to pose nuclear threats even by designating it as part of an ‘axis of evil’ and target of pre-emptive strikes, thus driving the DPRK to inevitably possess nuclear deterrent after all,” he said. Mr. Choe said the US had created the current impasse in the Six-Party Talks by scrapping an already agreed itinerary for the next round of discussions and by imposing financial sanctions on the DPRK. “If there is anything that the United States is in favour of, that is the aggravated tension on the Korean peninsula to be used as a pretext for reinforcing its military forces in the North-East Asian region.” He added that Pyongyang is committed to solving the nuclear issue peacefully through dialogue and negotiations, and that it possesses a deterrent nuclear power, “solely for self-defence.” Mr. Choe also said Japan should not be given a permanent seat on the Security Council because of its record during World War II and the fact that since then it “has been distorting its aggressive history instead of liquidating it.” 2006-09-26 00:00:00.000 ___________________ For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news To listen to news and in-depth programmes from UN Radio go to: http://radio.un.org/ _______________________________ To change your profile or unsubscribe go to: http://www.un.org/apps/news/email/ ***************************************************************** 10 N Korea hits out at US sanctions Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 20:34:59 -0500 (CDT) X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST N Korea hits out at US sanctions North Korea has blamed US financial sanctions for deadlock in multilateral talks on its nuclear programme. In a speech to the UN General Assembly, envoy Choe Su-Hon said that North Korea was willing to hold talks but the US stance had created an impasse. Last year, the two sides agreed a deal under which North Korea would receive economic aid in return for scrapping its nuclear ambitions. But the deal fell apart over disagreements on how to implement it. Shortly afterwards, the US imposed financial sanctions on Pyongyang, accusing it of involvement in counterfeiting and money-laundering. Rhetoric In his speech, Mr Choe, who is deputy foreign minister, said talks were not possible while the sanctions remained. "It is quite preposterous that the DPRK (North Korea), under the groundless US sanctions, takes part in the talks of discussing its own nuclear abandonment," he said. "This is (a) matter of principle intolerable of even the slightest concession." Mr Choe said North Korea was committed to the September 2005 deal and had much to gain from it, but he said that it was "crystal clear" that the US did not want the multilateral talks to succeed. Representatives from the six countries involved in the talks - North Korea, South Korea, the US, China, Russia and Japan - have not met since the deal collapsed. In a speech full of strong rhetoric, the North Korean envoy went on to condemn Japan's bid for a Security Council seat. Japan also has sanctions in place against Pyongyang. Mr Choe also attacked the Security Council, referring to events in Iraq and Lebanon, and accusing it of "irresponsibility, unfairness and double-standards in its activities". Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/5383452.stm Published: 2006/09/27 00:53:36 GMT = = = = STILL FEELING LIKE THE MAINSTREAM U.S. CORPORATE MEDIA IS GIVING A FULL HONEST PICTURE OF WHAT'S GOING ON? = = = = = = = = Sorry, we cannot read/reply to most usenet posts but welcome email FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://EconomicDemocracy.org/wtc/ (peace) http://economicdemocracy.org/eco/climate-summary.html (Climate) And http://EconomicDemocracy.org/ (general) ** New email: econdemocracy[at]gmail[dot]com ***************************************************************** 11 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL] Media nuclear jitters Almost all Korean language dailies splashed their Monday morning issue with an article headlined: "North Korea has 5-6 nuclear bombs." Their internet editions also carried the story complete with interpretative pieces for several hours until they canceled it with apologies to their readers - for printing a spoof produced by an American security affairs researcher. Chiefly to blame is the editors' inadequate understanding of the English copy, which purported to be introducing the text of an imaginary speech by North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju given to a meeting of North Korean diplomats held in Pyongyang sometime in the summer. But it was the nuclear jitters that have prevailed in South Korean society all these years that pushed them to devote a large space on the front and inside pages to a story that they were unable to verify. There were hints of fiction here and there in the lengthy article contributed to the Website of the Nautilus Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank, by Robert Carlin, a former chief of the Northeast Asia Division in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) at the State Department. But Seoul's newspaper and news agency editors were apparently enticed by the specific number of nuclear weapons revealed by Kang and his candid assessment of policy rift between North Korea's military and its foreign service. National dailies in South Korea have shown distinct tendencies regarding North Korean affairs. While the mass-circulation conservative dailies, which invariably are critical of the Roh Moo-hyun government, have been more impassioned in reporting the North's nuclear ambitions, the other liberal papers are generally more reserved in portraying Pyongyang's nuclear threats. But, on Monday morning, both pro- and anti-government papers treated the "Kang Sok-ju speech" so prominently, hurriedly providing expert analyses from the political, military and economic viewpoints. In its introductory part, the article quoted Kang as saying: "Whether or not we will test (nuclear weapons) is not for us to know. I can tell you this - the situation in Pyongyang is where we never wanted it to be. We have no standing at all, no weight, no credibility any longer to influence the decision." There were more words exposing a serious schism within Kim Jong-il's ruling structure, but, alas, they did not come from Kim's close aide but from the imaginative American researcher. The author, in his own style of sarcasm, criticized the Bush administration's blunt approach to Pyongyang that bungled the previously constructive U.S. diplomatic initiatives in the nonproliferation process. Unfortunately, the local media failed to catch the message and avoid the embarrassing mistake. If there is anything we can reap from the journalistic blunder, it must be awareness of the need to remain calmer about the "bombs" in the North, and not to expect an internal feud yet under the military-first politics in the monolithic state in the North. 2006.09.27 ***************************************************************** 12 Reuters: S.Korea to buy 1,000 tonnes of Australian uranium Tuesday September 26, 12:43 PM SEOUL, Sept 26 (Reuters) - South Korea will buy 1,000 tonnes of uranium from Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) over five years, starting in 2010, the commerce ministry said on Tuesday. South Korea's state-run Korea Hydro &Nuclear Power Co. will sign the long-term purchase contract next month with ERA. The total amount is equal to 25 percent of the country's annual demand for uranium, the ministry said in a statement. The ministry also said the state-run Korea Resources Corp. and SK Corp. will pay 6.6 billion won ($7 million) to buy a 15 percent stake in Australia's Cockatoo Coal Ltd. to develop coal mines in Australia. Cockatoo has already secured four coal sites in Australia, including the Wonbindi project, which is estimated to have 33.8 million tonnes of bituminous coal. South Korea's annual bituminous coal consumption is about 76 million tonnes. Resource-poor South Korea, which relies on a stable supply of raw material to feed its export-driven economy, is keen to develop mines to take advantage of soaring global prices. Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 13 Korea Times: Nuke Test to Trigger Retaliation Hankooki.com > The Korea Times By Park Song-wu Staff Reporter A group of South Korean opposition lawmakers fresh from their week-long visit to the United States claimed on Tuesday that Washington has opted for a policy of using military force to retaliate against North Korea if the communist state conducts a nuclear test. The lawmakers from the conservative Grand National Party (GNP), including Rep. Chun Yu-ok, told party leaders that the U.S. administration and Congress are also determined to continue sanctions against North Korea. ``There has been a controversy about Washington's North Korea policy,'' Chun said. ``But we clearly confirmed Washington's stance this time. The U.S. sanctions against North Korea will go on consistently and strongly, according to principle.'' Chun declined to say whom they met in the United States. In contrast, Alexander Vershbow, the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, reaffirmed on the same day that Washington is committed to a diplomatic solution to the North Korea nuclear issue. He told the governing Uri Party lawmakers at the National Assembly that President Roh Moo-hyun and President George W. Bush agreed to intensify consultations on a ``common and broad approach'' aimed at restarting the six-party talks when they held a summit in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 14. Vershbow, however, warned that Seoul and Washington ``must ensure that North Korea is deterred.'' ``It is important that Pyongyang understand that its provocative and destabilizing actions have consequences,'' he said. ``The most recent such action was the multiple missile launch in July.'' The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution that requires all U.N. member states to take steps to stop North Korea's efforts to acquire or sell technology for ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction as well as to finance proliferation-related activities. Regarding Seoul's retrieval of the wartime operational control of its armed forces from Washington, Chun argued that some ranking American officials, including those from the Pentagon, have expressed an intention to renegotiate the timing of the transfer after a change of government in South Korea. But Vershbow said the planned transfer will go on with no change and underlined that it will not affect the alliance. ``Let me stress that Korea and the United States are working closely together on the transfer of wartime operational control because it is a natural and positive evolution in the alliance,'' he said. South Korea and the United States are in the middle of negotiations over the timetable for the transfer. Seoul wants to regain the command by 2012, but Washington has proposed handing it over as early as 2009. ``I know that the transfer has triggered an enormous political debate here in Korea, but I sincerely wish that this debate will not become politically divisive,'' Vershbow said. The final results on the timeline will be unveiled at an annual meeting of the two sides' defense chiefs in Washington, D.C. next month. im@koreatimes.co.kr 09-26-2006 17:41 ***************************************************************** 14 AFP: Rice gives North Korea nuclear talks effort six weeks to resume Tue Sep 26, 6:51 AM ET NEW YORK (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice " /> has said she would travel to Asia in the next six weeks to see whether to make "one last push" to convince North Korea " /> to return to multilateral negotiations on ending its nuclear weapons program. North Korea agreed to join the negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea " /> and the United States a year ago but began boycotting the talks two months later. Amid reports the reclusive regime could be planning its first test of a nuclear bomb, Rice said in an interview released Monday that time was running out to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table. "This current situation isn't really acceptable," she said in the interview with The Wall Street Journal, a transcript of which was released by the State Department. She said a UN Security Council resolution adopted unanimously after North Korea carried out a series of missile tests in July "sent some shockwaves through the North". The resolution demanded that Pyongyang stop missile-related activities, confirm its moratorium on missile launches and return unconditionally to the six-way talks. Rice said in light of North Korea's continued refusal to return to the negotiating table, further action was needed. "We are in discussions now with South Korea, Japan, and I suspect I'll go to Asia sometime in the next month to six weeks, probably next six weeks or so, to take stock and see whether or not one last push to get the six-party talks back on can be made," she said. North Korea said its boycott of the six-party talks was a reaction to financial sanctions imposed by the United States on a Macau bank allegedly used to launder money and finance illicit North Korean activites. Since July's UN resolution, Japan and Australia have also imposed sanctions on firms suspected of involvement in North Korean weapons programs. Pyongyang has also demanded that Washington engage it in direct negotiations, rather than deal only through the six-party forum. While Washington has rejected direct negotiations, Rice said her top envoy on the North Korea issue, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has met with his North Korean counterpart on the sidelines of previous six-party meetings. "We've had situations where the night before the six-party talks, a couple nights before, Chris Hill sat with his North Korean counterpart and talked," she said. "There's no absence of an opportunity to talk, it's that the North Koreans haven't been willing to show up at the forum in which to talk," she said. Rice said that in the meantime, Washington would continue its financial measures "because they do relate to illicit North Korean activities". Rice also sought to counter suggestions of a growing rift between the United States and South Korea over how to approach the crisis, with Seoul seen as favoring more diplomacy rather than threats of sanctions against its volatile neighbor. "South Korea has been more helpful than you might think," she said. She said South Korea had told allies during meetings on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly here last week of efforts it was making to put pressure on the North, including cutting back badly needed food assistance and fertilizer supplies. She said those measures could be intensified and threaten overall North-South economic ties if North Korea goes ahead with the rumored nuclear weapons test. "The South Koreans have been very clear, if the North were somehow to have a nuclear test, to have a missile test, that would put a lot at risk in their relationship," she said. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 15 AFP: Rice gives North Korea nuclear talks effort six weeks to resume Tue Sep 26, 10:39 AM ET NEW YORK (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice " /> said she would travel to Asia in the next six weeks to see whether to make "one last push" to convince North Korea " /> to return to multilateral negotiations on ending its nuclear weapons program. North Korea agreed to join the negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea " /> and the United States a year ago but began boycotting the talks two months later. Amid reports the reclusive regime could be planning its first test of a nuclear bomb, Rice said in an interview released Monday that time was running out to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table. "This current situation isn't really acceptable," she said in the interview with The Wall Street Journal, a transcript of which was released by the State Department. She said a UN Security Council resolution adopted unanimously after North Korea carried out a series of missile tests in July "sent some shockwaves through the North." The resolution demanded that Pyongyang stop missile-related activities, confirm its moratorium on missile launches and return unconditionally to the six-way talks. Rice said in light of North Korea's continued refusal to return to the negotiating table, further action was needed. "We are in discussions now with South Korea, Japan, and I suspect I'll go to Asia sometime in the next month to six weeks, probably next six weeks or so, to take stock and see whether or not one last push to get the six-party talks back on can be made," she said. North Korea said its boycott of the six-party talks was a reaction to financial sanctions imposed by the United States on a Macau bank allegedly used to launder money and finance illicit North Korean activities. Since July's UN resolution, Japan and Australia have also imposed sanctions on firms suspected of involvement in North Korean weapons programs. Pyongyang has also demanded that Washington engage it in direct negotiations, rather than deal only through the six-party forum. While Washington has rejected direct negotiations, Rice said her top envoy on the North Korea issue, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has met with his North Korean counterpart on the sidelines of previous six-party meetings. "We've had situations where the night before the six-party talks, a couple nights before, Chris Hill sat with his North Korean counterpart and talked," she said. "There's no absence of an opportunity to talk, it's that the North Koreans haven't been willing to show up at the forum in which to talk," she said. Rice said that in the meantime, Washington would continue its financial measures "because they do relate to illicit North Korean activities." Rice also sought to counter suggestions of a growing rift between the United States and South Korea over how to approach the crisis, with Seoul seen as favoring more diplomacy rather than threats of sanctions against its volatile neighbor. "South Korea has been more helpful than you might think," she said. She said South Korea had told allies during meetings on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly here last week of efforts it was making to put pressure on the North, including cutting back badly needed food assistance and fertilizer supplies. She said those measures could be intensified and threaten overall North-South economic ties if North Korea goes ahead with the rumored nuclear weapons test. "The South Koreans have been very clear, if the North were somehow to have a nuclear test, to have a missile test, that would put a lot at risk in their relationship," she said. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 16 AFP: US offers NKorea new concession in bid to restart nuclear talks Tuesday September 26, 08:46 AM By Jun Kwanwoo [US assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill (R) and US Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow] SEOUL (AFP) - The United States is willing to hold a bilateral meeting with North Korea even before six-nation nuclear disarmament talks resume, a senior official has said, in a concession aimed at restarting the stalled dialogue. US ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow said a one-on-one meeting could take place if the North were to make a commitment to return to the multinational forum on scrapping its nuclear programme. Washington's position previously was that the North had (Advertisement) [Click Here] [ src=] to actually return to the six-nation talks before any bilateral meeting. Vershbow's comments come amid speculation that the North may be preparing for a nuclear weapons test. Former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage said here Monday there was an even chance of a test this year. "We are open to a new approach, as I said last week," Vershbow said, confirming his reported remarks that top US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill could meet the North Koreans even before the stalled disarmament talks resume. "Assistant Secretary Hill is open to a bilateral meeting with his North Korean counterpart if Pyongyang commits to return to six-party talks," Vershbow told lawmakers from South Korea's ruling party. The United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan signed a joint statement in September last year under which the North would abandon its nuclear program in return for energy and economic aid, eventual diplomatic benefits and security guarantees. But two months later, North Korea boycotted the forum in protest over US sanctions on a Macau bank which allegedly helped it pass counterfeit US dollars and launder funds. Seoul's top nuclear negotiator Chun Yung-Woo and Hill met in New York last week to follow up on a summit accord between their presidents to push for "a common and broad approach" to reviving the six-way disarmament forum. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that she would travel to Asia in the next six weeks to see whether to make "one last push" to persuade the North to return to the talks. Vershbow said Washington is ready to discuss how to implement the one-year-old accord. "The challenge now is formulating the implementation strategy," he said. "We are prepared to move forward quickly on all aspects of the joint statement, including a negotiation of a permanent peace regime for the Korean peninsula, economic and energy support that can help the lives of North Korean people, and normalization with Pyongyang, if the North Koreans are prepared to eliminate their nuclear weapons and nuclear programs as they promised to do one year ago." The North has said it will never return to dialogue while under US sanctions. Tensions have risen further following Pyongyang's missile tests in July and speculation about a nuclear test. The North declared in February 2005 it had built nuclear weapons, but there have been no reports of a test. Armitage said Monday his personal view is that North Korea may test a nuclear weapon by the end of this year. "As a personal opinion I think you have an even chance of a nuclear device detonation by the end of the year, and that in the longer time it's more likely than not that North Korea will detonate a nuclear device," he told a forum in the South Korean capital. "I think in their logic, it's the next rational escalation point." Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! UK Limited. All rights reserved. - - AFP ***************************************************************** 17 AFP: NKorea says nuclear weapons 'self-defense', blasts US - Tue Sep 26, 3:17 PM ET UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - A top North Korean official told the UN General Assembly that his country's nuclear arms were for "self-defense" as he accused Washington of using non-proliferation and terrorism as "a pretext" to invade sovereign states. In a rare North Korean explanation on the international stage of its policy, Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon said the Stalinist state's "possession of deterrent power, solely for self-defense, is fully in line with the interests of the regional countries for peace and security." He also reiterated that Pyongyang could not resume six-party talks on ending its nuclear program as long as it remains subject to US financial sanctions. "The US adventurous military maneuvers such as military exercises and economic blockade against the DPRK ( North Korea " /> ) continue to be tolerated, while the routine missile test fires of our army for self-defense have been picked up to be condemned as 'a threat to international peace and security'," Choe noted. Pyongyang declared in February 2005 it had nuclear weapons, but there have been no reports of a test. Last July, it defied international warnings and fired seven ballistic missiles, including its long-range Taepodong-2, believed to be capable of striking America's western seaboard. The UN Security Council, including the North's only major ally, China, responded by unanimously adopting a resolution condemning its actions and imposing missile-related sanctions. In 1998, North Korea had already caused international alarm by firing a long-range missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. In his speech, Choe also lambasted what he called Washington's "unilateralism and high-handed acts" that "are ever becoming so reckless as to trample down the principles on the respect for sovereign equality of all states, the fundamental basis of the UN Charter, thereby arousing a serious concern of the international society." "Worse still are the invasions on sovereign states either openly committed or disregarded and even fanned up under the pretext of 'non-proliferation' and 'anti-terrorism', giving rise to a massacre of innocent people and the serious destruction of international peace and security," he added. In September last year, Pyongyang joined the United States, South Korea " /> , China, Russia and Japan in signing a joint statement under which it pledged to abandon its nuclear program in return for energy and economic aid, eventual diplomatic benefits and security guarantees. But two months later, North Korea boycotted the forum to protest US sanctions on a Macau bank which allegedly helped it pass counterfeit US dollars and launder funds. Choe told the assembly Tuesday that Pyongyang would derive "a greater benefit from the implementation of the agreed provisions of the (six-party) talks. "That is why it is willing to hold the talks more than any other countries," he added. But he then went on to accuse Washington of scuttling the talks by "imposing financial sanctions upon the DPRK." "It is quite preposterous that the DPRK, under the groundless US sanctions, takes part in the talks of discussing its own nuclear abandonment," Choe said. "This is (a) matter of principle intolerable of even the slightest concession." Meanwhile, amid reports the reclusive regime could be planning its first nuclear bomb test, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice " /> said in an interview released Monday that time was running out to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 18 UPI: At U.N. North Korea denounces U.S. actions United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 9/26/2006 4:09:00 PM -0400 UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- North Korea says the United States is promoting tensions on the Korean peninsula to justify its desire to strengthen its military presence in the region. "It is crystal clear" Washington does not support either the denuclearization of the peninsula or the Six-Party Talks between the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States," Democratic People's Republic of Korea Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon told the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday. "The Unite States policy towards the DPRK has gone further beyond the mere hostility, so far as to pose nuclear threats even by designating it as part of an 'axis of evil' and target of pre-emptive strikes, thus driving the DPRK to inevitably possess nuclear deterrent after all," he said. Choe said Washington created the current impasse by scrapping the already agreed plan for the next round of discussions and by imposing financial sanctions on North Korea. "If there is anything that the United States is in favor of, that is the aggravated tension on the Korean peninsula to be used as a pretext for reinforcing its military forces in the North-East Asian region." He said Pyongyang is committed to solving the nuclear issue peacefully through dialogue and negotiations, and said it possesses a deterrent nuclear power, "solely for self-defense." At the same time, he said, "The United States adventurous military maneuvers such as military exercises and economic blockade against the DPRK continue to be tolerated, while the routine missile test fires our army for self-defense have been picked up to be condemned as a 'a threat to international peace and security.'" © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 19 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Open to New Approaches on N. Korea From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday September 26, 2006 7:01 AM AP Photo SEL801 By JAE-SOON CHANG Associated Press Writer SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The United States is prepared to pursue new approaches to resolve a standoff over North Korea's nuclear program, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea said Tuesday, urging the communist state to return to stalled disarmament talks. Alexander Vershbow didn't elaborate on what those approaches could be, but said the U.S. can meet bilaterally with North Korea if Pyongyang promises to resume the six-nation nuclear talks. Washington's long-standing position is that it is prepared to hold direct talks with Pyongyang within the framework of the nuclear forum. U.S. officials have made a recent series of conciliatory gestures in apparent efforts to lure the North back to the talks. Vershbow said last week that the main U.S. nuclear envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, could even visit Pyongyang if the North expresses its willingness to return to the dialogue table. ``We're open to new approaches,'' Vershbow said in a forum with South Korean lawmakers. North Korea has boycotted the six-party talks, which involve China, Japan, the Koreas, Russia and the U.S., insisting it will not return unless Washington drops financial restrictions imposed for the regime's alleged complicity in counterfeiting and money laundering. The U.S. has said the North shouldn't link the financial issue to the nuclear talks. Efforts to restart the dialogue have been picking up pace recently. South Korea's main nuclear envoy, Chun Yung-woo, has been in Washington since last week and is scheduled to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, in Seoul later this week. The need to resume the nuclear talks has taken on added urgency since North Korea test-fired a series of missiles in July. Reports have also suggested the communist regime might conduct a nuclear test to further escalate tension. Selig Harrison, a U.S. expert on North Korea, warned earlier this week after a trip to the North that the country could harvest more weapons-grade plutonium by removing fuel rods at its Yongbyon reactor within the next three months. North Korea boasts that it has nuclear bombs, but the claim has not been independently verified. Many experts believe the North has enough radioactive material to build at least a half-dozen or more nuclear weapons. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 20 Guardian Unlimited: N. Korea Rejects Talks on Nuke Program From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday September 26, 2006 9:01 PM AP Photo UNEB114 By PAUL ALEXANDER Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS (AP) - North Korea rejected further talks on its nuclear program and blamed the breakdown in negotiations directly on the United States Tuesday, claiming that Washington wants to rule the world. Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon said in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly that U.S. financial sanctions, imposed shortly after a joint statement was issued at six-nation talks on the communist North's nuclear program on Sept. 19, 2005, had convinced Pyongyang that the negotiations were not worth pursuing. ``It is quite preposterous that the DPRK, under the groundless U.S. sanctions, takes part in the talks on discussing its own nuclear abandonment,'' Choe said, referring to North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. He said it was a matter of principle ``that cannot tolerate even the slightest concession.'' In a speech that was peppered with anti-American rhetoric, Choe claimed North Korea has developed nuclear weapons as a deterrent solely for self-defense against pre-emptive strikes by the United States and was eager, in principle, to hold talks, but that Washington's ``vicious, hostile policy'' made negotiations unacceptable. Washington has denied it has any plans to attack North Korea. Pyongyang has boycotted the six-party talks, involving China, Japan, the Koreas, Russia and the U.S., insisting it will not return unless Washington drops financial restrictions imposed for the regime's alleged complicity in counterfeiting and money laundering. The U.S. has said the North shouldn't link the financial issue to the nuclear talks. The need to resume the talks has taken on added urgency since North Korea test-fired a series of missiles in July. Reports also have suggested the communist regime might conduct a nuclear test to further escalate tension. North Korea boasts that it has nuclear bombs, but the claim has not been independently verified. Many experts believe the North has enough radioactive material to build at least a half-dozen or more nuclear weapons. Choe blamed aggravated tensions on the Korean peninsula on the U.S. military presence in South Korea, what he called a U.S. doctrine of a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the North, large-scale U.S.-South Korean military exercises, U.S. military equipment sales to Seoul and regular U.S. aerial reconnaissance flights over the North. ``It is crystal clear that the U.S. is not in favor of the six-party talks and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,'' Choe said, referring to President Bush's characterization of the North as part of an ``axis of evil.'' ``If there is anything that the United States is in favor of, that is the aggravated tension on the Korean peninsula to be used as a pretext for reinforcing its military forces in the Northeast Asian region... within its world supremacy strategy.'' Choe said North Korea ``maintains its consistent position to resolve the issue of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula through dialogue and negotiations.'' He said the North ``is sure to get a greater benefit'' from the implementation of the September 2005 agreement, and he thanked U.N. member states ``for their continued support and encouragement'' to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully. Choe also slammed Japan's push for a permanent seat on the Security Council and criticized the 15-nation body itself as irresponsible, unrepresentative and unfair. One of the U.N.'s top priorities is reforming the world body, which was established in the political realities of post-World War II, particularly the Security Council. Choe urged that the power to issue resolutions related to international peace and security be shifted from the Security Council - where the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France have veto power - to the 192-member General Assembly where there are no vetoes. ``The fact that the Security Council remains indifferent to the infringement of sovereignty and massacre of civilians committed in the Arab territories, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Israel's aggression in Lebanon, represents typical examples of irresponsibility, unfairness and double-standards in its activities,'' Choe said. He said Japan must never be allowed to have a permanent seat on the Security Council, calling it a ``war criminal which invaded Asian countries and committed a massacre of innocent people but has been distorting its aggressive history instead of liquidating it.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 21 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear deterrent not the solution, says Clarke Will Woodward, chief political correspondent Tuesday September 26, 2006 The Guardian The government has failed to make the case for renewing Britain's nuclear deterrent, the former cabinet minister Charles Clarke said yesterday. Speaking at a Guardian debate at the conference, Mr Clarke, who was sacked as home secretary in May, fuelled the argument about Trident which some members have accused the party leadership of trying to curb. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are committed to replacing Trident at an estimated cost of £15bn-£25bn, although the Liberal Democrats claim it could cost more than three times that once maintenance costs are taken into account. "I'm not of the swords into ploughshares persuasion. I think the security risks ... are very real that we face in this country," Mr Clarke said. "I'm not convinced, however, that renewing Trident is the best way to address those security risks that we face some 15 years down the line. I don't rule it out, but I think the argument has not been made. The question about replacing Trident is whether that is the best means of providing the security the country is looking for." A total of 40 MPs have signed a letter to the party chairman calling for a debate on Trident. "Even at this late stage we believe a way should be found to permit a thorough debate on this issue, and that conference is allowed to express its view by way of a democratic vote," the MPs said. Two delegates, David Withers from Birmingham Selly Oak and Rob Bygraves, told the meeting that renewing nuclear weapons made it much harder for Labour to reconnect with its supporters. The party high command has refused to take a motion on Trident on the floor of the conference. On Sunday three ministers - Hilary Benn, Peter Hain and Harriet Harman - called for a full debate on the issue. At the Guardian event, Jack Straw, the leader of the Commons and former foreign secretary, said he supported multilateral, not unilateral, disarmament. "We went through that argument 40 to 45 years ago and we went through it again in the early 80s," he said. "It made damn sure we couldn't get elected to do any of the things we cared about." The doctrine of "mutually assured destruction can help in certain circumstances to calm the world", he said. Britain had done more than any other country under the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to reduce its nuclear weapons, and international agreement remained the best way to do that. Mr Straw said the government had to do more to bring public servants with it. "In reforming the public services we must not give the impression - albeit mistaken - that we are involved in some kind of permanent revolution." The party had to reverse the "I'm the lucky one syndrome" revealed by a recent Guardian poll in which voters denied, by a large majority, that people were better off, when the facts showed that was the case. "British politics is among the cleanest in the world but we do have a trust problem," he said. Email your comments for publication to politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 22 THE HINDU: `Climate change a serious issue' [Frontline] Volume 23 - Issue 19 :: Sep. 23-Oct. 06, 2006 INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE INTERVIEW `Climate change a serious issue' T.S. SUBRAMANIAN Interview with James Connaughton, Chairman, U.S. Council on Environmental Quality. K. PICHUMANI "I am a dedicated environmental optimist and an eco-realist." This is how James L. Connaughton, Chairman of the United States Administaration's Council on Environmental Quality, describes himself. "The link between awareness such as your magazine provides and the understanding of the need for such an action propels us as human beings to restore [the environment] and exercise better stewardship," he said in an interview to Frontline in Chennai on August 23. During President George W. Bush's first term, Connaughton coordinated the development of major U.S. government initiatives such as the national clean air strategy, the forests' restoration legislation, the new wetlands restoration initiative, the clean-up and re-development of abandoned industrial sites and the comprehensive climate change strategy. Excerpts from the interview: The climate across the world is changing. The temperature shot up to 40oC in New York and it snowed in Johannesburg. Are these bizarre changes related to greenhouse gas emissions? We know that global surface temperatures, on an average, are rising. Scientists are working on various causes for that temperature trend. There seems to be a general agreement that humans are importantly responsible for the rise in greenhouse gases that contribute to the warming trend and they are studying aggressively the extent to which these gases are factor, and the negative as well as the potentially positive consequences of such a trend. We need to be careful about attributing a single episode, whether it is positive or negative, in terms of the present weather, to the longer premises associated with global warming. It is a serious issue. The U.S. government, since President Bush has been in office, has spent more than $10 billion on climate change science alone and another $17 billion on technologies to reduce greenhouse gases. Can you give us a sense of the climate change strategy in the U.S.? Is there a concrete strategy to arrest the change in the climate? In the summer of 2001, President Bush gave a major policy address, describing the seriousness of the climate change issue and how he would approach it. He established a Cabinet-level committee that developed a broad series of policies that the President announced in February 2002. It began with a commitment to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of the U.S. economy by 18 per cent by 2012. He then outlined several dozen policy initiatives, which included new mandatory programmes to cut greenhouse gases, a large number of new incentives and a series of new public-private partnerships with industry and other groups to make specific, viable reductions in greenhouse gases. An example of the mandatory programme is the new fuel economy standards that apply to light trucks and large passenger vehicles. That calls for 15 per cent improvement in fuel economy across the entire fleet. An example of the incentives is Congress passing a new energy law last year that provides more than $10 billion in tax credits for renewable energy systems and highly fuel-efficient vehicles. In terms of partnerships, at the national level we have 15 per cent of our major sectors, each taking specific commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. We are working internationally, for example, to capture methane from coal mines, landfills and agricultural operations, and producing clean, low-emitting energy at substantial profit. That programme aims at cutting greenhouse gases by 15 million tonnes by 2015. That is one-tenth of what the Kyoto Protocol has achieved, if countries are meeting their targets. The U.S. has been seen as a spoilsport on several important international initiatives. It was a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, but the U.S. Senate did not ratify it. The Senate did not ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) also. The U.S. pulled out of one of the START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] agreements. Why did the U.S. pull out of these international agreements. Was it because of its selfish interests? The U.S. strongly supports well-designed international treaties and agreements that achieve their goal in a rational way and have a strong likelihood of success. We are strong supporters of several treaties, for example, of eliminating the deadliest chemicals. We are leaders of international treaties on fishing. We led the way in the elimination of ozone-depleting substances. I give you these examples - just a few of the many - where the U.S. is an active leader and a strong supporter of the goals of international engagement. Most notably, bilaterally, the agreement between the U.S. and India to advance zero emission. It is important to understand that there are times when we assess treaties and make a decision that they [the treaties] are not rational and not achievable. The Kyoto Protocol, as applied to the United States, presents both the problems. The target agreed to by the prior administration was impossible to achieve without causing a loss of nearly five million jobs. At the same time, it would have resulted in simply shifting the greenhouse gases emitted from America to other countries where the greenhouse gases would still be emitted and, therefore, would not have done much in solving the environmental problem. Which is why the prior administration did not send the treaty to its own Senate for ratification. When President Bush came into office, he more directly restated the policy that was already established by the prior government that had signed the treaty and then elected not to send it to the Senate. Nevertheless, we did aggressively move forward to design a strategy that was more rational economically and will produce real and lasting reductions in greenhouse gases. The reason for this [my] visit is that we have constructed international partnership and agreements that are aimed at significant transfer and application of the cleanest, new technologies to advance economic growth while reducing not only greenhouse gases but also harmful air pollution that plagues so many cities worldwide. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate is one example of that. We have the methane partnership. Another example is through the G-8 Plan of Action on Clean Development and Climate. President Bush is working closely with Prime Minister Tony Blair [of the U.K.] to develop it. It is a 40-page comprehensive series of steps that the G-8 countries with five major emerging economies, including India, can take to improve their energy security, to reduce harmful air pollution that affects our cities and human health today, and at the same time make lasting progress on climate change. What is the new wetland initiative in the U.S.? The President is a strong conservationist. Because so many of his initiatives are positive and everybody likes them, you cannot hear too much about them. There is no conflict. Wetlands is a good example of it. In March 2003, the President was pleased to announce that the U.S. has finally stopped the overall loss of its wetlands since the settlers first came to America, and turned the corner on restoring the wetlands. At that time, he made a commitment to restore, improve and protect three million acres of wetlands over five years. We have more than 40 federal programmes dedicated to that purpose. For example, we have $40 billion going to our farmers and ranchers over 10 years in new conservation programmes. Several of these will be used to restore and improve wetlands and working farmlands, taking the most valuable ecological parts of those lands out of production. Out of production? Out of production while continuing production on the parts that are best-performing. Did not the farmers object? The farmers no longer object. They are now delighted that they are able to transition part of their land into a more vibrant land that provides nicer access to rivers and streams. It is now a place of recreation for fishing, bird-watching and hunting, and farmers can charge licence-fees for these activities. We have another programme called the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. That has already restored and protected more than five million acres of wetlands in the last decade, which helped to turn the corner in the overall gain in the wetlands. That is a programme in which the federal government puts in a dollar and conservation groups and other organisations match it anywhere from three to ten times. For a dollar of federal spending, we get three to ten dollars of private spending to go out for the best opportunities to restore wetlands on a large-scale. Duck-hunters are particularly active. James Lovelock, eminent environmental scientist, says that we have no time to experiment with newfangled technologies. Do you agree with his view that only nuclear power can halt global warming? You are not seriously dedicated to energy security, air pollution control and climate change unless you are seriously dedicated to a dramatic expansion in the use of zero emission nuclear power. That is one of a broad portfolio of technologies that will be necessary to provide the foundation for a more sustainable energy future. The others include renewable fuels, and technologies that make coal-fired energy zero emission. We are working aggressively on all of these because we still need coal at least for the next several decades to help people out of poverty and foster economic growth. A joint meeting of Indo-U.S. coal technologists concluded that U.S. technology would not suit Indian coal for gasification... There are four important steps to make the use of coal more sustainable. One is more effective, efficient and high-performing coal mining, with reclamation to restore the land to its original state. The second is to make the current generation of coal-fired power plants more efficient. For several plants you make more efficient, you don't have to build a new one. Three, we must move forward rapidly on the current high-tech approaches to cut air pollution from all coal-fired power plants and install the best technologies in constructing new coal-fired power plants. The fourth is to rapidly move forward with half-a-dozen different approaches being explored for capturing carbon-dioxide emission from coal and storing them deep underground for putting them to productive use as a product instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. India has just joined the FutureGen [alliance], which is dedicated to solving the carbon-dioxide capture issue from coal. That was an important development because as you said, India has a different coal content from that of the U.S. or other countries. So we need to experiment with the kind of coal India is using and make sure that these technological advancements are applicable to India as they are to the United States, China and Eastern Europe. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate is interested in hydrogen economy. How far are we away from hydrogen economy? India is going to build a Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR), which will generate not only electricity but hydrogen. First, we already know how to produce a lot of hydrogen. The challenge is in how to make effective use of that hydrogen in energy systems such as small industrial parks, homes, consumer goods and transportation. There is a worldwide effort to systematically accelerate the time that hydrogen will be available for these applications on a commercial scale. That is, through the International Partnership for Hydrogen Economy. The U.S. is committing $1.7 billion over five years to this effort alone and that amount of money is being matched in substantial measure by Asian and European companies and the private sector. There is an extremely high level of interest in making this transition to this energy-delivery source. The advantage is in its zero emission. Its only emission is water vapour and its main source is water. You asked what the prospects are for hydrogen economy. The President has directed his administration to work towards a goal of achieving commercialisation [of hydrogen] in this generation. In his State of the Union address in 2003, the President used the expression that a child born today could drive hydrogen-powered vehicles. I have personally driven several [of them]. So the technology exists. It is in use. It is currently very expensive. Issues of reliability must be examined for wide-scale use. But we are not working on some future dream. We are working on a present reality, on a technology that can be used for this purpose. The world should work together on this because that excites private markets. If they are building a technology for all major countries in the world rather than for one country, it increases the incentive to invest and innovate with the technology. You deal with environment and energy. Do you believe that we have damaged the environment so badly that we cannot recover from it? Or is there cause for optimism? I am a dedicated environmental optimist and an eco-realist. What that means is that as soon as we are able to identify a problem, there are people rolling up their sleeves and working to correct it. So the link between awareness such as your magazine provides and the understanding of the need for action propels us as human beings to restore [the environment] and exercise better stewardship. Environmental degradation typically comes from poverty and a lack of understanding of its impact on the local world and the world at large. I am an optimist because as I sit here today the air pollution in America has been cut by half while we tripled our economy. As I sit here, we no longer have significant issues of hazardous waste in America. We have well-managed landfills. We have strict rules. All our water systems are recovering at a rapid rate, faster than anyone thought possible 20 years ago. So we know from experience that we can fix these problems. We just need to design rational policies that enable us to grow our economies so that we can pay for these solutions at a faster rate. There is a direct connection between the rate of environmental progress and the rate of economic growth. One should be highly determined to address environmental problems. What is the role of the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate for reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Each of the countries is leading different working groups in equal partnership with their private sectors, which makes it a different and exciting partnership. We have CEOs of leading companies of the world [taking part in the partnership]. The U.S.' role is in equal measure as the other five countries [India, Australia, China, Japan and South Korea]. We are designing strategies that are relevant to all our countries, which represent more than 50 per cent of the world's population, of the world's fossil energy use and of the world's economy. Copyright © 2006, Frontline. ***************************************************************** 23 IAEA: IAEA Board Elects Officers for Next Two Years [IAEA.ORG :: Atoms for Peace] Staff Report 26 September 2006 [Board Officers] IAEA Board of Governors where its officers were elected to serve for the next two years. (Photo: D. Calma/IAEA) + Story Resources + IAEA Board + New Members Elected The newly constituted IAEA Board of Governors for 2006-07 elected its officers this week for the coming two year period. Elected Board Chair is the Ambassador and Resident Representative from Slovenia, Mr. Ernest Petri . He succeeds the Ambassador and Permanent Representative from Japan, Mr. Yukiya Amano. Elected as Vice-Chairs for 2006-07 were Mr. Thomas Stelzer, the Governor from Austria, and Mr. Milenko E. Skoknic, the Governor from Chile. Member States represented on the IAEA Board for 2006-2007 are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Republic of, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Morocco, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Syrian Arab Republic, Thailand, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America. The full Board next meets in Vienna, 23 November, 2006. Copyright ©, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: Official.Mail@iaea.org ***************************************************************** 24 IAEA: IAEA General Conference Adopts Resolutions in Key Areas + [IAEA.ORG :: Atoms for Peace] Conference Concludes 22 September 2006 in Vienna Staff Report 26 September 2006 [GC 50 Plenary] Plenary during the 50th Regular Session of the IAEA General Conference. (Photo: D. Calma/IAEA) + Story Resources + IAEA General Conference Website + General Conference Documents + General Conference Resolutions, Ful List + Resolutions: [pdf] - Safeguards [GC(50)/RES/14] - Technical Cooperation [GC(50)/RES/12] - Nuclear Science & Applications [GC(50)/RES/13] - Nuclear Security [GC(50)/RES/11] - Safety [GC(50)/RES/10] - DPRK [GC(50)/RES/15] - Middle East NWFZ [GC(50)/RES/16] Member States meeting at the IAEA General Conference have adopted resolutions on key areas of the Agency´s work. More than 100 IAEA Member States attended the week-long Conference, which concluded 22 September 2006 in Vienna. Adopted resolutions include: + Nuclear Security - Measures to Protect Against Nuclear Terrorism. The resolution welcomes Agency efforts and progress in key areas. It calls upon all Member States to provide political, financial, and technical support to improve nuclear and radiological security and prevent nuclear and radiological terrorism, and to the provide the Agency´s Nuclear Security Fund the support it needs. The resolution emphasizes the importance of physical protection and other measures against illicit trafficking and national control systems for ensuring protection against nuclear terrorism and other malicious acts, including the use of radioactive material in a radiological dispersion device. + Strengthening the Effectiveness and Improving the Efficiency of the Safeguards System and Application of the Model Additional Protocol. Expressing the conviction that IAEA safeguards contribute to strengthening the collective security of States, the 5-page resolution supports the Agency´s verification system and efforts to strengthen it. Among other points, the resolution stresses the need for effective safeguards in order to prevent the use of nuclear material for prohibited purposes in contravention of safeguards agreements, and underlines the vital importance of effective safeguards for facilitating cooperation in the field of peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It further stresses the importance of the safeguards systems, including comprehensive safeguards agreements and additional protocols, and of pursuing the implementation of strengthening measures as far as available resources permit. It affirms that measures to strengthen the effectiveness and improve the efficiency of the safeguards system with a view to detecting undeclared nuclear material and activities must be implemented rapidly and universally by all concerned States and other Parties in compliance with their respective international commitments. + Strengthening of the Agency´s Technical Cooperation Activities. The resolution stresses the importance of nuclear knowledge sharing and the transfer of nuclear technology to developing countries for further enhancing their scientific and technological capabilities and thereby contributing to their socio-economic development. It further stresses that the Agency´s resources for technical cooperation activities should be assured, predictable, and sufficient to meet objectives. It requests the IAEA Director General to support efforts to strengthen technical cooperation activities through partnerships and other cooperative channels and to help interested Member States in a number of specific areas, including food and agriculture, human health, industry, water resource management, environment, knowledge management, biotechnology, and nuclear energy planning for interested States. + Strengthening the Agency´s Activities Related to Nuclear Science, Technology and Applications. The cluster resolution addresses nuclear applications for electrical power production and for non-power purposes. Among non-power applications, the resolution addresses the Programme of Action for Cancer Therapy; the development of the sterile insect technique for the control or eradication of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes; and the African Union´s Pan African Tsetse and Trypanosomosis Eradication Campaign. Concerning nuclear power applications, the resolution addresses Agency activities in the development of innovative nuclear technology; approaches to supporting nuclear power infrastructure development; and nuclear knowledge. + Measures to Strengthen International Cooperation in Nuclear, Radiation and Transport Safety and Waste Management. The cluster resolution urges the IAEA to continue strengthening its efforts in the subject areas, focusing particularly on mandatory activities and on technical areas and regions where the need for improvement is the greatest. Areas covered in the resolution include the Agency´s safety standards programme; nuclear installation safety; radiation safety; the safety of radioactive waste management; the safe decommissioning of nuclear facilities and other facilities using radioactive materials; education and training in nuclear, radiation, transport and waste safety; nuclear and radiological incident and emergency preparedness and response; and the safety and security of radioactive sources. + Implementation of the Safeguards Agreement Between the Agency and the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Pursuant to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The resolution "calls upon the DPRK to cooperate promptly with the Agency in the full and effective implementation of IAEA safeguards and to resolve any outstanding issues that may have arisen due to the long absence of safeguards... and to comply fully with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons." The resolution stresses the General Conference´s desire for a "peaceful resolution through dialogue to the DPRK nuclear issue, leading to a nuclear-weapon-free Korean Peninsula, with a view to maintaining peace and security in the region." + Application of IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East. The resolution requests the IAEA Director General to continue consultations with the States of the Middle East to facilitate the early application of full-scope safeguards to all nuclear activities in the region as relevant to the preparation of model agreements, as a necessary step towards the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free-zone in the region. + Applications for Membership of the Agency. Resolutions approved the applications for IAEA membership of the Republics of Malawi, Montenegro, Mozambique and Palau. Membership takes effect once the required legal instruments are deposited with the Agency, which in the case of Mozambique has been done. The IAEA now officially has 141 Member States. The full texts of adopted resolutions will be posted on the IAEA.org website as they become available. Copyright ©, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: Official.Mail@iaea.org ***************************************************************** 25 UPI: Paper insists on Saudi-Israel contacts United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 9/26/2006 7:29:00 AM -0400 TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Despite denials of any secret meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and a member of the Saudi royal family, Israeli sources insist it took place. Israel's Yediot Ahronot Tuesday affirmed that a secret encounter took place 10 days ago between Olmert and a high-ranking Saudi royal family member, who could have been King Abdullah, in person. Olmert Monday denied that such a meeting took place, but highly-placed political sources in Israel confirmed the meeting, saying the two sides "discussed Iran's danger on the safety of the region through its attempts to acquire nuclear weapons, its role in arming Hezbollah and in supporting the rise of a terrorist and extremist Islamic state led by Hamas in Gaza." The Israeli source said few Israeli officials -- including Olmert's closest aides and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni -- knew about the secret contacts with Saudi officials. In Riyadh, a Foreign Ministry official denied the report, saying Saudi Arabia has no covert policies. "There is no truth at all in the reports circulated by the Israeli and Qatari press lately about contacts between Saudi and Israeli officials," the official Saudi Press Agency quoted the ministry source as saying Tuesday. "The information is fabricated and Saudi Arabia assumes its Arab national roles clearly and with great transparency and has no covert policies," the source added. He stressed that the oil-rich kingdom's stance regarding the Palestinian cause "was defined in the peace initiative adopted at the Arab summit in Beirut in 2002." © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 26 UPI: Analysis: Rumors of Saudi-Israeli meeting United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 9/26/2006 1:27:00 PM -0400 By CLAUDE SALHANI UPI International Editor WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Once again the Middle East rumor mill has been active. The buzz this time was around the possibility of a meeting between a member of the royal family of Saudi Arabia and an Israeli official. Reports that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may have met with someone from the Saudi royal family first emerged during the 34-day war between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah. Why would Saudi royals agree to meet Israelis? Ever since he replaced his ailing brother King Fahd upon Fahd's death, King Abdullah has come to realize that the Middle East will continue to bubble away in turmoil unless there can be a settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Therefore, since his ascension to the throne, he has been working behind the scenes in an effort to break through the deadlock. They say that politics makes strange bedfellows; and indeed it does. The political reality in the Middle East is that some of the more moderate Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan share much of the same concerns as Israel. High on that list comes Iran with its nuclear ambitions, and the growing popularity of Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, armed and financed by Iran. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan -- traditionalist Sunni countries -- look at the Islamic republic's growing influence with great trepidation. Moderate Sunni Arabs would have not been disappointed had Israel emerged victorious and defeated Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah's Shiite militant movement. But it was the reverse that happened. Hezbollah and Nasrallah came out of the 34-day war stronger than ever. In a blatant demonstration of force, Nasrallah gathered some 800,000 supporters for a "victory rally" in Beirut meant to celebrate Hezbollah's triumph over Israel. The meeting was something of a slap in the face to Israel, which tried, unsuccessfully, to eliminate the militant sheik. Addressing the jubilant crowd, Nasrallah claimed Hezbollah still possessed some 20,000 rockets that could be launched against Israel. While high-ranking Saudi officials in Washington denied over the weekend that such a meeting between Saudis and Israelis had taken place, Israel's influential Yedioth Aharonot newspaper reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had secretly met a member of the Saudi royal family. Olmert told the newspaper he was "highly impressed by various moves and statements connected with Saudi Arabia. ... I am impressed by King Abdallah's intelligence and sense of responsibility." Another Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, quoted unnamed political sources in Jerusalem as initially confirming the main elements of the report. A report published on the newspaper's Web site suggested the Saudi official was Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's former Ambassador to Washington. Bandar is now the national security adviser. Olmert later denied the meeting took place. But Israeli journalists say the prime minister "was not very convincing." Saudi security officials told United Press International during a meeting in Saudi Arabia late last year that King Abdullah was convinced of two things: first that since the death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, there was a void of leadership in the Arab world. Abdullah has ambitions to fill that void. And second, the Saudi official said Abdullah is convinced there can be no permanent solution to the Israeli-Arab dispute so long as the question of Palestine remains unsolved. Abdullah's peace plan was adopted by the Arab League in 2002 during an Arab summit in Beirut, Lebanon. It offered Israel full recognition and peace by all 22 member states of the Arab league in return for Israel's withdrawal from all territories occupied in 1967. Ariel Sharon, at the time prime minister of Israel, rejected the offer. Today, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia feel there is all the more urgency to reach a settlement in the Middle East, particularly in the aftermath of the second Lebanon war and of Nasrallah's rising popularity. A popular Hezbollah means more power to its political and military backers, Syria and Iran. Israel's war on Hezbollah has helped make Nasrallah more powerful than ever before, rendering him into something of a cult hero in Lebanon and the Arab world. The fear for Israel -- besides having a nuclear-armed Iran armed with missiles capable of targeting Israeli cities -- is that Hezbollah's "victory" will encourage Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, their greatest fear is to see Iran's influence in the region continue to grow. Already, Egypt announced Monday it too would begin to develop nuclear energy. If the Saudi king is able to revive the dead Middle East peace initiative and eventually reach a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute, there would be no question regarding who is the most influential Arab leader. © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights ***************************************************************** 27 Guardian Unlimited: 40 Labour MPs demand trident debate Last updated: 4:18 AM From Press Association [UP] Press Association Tuesday September 26, 2006 2:03 AM Dozens of Labour MPs have signed an open letter to the party chairman calling for a debate at the annual conference on the future of the Trident nuclear weapons system. A total of 40 MPs signed the letter to Hazel Blears following a decision by organisers of the Manchester conference to rule out of order a series of resolutions opposed to Trident. The letter said it was likely that a decision on whether to spend £25 billion on a new generation of nuclear weapons will be made by the Government before next year's annual party conference. "It is regrettable therefore that Labour Party members will not be able to have their say at this year's conference on this critical issue. "Even at this late stage we believe that a way should be found to permit a thorough debate on this issue and that conference is allowed to express its view by way of a democratic vote." Katy Clark, (North Ayrshire) one of the MPs who signed the letter, told the Press Association that the names had been collected over the past few days showing the strength of feeling among Labour MPs that a debate should be held. Kate Hudson, chairwoman of CND welcomed the letter pointing out that the Government had promised a full public debate on Trident replacement which had not yet happened. Ms Hudson described the decision to rule out of order all resolutions on Trident as a "travesty of democracy" while delegates who had wanted to discuss the issue complained they had been gagged. © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 28 [NukeNet] How safe is your nuclear plant? Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:55:16 -0700 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (borg.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61] X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61 X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) Dear All, Feel free to forward. I suspect that the fire problem at nuclear power plants is generic. Remember just a few months ago, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wanted to abolish it's fire code. Thanks to responses from many of you, led by Paul Gunter at NIRS, they "postponed" that idea. I would like to say abandoned, but with the nuclear industry, bad old ideas keep resurfacing. Jim, I am impressed that you pulled together a coalition to act together on this issue. I also like the tactics that you are using and all of the press coverage you are generating. Thanks for sharing it with us. Good luck, and thanks for leading the way with a model that can be duplicated by other citizen's groups. The NRC should be held accountable. I like your idea of the hefty fine for each day the utility is in violation. Is that from the first day of the violation, way back in 1992? Do you have an exact date? I'd love to figure out the number of days, and multiply that by $130,000 per day Jeannine. From: "Jim Warren" To: "Jim Warren" Subject: Shearon Harris Fire Action, Pols, Media Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 18:18:08 -0400 Members and Allies, We're drawing much attention -- from public officials and news media -- since Wednesday's legal/public action to force Shearon Harris to fix 14 years worth of fire safety violations. Thanks to all of you who filled the hall Wednesday night. Please keep letting the media know it's important to you, and urge public officials to back the Petition for Emergency Enforcement. It's easy for most people to agree that federal fire safety regulations should be enforced. More details to follow. A quick backgrounder is shown below (see “Delaying With Fire” at top of www.ncwarn.org). Also below is a sample of the news stories -- most are very good despite Progress Energy's efforts to twist -- on the fire violations and last week's sudden shutdown of the Harris reactor. Also watch for articles in weekly papers. Thanks! Jim If you just tuned in: Last Wednesday, NC WARN, NIRS, the Union of Concerned Scientists, NC Fair Share, and SURGE filed an Emergency Enforcement legal action against the NRC. We are demanding the agency suspend Shearon Harris’ license until the plant corrects multiple fire safety violations, or levy the maximum fine of $130,000 per violation for each day the plant operates out of compliance. What’s at Stake and Why? Fire constitutes up to 50% of the risk of a core meltdown at US nuclear plants; this assumes the plants are in compliance with the fire safety regulations. Fire at the Harris plant could cause failure of both the primary and backup electrical cables that permit the safe shutdown and cooling of the reactor. The plant has been in gross violation of federal regulations since 1992, and ranks worst in the nation in two fire safety categories, according to NRC data. What About the Timing? We recently realized the full extent of this vulnerability. Also, Progress Energy is seeking NRC permission to study Harris’ fire vulnerabilities for years, and make unspecified modifications that would bring the plant into compliance with less extensive regulations by 2015. Although its current operating license runs until 2026, Shearon Harris also plans to apply late this year for a 20-year extension – without having corrected its fire safety violations. After 14 years of fire safety violations, it is past time to demand that NRC enforce its own rules. News Coverage on Harris Fire Issue & the Sudden Shutdown (Many reports not available on the web. Watch for the weekly papers.) Groups: Nuclear plant is unsafe Petition against Shearon Harris Wade Rawlins: Raleigh News and Observer Sept. 21, 2006 http://www.newsobserver.com/1156/story/488872.html Harris plant still down (includes video) ABC 11 Eyewitness News Sept. 20, 2006 http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=triangle&id=4580804 Members of each local government vow to back petition against nuke plant BY JENNIFER FERRIS : The Herald-Sun Sep 22, 2006 : 9:51 am ET http://www.heraldsun.com/orange/10-771967.html Shearon Harris worries Orange Leaders may call for NRC action By Jesse James Deconto: Raleigh News and Observer Sept. 22, 2006 http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/489185.html Bad time for nuke shutdown Group says outages show safety problem By John Murowski: Raleigh News and Observer Sept. 22, 2006 http://www.newsobserver.com/104/story/489246.html Progress Energy works to repair nuclear plant Updated: 9/21/2006 By: Associated Press News 14 Carolina http://rdu.news14.com/content/headlines/?ArID=91249&SecID=2 Third of nuke plants have had long shutdowns Meeting tonight to focus on fire safety standards at Shearon Harris plant John Murawski: Raleigh News and Observer Sept. 20, 2006 http://www.newsobserver.com/1156/story/488483.html Groups seek NRC action against nuke plant Emily Coakley: Durham Herald-Sun Sept. 20, 2006 http://www.heraldsun.com/chatham/13-771664.html Pursuing new power plants is squandering our chances to cut greenhouse gases. Jim Warren, Executive Director NC WARN North Carolina Waste Awareness & Reduction Network Ph: 919-416-5077 Fax: 919-286-3985 PO Box 61051, Durham, NC 27715-1051 Email: Jim@ncwarn.org Web: www.ncwarn.org _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://mail.energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 29 HindustanTimes.com: Nuke deal: Vote unlikely this weekend S Rajagopalan Washington, September 27, 2006 There are fresh doubts over whether the US Senate will be able to go through with the much-awaited debate and vote on the nuclear deal legislation before it adjourns this weekend for the upcoming Congressional elections. A renewed effort by Senate majority leader Bill Frist on Monday night failed to get past the Democrats, but further behind-the-scene efforts are said to still be on. In a statement on Tuesday morning, Frist indicated that the Democrats had blocked a unanimous consent proposal for consideration of this legislation and said he had appealed to them to review their position. "Last night, I offered a unanimous consent agreement to ensure that the Senate could complete consideration of the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Cooperation legislation in a reasonable period of time. However, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle objected," Frist said. "The enactment of this legislation is critical to advancing Indo-US relations and will help create export opportunities for American businesses. We need time to work out the differences with the companion legislation passed by the House. Therefore, the Senate cannot afford to wait until November to pass this critical piece of legislation," he added. Without a unanimous consent agreement, it will not be possible for Frist to schedule the bill for debate and vote this week. Originally, October 6 was the target date for adjournment. But in the revised scheme of things, the Senate will be going into recess from September 29 itself. According to a report, the point being made in political circles in the US is that the civilian nuclear legislation technically still has a chance to be acted upon during the lame duck session in the middle of November, but this again depends on how the congressional elections of November 7 turn out. The argument goes that if the Democrats win either the House of Representatives or the Senate or even make substantial inroads into one of the two chambers, they could play "hardball" and insist that all unfinished legislative business be taken up in the 110th Congress, which will not convene until the beginning of 2007. ***************************************************************** 30 THE HINDU: Milestone ahead [Frontline] Volume 23 - Issue 19 :: Sep. 23-Oct. 06, 2006 INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE NUCLEAR ISSUES Milestone ahead T.S. SUBRAMANIAN in Chennai The construction of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam is progressing at a hectic pace. S.R. RAGHUNATHAN THE MAIN VESSEL of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor under fabrication. ON the open beachfront at Kalpakkam, about 65 km from Chennai, some 2,000 people, men and women, are engaged in the construction of a huge structure called reactor vault. Some distance away, inside a tall, massive hall, huge vessels sit on platforms. One of them, called the safety vessel, is 13.5 metres in diameter and 13.5 metres in height, and weighs 115 tonnes. Specialist welders are stitching seams inside this cavernous vessel made of stainless steel. Others are cleaning it. It is the site of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) being constructed by Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI). "The project will reach the peak of its activity in about six months from now," said Prabhat Kumar, Project Director. "We shall cross the first major milestone of the project when we transport the safety vessel from the Site Assembly Shop [SAS] and lower it inside the reactor vault," he added. The PFBR will be built at a cost of Rs.3,492 crores. When the reactor is commissioned, it will generate 500 Mwe of power. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurated its construction on October 23, 2004. On August 18, 2003, Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), performed the bhoomi puja. After the puja, he said: "We want to make a commercial success of this breeder technology. Based on this technology, we will build more reactors." The PFBR fuel will be mixed plutonium-uranium oxide. Liquid sodium is the coolant. This is the first time that the DAE is building a commercial breeder reactor of 500 MWe capacity. The PFBR's forerunner is a small, experimental Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) of 13 MWe capacity, also located at Kalpakkam. The Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) at Kalpakkam designed the PFBR. Several IGCAR teams, headed by its Director Dr. Baldev Raj, developed the crucial technology for the components of the PFBR. BHAVINI has been exclusively set up to build breeder reactors. The DAE-run company is an amalgamation of talent from Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), the IGCAR, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the Nuclear Fuel Complex and Electronic Corporation of India Limited, both located in Hyderabad, and the Heavy Water Board. S. K. Jain is the Chairman and Managing Director of both NPCIL and BHAVINI. The construction of the PFBR is racing ahead of schedule. This despite the loss of five months of work after the tsunami of December 26, 2004, dumped water to a height of six metres inside the 24-metre-deep foundation pit. It had to be abandoned and another one of the same size was built. Prabhat Kumar said: "We have an ambitious target. As per schedule, the reactor should go critical in September 2010. We will definitely commission it ahead of schedule. The main civil works are progressing fast." Construction to a depth of 18 m in the pit and that of a raft (foundation) 3.5 m high has been completed. On this raft will come up eight huge buildings that constitute what is called the nuclear island. Excavation is under way for the power island, which will consist of several buildings. FIRST OF ITS KIND Orders have been placed for most of the core components. They are under fabrication. More orders for equipment valued at Rs.1,300 crores will be placed by March 31, 2007. Premier companies such as BHEL, L Limited, MTAR Technologies Private Limited, Kirloskar Bros have expressed interest. "What is most satisfying to us is that most of the components have been fabricated to better specifications than envisaged. This is remarkable for the first-of-its-kind reactor in the country," Baldev Raj said. According to Prabhat Kumar, everything in the PFBR is first of its kind. "So no previous procedures were applicable. Everything had to be developed afresh." This posed challenges in civil works and the manufacture of components. For instance, the PFBR has the largest and deepest excavated pit, which is 21m to 24m deep. It is 268m long and 216m broad. The concreting for a raft for the PFBR was done with 35,000 cubic metres of concrete. The concreting is state of the art. Concrete batching was fully computerised and automatic data collection was deployed. Ice manufacturing plants and storage facilities were erected. Ice flakes were mixed with concrete because the temperature of the concrete had to be maintained at 19{+0} C and 23{+0} C for the perimeter wall of the nuclear island and the raft respectively. This posed a massive challenge because the work was spread over several months. First, extensive dewatering using powerful pumps had to be done from the pit because the pit was just about 500 m from the shore and water kept gushing even a few feet below ground level. The project uses the largest tower crane in the country for erection/construction work: the crane can swing loads weighing 3.5 tonnes over a distance of 70m. The nuclear island The PFBR is the first reactor where seven to eight buildings of the nuclear island will come up on a single raft. The nuclear island buildings are those related to the reactor. They include the reactor building, that is, the building which will house the reactor; two steam generator buildings; the control room building; the building for storing the fuel for the reactor; and plants for storing the radioactive waste from the reactors. The reactor building will be 73m tall from the foundation. The steam generator buildings will be taller, at 85m. Besides these eight buildings, there will be 10 buildings. Gammon India Limited is constructing them. These include the reactor vault, which is 13.8m in diameter and 17m in height. It is so big that a mock-up with lining was built before its actual construction. It has not been decided as to how many buildings will belong to the power island. Gammon India Limited is also excavating the pit for the power island and will construct the buildings. This is the first reactor for which components are manufactured at the site itself because they are of gigantic proportions. In the SAS, situated close to the nuclear island, workers are fabricating the safety vessel, the main vessel, the inner vessel and the thermal baffles. While L is building the safety vessel and the main vessel, BHEL is fabricating the inner vessel and the two thermal baffles. The safety vessel is a massive contraption, 13.5m in diameter and 13.5m in height. It is made of stainless steel called 316-LN. No vessel of this size has been built in India so far. Seventy sections were welded together to make it. The dimensions of 13.5m by 13.5m were done with an accuracy of plus or minus 8 millimetres. R.K. Sharma, site-in-charge, special project, L Limited, said the circumference of the safety vessel was 43m. This was achieved with an accuracy of 3mm. That is, the vessel's circumference of 43,000 mm was accomplished with an accuracy of plus or minus 3mm. This was tough indeed. When stainless steel was welded, it underwent a large amount of distortion because heat got accumulated. "We adopted this particular sequence in the safety vessel. L considers this a challenge because of the demands made by tolerance and distortion control," said R.K. Sharma. The reactor building will house the reactor vault, the vessels and the baffles in a concentric manner. The outermost is the reactor vault. On the inner surface of the reactor vault is the shield of embedded cooling pipes. Inside the reactor vault is the safety vessel with thermal insulation panels bolted on the outer surface. Inside the safety vessel is the main vessel, which holds the liquid sodium. Inside the main vessel are two thermal baffles that direct the liquid sodium in the required flow pattern. Inside the thermal baffles is the inner vessel, which supports the reactor core that includes the fuel blanket. The main vessel is welded on to the roof-slabs. The main vessel, without liquid sodium, weighs 140 tonnes. The entire assembly, that is, the main vessel, the safety vessel and the inner vessel, will be engineered in such a way that they will be hanging from the top of the reactor vault. When completed, this will be a marvel of construction and engineering techniques. While the project cost was Rs.3,492 crores, about Rs. 393 crores had been spent until March, B.S. Goyal, Director (Finance), BHAVINI, said. Copyright © 2006, Frontline. ***************************************************************** 31 THE HINDU: Cooperation first, then safeguards [Frontline] Volume 23 - Issue 19 :: Sep. 23-Oct. 06, 2006 INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE NUCLEAR ISSUES T.S. SUBRAMANIAN in Mumbai AEC Chairman Anil Kakodkar talks about the options before India vis-a-vis the U.S. Bill on the nuclear deal. K. MURALI KUMAR Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, and Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Atomic Energy. IN the context of the United States House of Representatives Bill 5682 and the draft Senate Bill 3709 imposing extraneous conditions on the proposed India-U.S. nuclear agreement, Frontline spoke to Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), in Mumbai. Kakodkar said: "We consider reprocessing an extremely important part of full civil nuclear cooperation. Since India has already developed its own enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water technologies, there need be no apprehensions with cooperation in these areas... . A situation where the spent fuel simply accumulates without any proper disposal option being available is not acceptable." (Full civil nuclear cooperation includes the closed nuclear fuel cycle, which means the country has mastered the technology of reprocessing spent fuel.) On the attempts in the U.S. Congress to force India to put 14 of its reactors under safeguards before nuclear cooperation materialises, the AEC Chairman said: "The safeguards kick in only after the cooperation starts. There is no question of the safeguards kicking in before the cooperation. So let us see how the Bill appears in its final shape." Excerpts from the interview: The July 18, 2005, Joint Statement by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush promises full civil nuclear cooperation with India, covering the entire nuclear fuel cycle. But the House of Representatives Bill passed in July says that the President "should seek to prevent the transfer to India of nuclear equipment, materials or technology from other participating governments in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) or any other source". The draft Senate Bill also excludes specifically the "export or re-export to India of any equipment, materials or technology related to the enrichment of uranium, the reprocessing of spent fuel or the production of heavy water". On August 17, Manmohan Singh said in the Rajya Sabha: "We will not agree to any dilution that will prevent us from securing the benefits of full civil nuclear cooperation." If there is no full civil nuclear cooperation as promised, what follows? Let us look at it in the following way: We are talking about developing civil nuclear cooperation so that we bring in substantial additionalities to our electricity-generating capacity using nuclear means. We have been adopting the principle or philosophy of closed nuclear fuel cycle, which means that the spent fuel, after its use in the reactor, must be reprocessed, and uranium and plutonium recycled. This way we have not only an environmentally benign radioactive waste management arrangement but also considerably enlarged energy that you can extract from the given quantity of uranium. In the absence of closed nuclear fuel cycle, one ends up having to deal with the spent fuel as waste which, according to us, is not an acceptable solution even from a credible long-term waste-management point of view, leave alone the issue of energy availability in a sustainable manner. The spent fuel, if deposited in repositories for long-term disposal, would, over a period of time become a virtual plutonium mine once most of the radioactive components decay out. This can thus become a serious security issue. In fact, the logic of closed nuclear fuel cycle is getting to be recognised world over and I am certain it will become universal fairly soon. It is in this context that we consider reprocessing an extremely important part of full civil nuclear cooperation. Since India has already developed its own enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water technologies, there need be no apprehensions with cooperation in these areas. If no full civil nuclear cooperation is offered, will it be a deal-breaker? A situation where the spent fuel simply accumulates without any proper disposal option being available is not acceptable. According to the separation plan, all nuclear restrictions on India should be lifted before India puts the 14 nuclear reactors under safeguards. This includes suitable amendment to the U.S. legislation, changes to the NSG guidelines and so on. Manmohan Singh has said India could not be expected to undertake safeguard obligations on its facilities in anticipation of a future lifting of restrictions. But it looks as if the House of Representatives Bill and the draft Senate Bill want the reactors to be put under safeguards first before the restrictions are lifted. If there is a change in the sequence, is it acceptable to India? The Prime Minister's statement is very clear. Let us wait for the outcome of the U.S. legislative process. We shall decide at that time. You want to see how the [final] Senate Bill looks like? We must see what it contains. Supposing the Bill says that we put our reactors first under safeguards and then the promise of nuclear cooperation will materialise, that is, the sequence is changed, what will India do? The safeguards can kick in only after the cooperation starts. There is no question of the safeguards kicking in before the cooperation. So let us see how the Bill appears in its final shape. Under the U.S. Public Law and the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, if India conducts a nuclear test, fuel supply will be stopped and imported reactors' construction will come to a stop midway through. The draft Senate Bill also sets its face against a nuclear test by India. The Prime Minister has said India would take corrective steps if the fuel supply were to be stopped. What are these corrective steps? The Prime Minister's reply is quite clear. We are a sovereign country. Our moratorium on tests is our own unilateral one. These are all multi-layered assurances built into the separation plan. If in spite of all that there is a discontinuance of fuel supply, then India shall have to take corrective steps as has been specified. We shall decide what to do at that time. Can you spell out these corrective steps? There is no need to spell them out. If the fuel supply is stopped, the agreement will be dead. So will it be a deal-breaker? We should approach the whole discussion in a positive manner. We have stated our commitment to the understanding of the July 18, 2005, Joint Statement. Certainly, things can move forward on the basis of the July 18 understanding. Although India observes a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing and it is mentioned in the Joint Statement also, can we think of any circumstances where we need to conduct a test? The moratorium is India's unilateral voluntary moratorium. We don't want to convert that into a bilateral legality. But India's policy in this regard has been continuing right from 1998. That policy stays as it is. No change. Supposing India conducts a nuclear test, what will be the consequences? It is a unilaterally voluntary moratorium that has been declared. Why are you asking that question? It is like this. What are we trying to achieve? We are trying to enhance the electricity-generating capacity in India through nuclear means. Of course, we already have our domestic three-stage nuclear power programme. We are progressing well according to that programme. That will continue. We also have our strategic programme to meet the national security needs. That also will continue. We carry out our programmes in accordance with our national requirements as are determined by us. The objective of developing international civil nuclear cooperation is to create additionalities to our electricity supply without in any way compromising the on-going domestic programme. Now we are looking at these additionalities in terms of nuclear fuel, nuclear reactors, capital and augmented project construction capacities. Given the responsible nature of all our activities, there need be no concern with regard to the inputs to the civilian programme creating any benefits to our strategic activities. So what we would like to see is an environment where a number of players can contribute to the Indian nuclear power programme, of course, in full compliance with the requirements of safety, control on nuclear materials and physical protection of nuclear materials and facilities. In the separation plan, India agreed to India-specific safeguards with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and an Additional Protocol to that. You had also stated earlier that these should bring it recognition India as a nuclear weapons state and that India should get the benefits from that recognition. Now the draft Senate Bill says that we can only sign the Additional Protocol as applicable to non-nuclear weapons states. This means that they do not want to recognise India as a nuclear weapons state, a country with advanced nuclear technology. This means we cannot reclassify a civilian facility as military facility. What are the objectionable items in the Additional Protocol? Does it include the IAEA or American inspectors policing our R &D institutions? `Nuclear weapon state' and `non-nuclear weapon state' are NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] terminologies. That is a treaty to which we do not subscribe. However, the fact is that India is a country with nuclear weapons. Also, the fact is that our non-proliferation credentials are impeccable. So any arrangement that we enter into has to incorporate these realities. Under the Bills, the U.S. President has to give an annual certification to Congress that India is in full compliance with its non-proliferation and other commitments. The Prime Minister has said that such a certification would diminish a permanent waiver into an annual one and introduce uncertainties in future nuclear cooperation. Will the annual certification be a deal-breaker? Whatever cooperation arrangement we work out, they must be sustainable. We cannot have a situation of uncertainties coming up every now and then. The Bills' policy statement says that the U.S. policy is to "achieve a moratorium on the production of fissile material for nuclear explosive purposes by India, Pakistan and China at the earliest possible date". Will we accept this (capping of India's fissile material production) even before a multilateral Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty is concluded in the Conference on Disarmament? We will not accept it. We will accept only a multilaterally negotiated non-discriminatory and universally verifiable treaty, negotiated at the Conference on Disarmament. How do you rate the chances of this nuclear agreement going through? Let us wait and see. What does it matter? Our programme is going on. If we succeed in developing cooperation, well and good. There is an impression that Pakistan is ahead of India in enrichment technology. Is this impression true? India is recognised worldwide as a country with advanced nuclear technology. We have reached this level of recognition on the basis of a self-reliant R &D carried out within the country. Former top brass of the AEC told Manmohan Singh that the U.S. could not be trusted, given the Tarapur experience. The U.S. also forced Russia to deny cryogenic technology to India. The Prime Minister said: "We will draw the necessary conclusions" if extraneous conditions were introduced into the U.S. legislation or the NSG guidelines. So, has the message gone loud and clear to the U.S. Congress? Well, I hope people are listening. But we must certainly learn from our experiences in the past. Having said that, it is important that we must maintain a positive approach. Is it true that some Members of the Planning Commission want our three-stage nuclear power programme to be scrapped and they want the country to go in for only imported reactors? The Prime Minister's statement is very clear that the country will continue with the pre-planned development of its three-stage nuclear power programme. He has said we will maintain the integrity of the three-stage power programme and continue our R &D in an autonomous manner. The U.S. needs India more than India needs it in the nuclear field. After the Three Mile Island accident, they have not built any reactor in the past 25 years. They have lost out on a generation of reactors. They have lost out on human resource also in this field. I shall not go into this. Any cooperation has to be a win-win arrangement. Is it true that the capacity factor of our nuclear power reactors has come down to 65 per cent from 90 per cent because we lack natural uranium? We are starting new uranium mines. The capacity factor will go up again. We need to factor in the planned shutdowns and things like that. Has the capacity factor come down to 65 per cent from 90 per cent? That is because of this uranium mismatch. It will get corrected. Will the safeguards apply to the personnel working at Indian reactors? Can't personnel from the safeguarded civilian reactors be transferred to unsafeguarded military reactors? We will agree to just the IAEA safeguards. There is no question of a firewall. The question is that there should be no diversion of materials (for making nuclear bombs). That is what we are ensuring through the IAEA safeguards. Copyright © 2006, Frontline. ***************************************************************** 32 NRC: Florida Power and Light Company; Turkey Point Nuclear Plant, FR Doc 06-8220 [Federal Register: September 26, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 186)] [Notices] [Page 56188-56189] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr26se06-121] Unit Nos. 3 and 4 Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering issuance of an exemption from Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) part 50, Appendix R, Subsection III.G.3, for Facility Operating License Nos. DPR-31 and DPR-41, issued to Florida Power and Light Company (the licensee), for operation of the Turkey Point Nuclear Plant, Units 3 and 4, respectively, located in Miami-Dade County, approximately 25 miles south of Miami, Florida. Therefore, as required by 10 CFR 51.21, the NRC is issuing this environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact. Environmental Assessment Identification of the Proposed Action The proposed action would exempt the licensee from the requirements of 10 CFR part 50, Appendix R, Subsection III.G.3 for fixed suppression in the Mechanical Equipment Room and for detection and fixed suppression in the subsection of the Control Building that contains the Control Room Roof at the Turkey Point Nuclear Plant. The proposed action is in accordance with the licensee's application dated December 27, 2004, as supplemented by letters dated May 23, 2005, January 13, 2006, and July 12, 2006. The Need for the Proposed Action Fire protection features for assuring alternative or dedicated shutdown capability in the event of a fire are addressed in 10 CFR, part 50, Appendix R, Subsection III.G.3, which requires that fire detection and a fixed fire suppression system be installed in the area, room, or zone where equipment or components are relied on for the assured shutdown capability. The NRC approved the alternate shutdown capability proposed by the licensee for Turkey Point, Units 3 and 4, for compliance with the requirements of III.G.3, in a safety evaluation dated April 16, 1984. The Control Room was one of the areas approved. However, the Mechanical Equipment Room and Control Room Roof, which are identified in the plant fire protection program report as part of the Control Room fire area, were not included. In February 2004, during an NRC triennial fire inspection at Turkey Point, the inspection team reviewed fire protection systems, features, and equipment, and found that all fire zones supporting the alternate safe shutdown function for the Control Room do not provide fire detection and a fixed suppression system in accordance with the requirements of III.G.3, for both Turkey Point units. Specifically, the Mechanical Equipment Room does not have full area detection and fixed suppression. In response to this inspection finding, the licensee declared the detection and suppression inoperable for the Mechanical Equipment Room (and the Control Room Roof, which also fails to provide detection and fixed suppression) and established an hourly fire watch. The licensee proposed to install a fire detection system in the Mechanical Equipment Room and requested exemption from the requirements for fixed suppression in the Mechanical Equipment Room and for detection and fixed suppression on the Control Room Roof. The proposed action would restore system operability and eliminate the need to institute compensatory measures. Environmental Impacts of the Proposed Action The NRC has completed its safety evaluation of the proposed action and concludes that, based on the existing fire protection features, the proposed installation of new detection equipment in the Mechanical Equipment Room, low combustible loading, existing administrative controls for combustibles, and availability of nearby suppression equipment, there is reasonable assurance of adequate suppression capability in the affected fire zones. Also, in the event of a fire- induced failure of safety-related equipment resulting in a loss of Control Room heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment, there is reasonable assurance that there would be adequate time to evacuate the Control Room, if necessary, and shut down the plant from the Alternate Shutdown Panel. Therefore, assurance of alternative or dedicated shutdown capability in the event of a fire is achieved. The proposed action is contingent upon installation of new area fire detection equipment in the Mechanical Equipment Room, maintaining existing or comparable separation and protection for redundant safe shutdown equipment on the Control Room Roof, the availability of manual fire fighting and associated fire fighting equipment, and maintaining existing or comparable administrative controls for combustibles. The details of the staff's safety evaluation will be provided in the exemption that will be issued as part of the letter to the licensee approving the exemption to the regulation. The proposed action will not significantly increase the probability or consequences of accidents because the exemption is based on the existing fire barriers at Turkey Point, fire protection measures, availability of nearby suppression equipment, low combustible loading, existing administrative controls for combustibles, and installation of new fire detection equipment in the Mechanical Equipment Room. No new accident precursors are created by the proposed exemption and the consequences of postulated accidents are not increased. No changes are being [[Page 56189]] made in the types of effluents that may be released off site. There is no significant increase in the amount of any effluent released off site. There is no significant increase in occupational or public radiation exposure. Therefore, there are no significant radiological environmental impacts associated with the proposed action. With regard to potential nonradiological impacts, the proposed action does not have a potential to affect any historic sites. It does not affect nonradiological plant effluents and has no other environmental impact. Therefore, there are no significant nonradiological environmental impacts associated with the proposed action. Accordingly, the NRC concludes that there are no significant environmental impacts associated with the proposed action. Environmental Impacts of the Alternatives to the Proposed Action As an alternative to the proposed action, the staff considered denial of the proposed action (i.e., the ``no-action'' alternative). Denial of the application would result in no change in current environmental impacts. The environmental impacts of the proposed action and the alternative action are similar. Alternative Use of Resources The action does not involve the use of any different resources than those previously considered in the Final Environmental Statement for Turkey Point Units 3 and 4, dated January 1972, and Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (NUREG-1437 Supplement 5) dated January 2002. Agencies and Persons Consulted In accordance with its stated policy, on August 7, 2006, the staff consulted with the Florida State official, William Passetti of the Bureau of Radiation Control, regarding the environmental impact of the proposed action. The State official had no comments. Finding of No Significant Impact On the basis of the environmental assessment, the NRC concludes that the proposed action will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment. Accordingly, the NRC has determined not to prepare an environmental impact statement for the proposed action. For further details with respect to the proposed action, see the licensee's letter dated December 27, 2004, as supplemented by letters dated May 23, 2005, January 13, 2006, and July 12, 2006. Documents may be examined, and/or copied for a fee, at the NRC'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 (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 or 301-415-4737, or send an e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 20th day of September 2006. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Brendan T. Moroney, Project Manager, Plant Licensing Branch II-2, Division of Operating Reactor Licensing, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. 06-8220 Filed 9-25-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 33 Interfax: Russia will honor its obligations in Bushehr project - Igor Ivanov Updated: Sep 27 2006 4:25AM (MSK) Sep 26 2006 12:51PM MOSCOW. Sept 26 (Interfax) - Russia will strictly honor its obligations in the construction of a nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Russia's Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov said. "A specific plan has been charted to build a nuclear power plant in Bushehr, and we'll strictly honor our obligations," Ivanov told Iranian Vice President and head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Gholamreza Aghazadeh in the Kremlin on Tuesday. © 1991-2006 Interfax All rights reserved News and other data on this web site are provided for information purposes only, and are not intended for republication or redistribution. Republication or redistribution of Interfax content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Interfax. ***************************************************************** 34 BBC: Earlier check for nuclear Last Updated: Monday, 25 September 2006 An inspection of nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point B power station in Somerset has been brought forward amid new safety fears. It follows checks on reactors at Scotland's Hunterston plant, which showed problems with cracked pipes. British Energy said it did not believe the position at Hinkley B - which has identical reactors - was as serious. But as a prudent measure, the date of the station's three-yearly statutory inspection has been brought forward. The advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs) at both Hunterston and Hinkley B are 30 years old. The company said the level of cracking in boiler tubes at the Scottish plant was "above that expected." Repairs are currently being made to the defective pipes. Hinkley B's two reactors provide 3% of the UK's electricity, but output has been cut by half, with the closure of one of them for early inspection. The Somerset power station is due to be decommissioned in 2011. ***************************************************************** 35 Platts: Nearly seven of 10 Americans support nuclear power: Survey Washington (Platts)--25Sep2006 Nearly seven out of 10 Americans polled support nuclear power and 68% said they support building a new reactor at the existing nuclear power plant closest to where they live, according to a recent survey done for the Nuclear Energy Institute. "Regionally, 70% of respondents in the Northeast and Midwest favor the use of nuclear energy, 67% in the South and 66% in the West," NEI said Monday. "Favorability among Northeast residents has increased 12 percentage points since March of this year," it added. The nationwide telephone survey, done by Bisconti Research Inc., polled 1,000 people 18 years old or older. NEI said the margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points. --Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com Terms & Conditions Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 36 Platts: Germany's RWE applies to extend life of 1,223-MW Biblis-A nuke Freiburg, Germany (Platts)--26Sep2006 Germany's RWE is to apply to extend the life of its 1,223-MW nuclear power reactor Biblis-A, the company said. More details would be available after a telephone conference at lunchtime Tuesday. Hours of operating life would be transferred from another unit of the company to Biblis-A. Germany is shutting all its nuclear power plants in a decommissioning program that would leave the country a nuclear-free state. Each plant is allowed to operate for a set amount of production before it must be shut down for good, but operators can shuffle hours from one plant to another within their portfolio. Biblis was commissioned in 1975 and is one of the oldest of Germany's 17 operating reactors. The vice chairman of the SPD party, Ulrich Kelber, meanwhile said politicians would stick to their promises and order Biblis-A to come offline as scheduled. The politician said the reactor had seen a large number of operating incidents and should come offline as soon as possible. "I am sure the investigations in the environment ministry will decide that extending the life [of Biblis] by capacity transfer from younger, safer plants would not be responsible," he said. German environmental groups Bund and Nabu have slammed the application, saying it posed a test for the current coalition government. Even though Chancellor Angela Merkel has previously said she would stick to the plan to decommission nuclear power by the start of the 2020s, rising energy prices and global warming have led some to call for nuclear to be retained. Sigmar Gabriel, federal environment minister, has said he would check any application, but is against the continued use of nuclear power. The managers of the other three nuclear operators, E.ON, Vattenfall Europe and ENBW, have all said the phase-out of nuclear power is bringing rising prices. "But the opposite is the case: we have 17 nuclear reactors in operation, and the power prices are as high as never before," said environment group Nabu. "The written-off reactors are merely a license to print money for their operators." It is estimated that RWE makes about Eur1 million ($1.3 million) each day through Biblis-A operation at times of high prices. In theory, Biblis-A is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2008. Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 37 NRC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company; Notice of Acceptance for FR Doc 06-8221 [Federal Register: September 26, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 186)] [Notices] [Page 56187-56188] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr26se06-120] Docketing of Application for Early Site Permit (ESP) for the Vogtle ESP Site On August 15, 2006, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC, the Commission) received an application from Southern Nuclear Operating Company, dated August 14, 2006, filed pursuant to section 103 of the Atomic Energy Act and 10 CFR part 52, for an early site permit (ESP) for a location in eastern Georgia (near Waynesboro, Georgia) identified as the Vogtle ESP site. A notice of receipt and availability of this application was previously published in the Federal Register (71 FR 51222: August 29, 2006). The applicant supplemented the application by letters dated September 6 (two letters), 2006, and September 13, 2006. An applicant may seek an ESP in accordance with Subpart A of 10 CFR Part 52 separate from the filing of an application for a construction permit (CP) or combined license (COL) for a nuclear power facility. The ESP process allows resolution of issues relating to siting. At any time during the duration of an ESP (up to 20 years), the permit holder may reference the permit in a CP or COL application. The NRC staff has determined that Southern Nuclear Operating Company has submitted information in accordance with 10 CFR Parts 2 and 52 that is sufficiently complete and acceptable for docketing. The Docket No. established for this application is 52-011. The NRC staff will perform a detailed technical review of the application, and docketing of the ESP application does not preclude the NRC from requesting additional information from the applicant as the review proceeds, nor does it predict whether the Commission will grant or deny the application. The Commission will conduct a hearing in accordance with 10 CFR 52.21 and will receive a report on the application from the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards in accordance with 10 CFR 52.23. If the Commission then finds that the application meets the applicable standards of the Atomic Energy Act and the Commission's regulations, and that required notifications to other agencies and bodies have been made, the Commission will issue an ESP, in the form and containing conditions and limitations that the Commission finds appropriate and necessary. [[Page 56188]] In accordance with 10 CFR Part 51, the Commission will also prepare an environmental impact statement for the proposed action. Pursuant to 10 CFR 51.26, and as part of the environmental scoping process, the staff intends to hold a public scoping meeting. Detailed information regarding this meeting will be included in a future Federal Register notice. Finally, the Commission will announce, in a future Federal Register notice, the opportunity to petition for leave to intervene in the hearing required for this application by 10 CFR 52.21. A copy of the Southern Nuclear Operating Company ESP application is available for public inspection at the Commission's Public Document Room located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland, and at the Burke County Library in Waynesboro, Georgia. It is also accessible electronically from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at the NRC Web site, (ADAMS Accession No. ML062290246). Persons who do not have access to ADAMS, or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, should contact the NRC Public Document Room staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737 or by e-mail to . Dated at Rockville, Maryland this 19th day of September, 2006. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. David B. Matthews, Director, Division of New Reactor Licensing, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. 06-8221 Filed 9-25-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 38 American Spectator: Dispelling Nuclear Phantoms The Nation's Pulse By William Tucker Published 9/26/2006 12:08:18 AM Boulder, Montana, is the kind of small town where young people leave home by joining the military. That much is evident from the carved wooden yellow ribbons that decorate every lamppost and store window. Samuel Freeland, Trapper Hoberg, Cody Huizinga, Andrea Trotter, Justin Carr, Jennie Carr, Aaron Lindermann, Jim Letexier, Joseph Smith -- there are over 40 names in a town of 1,500. These are the young men and women who fight the country's wars. Nor is any of this likely to change. In every supermarket and fast-food shop recruiters have hung flyers advertising $40,000 bonuses and $70,000 in educational benefits for enlisting. Most are brand new when I arrive but by the time I leave four days later, half the phone number tabs have been torn off. I'm in Boulder for an entirely different purpose -- trying to make people less afraid of nuclear power. Boulder is the home of a mini-industry of old uranium, silver, and copper mines that have been transformed into health spas. The monikers are enticing -- Earth Angel, the Sunshine Health Mine, Free Enterprise, the Merry Widow. All have attracted victims of arthritis, asthma, psoriasis, rheumatism, and other aches and pains for more than a half-century. IT ALL BEGAN BACK in the 1950s when Wade Lewis, a Boulder geologist, discovered radioactivity in the abandoned Free Enterprise silver mine just on the edge of town. The shaft turned out to contain uranium, much more valuable than silver, and Lewis began mining it for the growing nuclear industry. Then the wife of one engineer spent a few days down in the mine and found her bursitis had been cured. She told a friend who also had bursitis and got the same results. Soon the news spread by word-of-mouth and people were coming from all over to relieve their aches and pains. Lewis did some research and found there was reason to believe that low doses of radiation might be a cure for a variety of illnesses. People had been exposing themselves to radiation since Roman times, although no one ever realized it. "Hot springs" and other geothermal sites have always been renown for their health effects. People always assumed it was the hot baths or the sulfur in the water that was beneficial, but in the 20th century it was recognized that rocks and waters at these sites are often highly radioactive. Europeans still frequent these spas. Bad Gastein, in Austria, has just been remodeled for $20 million and advertises its high radon count. The Radium Palace in the Czech Republic, founded by Marie Curie in 1906, treats 14,000 patients a year and has to turn people away. Back in the 1950s, Life magazine did a spread on Montana health mines and soon 100 people a day were crowding into the 400-foot tunnel, soaking up radiation. Stories of remarkable cures abounded. Even today, I met a woman who in her 70s who said she was in a wheelchair with arthritis twenty years ago before coming to Boulder. Today she is still spry and healthy. In 50 years, the mine has never had a lawsuit. In 1980, however, the Environmental Protection Agency began a lurid campaign against radon gas, charging that it causes 15,000 to 20,000 lung cancers a year, about one-fifth of all lung cancers -- a preposterous figure. Bernard Cohen, of the University of Pittsburgh, did a comprehensive study of radon levels in 90 percent of the nation's counties and found lung cancer rates vary inversely with radon exposure. (Radon is a relatively short-lived by-product of uranium breakdown.) Nonetheless, traffic at the mines has slowed to a crawl. The visitors are mostly Canadians -- who don't pay any attention to the EPA -- and American Amish, who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge all fads and customs. One group of women in bonnets and men in round hats had ridden the train from Erie, Pennsylvania. "We don't travel in airplanes," said one elderly patriarch with a full white beard and perfect teeth, "but we are allowed to take a cure from radiation." So for four days I sat in the damp tunnel absorbing about 400 times what the EPA calls an "action-level dose" of radon gas. There are comfortable chairs and bright lights and I caught up on my reading. One Canadian couple down the hall played cribbage all day while others read or napped. "Last week a couple brought a dog that was all crippled with arthritis," remarked one Alberta wheat farmer. "After a few days that dog was running around like a pup. People say this cure is all in your head but you can't tell us that dog was just pretending he felt better." THE IDEA THAT SMALL or even sizable doses of radiation can be healthy now has a very firm footing in the theory of "hormesis," whose principal exponent is Professor Edward Calabrese, of the University of Massachusetts. Hormesis says that the body's repair mechanisms work to undo radiation damage we experience every day. After all, every human being on earth is zapped by around 15,000 bullets of ionizing radiation every second. Obviously, our bodies have long learned to deal with these insults. At extremely high doses -- the kind you get from witnessing an atomic bomb explosion -- radiation does cause cancer at predictable levels. For much smaller doses, however -- the kind we experience from cosmic radiation or X-rays - there has never been any evidence of damaging effects. Instead, government regulators have assumed there is "no safe dose" of radiation, "just to be safe." As a result, we end up fretting over doses of 1 millirem per year -- the amount you would get standing next to a nuclear reactor for a year -- while we regularly absorb anywhere from 250 to 400 millirem from natural sources. Hormesis theory, on the contrary, argues that bodily defense mechanisms are actually stimulated by low doses of radiation -- just as the immune system is stimulated by small exposures to a virus. A little radiation can actually inoculate you against cancer. This would explain why residents of Colorado, who endure the nation's highest levels of background radiation, have the nation's lowest rates of cancer, while residents of the Mississippi Delta, with the lowest background exposures, have the highest cancer rates in the country. Wade's granddaughter Patricia and her husband Burdette Anderson bought the mine from her grandfather's company in 1994. After a decade of declining traffic, they are stoic about the future. "Our heyday has pretty much come and gone," she says glumly. "Lone Tree Mine just down the road closed up this year. The EPA's campaign against radon has definitely had a tremendous impact." Nonetheless, she continues to communicate with groups like the Hormesis Society, hoping for a breakthrough. "They say the scientists will eventually prove us right, but we think we're going to prove them right." After four eight-hours days in the Free Enterprise Mine, I certainly didn't feel any ill effects. (Some people claim to feel a little nauseous if they have serious conditions at the beginning.) I have had a little touch of arthritis in both knees but we'll have to wait to see what happens. Most of all, I feel a lift in pioneering the effort to help Americans get over their inordinate fear of radiation and nuclear power. After all, if we had a few score more reactors pumping out electricity across the country, we might not to send so many Boulder youth off to the Middle East worrying about our oil supplies. William Tucker is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. Copyright 2006, The American Spectator ***************************************************************** 39 MSN Money: Linking business and diplomacy with nuclear energy Vivian Lewis / Global Investor9/26/2006 12:00 AM ET While I realize that Areva (ARVCF, news, msgs), one of the stocks in my Strategy Lab portfolio, is an acquired taste, here is something published today by Les Echos, the French business daily and my views on it. Areva, the French nuclear engineering group, is among the bidders to put up the first U.S. nuclear fuel recycling plant. The bidding is being run by the U.S. Department of Energy and the facility will cost $10-$15 billion. It will reduce radioactive waste currently buried at Yucca Mountain (Nevada) by 75%, enhancing U.S. security and cutting risk. As our country moves toward rediscovery of the advantages of nuclear energy, we are having to call on French expertise. France never gave up on nuclear, and now produces nearly 70% of its electricity from nuclear power plants. Linking business and diplomacy What I hope to see is a link between Areva bidding on this reprocessing facility and its decision not to sell anything similar to Iran. Pourquoi pas? The French would not hesitate to link business and diplomacy this way if the situations were reversed. Get to work Condi Rice! [picture of Global Investor, Vivian Lewis] Global InvestorVivian Lewis Round 14 © 2006 Microsoft ***************************************************************** 40 Atlanta Journal-Constitution: CDC study: Nuclear plant no danger to residents | ajc.com By STACY SHELTON The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 09/26/06 New Ellenton, S.C. James Hell sells fruits and vegetables at the edge of a town that was moved in the Cold War days of the early 1950s when the federal government took over this corner of South Carolina to build a nuclear bomb materials plant. Down the road, in sight of the customers picking through his tomatoes, watermelons and peaches, are the massive gates to the plant, the Savannah River Site. "Really, I never gave it a thought about what they do down there," said Hell, a middle-aged farmer who moved here last year from North Carolina. "So far, they've given me no problem." That's precisely what the government now concludes. After an exhausting 14-year study that cost $10.3 million, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined the plant delivered a negligible amount of radiation to the thousands of townsfolk who lived, worked and played for four decades around the vast facility, known as SRS. For the first time during the study, the public was given information about thousands of accidental discharges by the plant. Cancer-causing plutonium, tritium and other radioactive and toxic materials were released into the air, water and groundwater. The largest releases occurred during the plant's early years. SRS stopped making materials for nuclear bombs in 1988. It is now a Superfund site, with the federal government investing billions of dollars to clean up contaminated soil and groundwater, an effort now under way. The CDC's findings were met mostly with a yawn. Only about 30 people attended the public meeting last week at the University of South Carolina-Aiken, at which the CDC announced the end of the SRS Dose Reconstruction Project. Only a few people in the audience expressed doubts and concerns about the report, which they said failed to tell the whole story. 10,500 work at the plant But most of the people in attendance the majority of whom either retired from careers at SRS or still depend on the plant for their livelihood seemed satisfied. About 10,500 people still work at the plant, either directly for the federal government or for federal contractors who operate the facility. Joe Ortaldo, a retired engineer who had worked at SRS and now lives nearby in Aiken, said the CDC "did a good job. Bear in mind, they were working with information from the middle '50s." He said the findings were consistent with those from other studies. Over a 39-year span, between the mid-1950s and the early 1990s, when main production operations ceased, "The highest [radiation] dose to anybody was about 1 rem [a unit of measuring exposure risk]," said the CDC's Charles M. Wood, a former nuclear submarine officer. The average person receives more than a third of that amount every year, from the sun, medical X-rays, color televisions and airplane travel. It was the lowest radiation dose estimated from any of the five nuclear facilities reviewed by the CDC, Wood said. The CDC's study began with a two-year document search by a team of nuclear detectives who combed through thousands of handwritten notes and other records dating back to the 1950s to figure out how much radiation left the site. In Aiken's historic downtown district, about 15 miles from the plant, city manager Roger LeDuc said he had not heard about last week's CDC meeting, or that the study had been completed. "I would've been surprised if they had found a problem," LeDuc said. Though the town is so close to the nuclear facility, he said, "It's really never been an issue. "Most of that has to do with the safety record [SRS] held for years and even decades. There weren't any accidents at the site," LeDuc said. Before the plant was built in the 1950s, Aiken had more horses than people, said LeDuc, a transplant from the North. The population of the city, and the surrounding county, boomed after SRS became South Carolina's largest employer with more than 25,000 workers. Even though SRS downsized dramatically after 1992, when it ceased making bomb parts, Aiken's population kept rising. Retirees are driving Aiken's recent population boom, drawn by the climate and the horse culture. James Giusti, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy, which owns SRS, said reaction to the CDC study may have been muted because many people in the community either work at the plant or have relatives who do. Their concerns have been answered through other studies and medical examinations, he said. Also, Giusti said, a draft of the final report came out last year, and very little changed. "I'm just glad the data supported what we thought would be the outcome based on what we knew were in our records and what other studies have said," Giusti said. On Main Street in New Ellenton, the Rev. Robbie Vance considered the possibility of radiation exposure from the front stoop of the parsonage next to Corinth Baptist Church. "People don't really talk about it," Vance said. But he wonders if one day scientists will figure out that certain deaths in the community were caused by the radioactive material handled and stored at the plant. "I don't feel completely safe living here," Vance said. Among his congregation is a married couple in their 80s, both of whom worked for SRS. They made a good life for themselves, and still live on a 25-acre horse farm not far from the plant. The couple said they believe radiation killed some of their co-workers, but they blame the workers, not the government or the contractor that ran the plant. Some gung-ho employees tried to get ahead by cutting corners and failing to wear all the necessary protective gear, they said. "I respected it," the man said of the radioactive materials he handled as a crane operator. "Any problems were because of operator error." "I haven't ever been afraid of it," the woman said. Dr. William Johnson, a retired physician from Augusta, just across the river from the Savannah River Site, is trying to get more information about radiation exposure on behalf of a family that asked him to look at the medical records of a relative who worked at the plant and died of colon cancer. Johnson said he's heard of clusters of leukemia and birth defects, but has never seen any proof. Separate epidemiological studies have been performed over the years on the workers, CDC and plant officials said. They have not shown SRS workers to have a higher rate of cancer than the general population. 'Like another world' In 1997, researchers from Emory University and the Medical University of South Carolina concluded the cancer rate among more than 1 million people living in a 22-county area around the plant was about normal for a rural region. SRS is "an extremely big reservation. It's like another world," Johnson said. "I wonder if the size of it and the distance between it and surrounding communities doesn't have something to do with the lack of interest. Some of these people have been around nuclear materials forever and it doesn't seem to faze them." Jen Kato, a progressive care nurse in Atlanta who grew up in Augusta and sat on a citizens advisory group, the Savannah River Site Health Effects Subcommittee, is critical of the CDC study. She said it has too many gaps in it. For example, researchers did not consider the radiation impacts on fetuses, considered the most likely population to be affected by radiation exposure. Kato, a member of the Sierra Club, said she had hoped the study would answer the questions about whether there is a cluster of cancers and birth defects among the population living around SRS. She says because of the information gaps, the CDC's findings leave those questions unanswered. Now she says the likelihood of getting those answers is remote because the CDC has said everything is OK. "The probability of funding for a real epidemiological endeavor that I and other committee members feel should be undertaken is probably vacant now," Kato said. © 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution | Customer care| ***************************************************************** 41 Secrecy News: NRC Rescinds Secrecy Surrounding HEU Fuel Exports from the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that it will no longer conceal the amounts of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel proposed for export to foreign research reactors. The announcement marks a step back from the heightened secrecy adopted by the NRC and other government agencies post-September 11. The revised policy had been sought by the , a non-proliferation advocacy organization, and the move was disclosed in (pdf) to the Institute. "After considering your recommendations and various other factors, NRC will discontinue automatically withholding material quantity information from the public versions of export license applications," wrote NRC Chairman Dale E. Klein to NCI analyst Alan J. Kuperman. Henceforward, "Federal Register notices for proposed HEU exports will also include quantities requested," Chairman Klein . The Nuclear Control Institute that such disclosure serves the public interest because it enables public vetting of applications for HEU exports and thereby helps to ensure that traffic in weapons-grade uranium is minimized. NCI analyst Kuperman commended the NRC for "rethinking and reversing a secrecy policy that was a counter-productive over-reaction to the attacks of September 11." He said the new openness policy will "assist the Commission to fulfill its statutory responsibility to minimize commerce in bomb-grade uranium." "The NRC will continue to withhold information on projected or actual shipment schedules, delivery dates, ... or any other related logistical information... as this information could be useful to a potential adversary," Chairman Klein . Posted by Steven Aftergood on September 26, 2006 11:29 AM | Permalink Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style) Contact Search Search this blog: --> Categories --> + + + + + + + + + Recent Posts + + + + + + + + + + --> ***************************************************************** 42 UN Atomic Watchdog Calls For Financial And Technical Support To Fight Nuclear Terrorism Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:00:27 -0400 UN ATOMIC WATCHDOG CALLS FOR FINANCIAL AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT TO FIGHT NUCLEAR TERRORISM New York, Sep 26 2006 1:00PM The United Nations atomic watchdog agency has called on all Member States to provide political, financial, and technical support to prevent nuclear and radiological terrorism. The call, which also seeks necessary funds for the Nuclear Security Fund, came in a resolution passed by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (<"http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2006/gc_resolutions.html">IAEA) General Conference, which was attended by more than 100 Member States and ended last week. The resolution on “Nuclear Security - Measures to Protect Against Nuclear Terrorism” emphasizes the importance of physical protection and other measures against illicit trafficking and national control systems for ensuring protection against nuclear terrorism and other malicious acts, including the use of radioactive material. Other resolutions call for strengthening the safeguards of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to prevent the use of nuclear material for prohibited purposes while facilitating cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy; transferring nuclear technology to developing countries to aid to their socio-economic development; and enhancing a whole spectrum of nuclear applications from power production to cancer therapy to eradication of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. The conference also called on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which withdrew from the NPT in 2002, to cooperate promptly in the full and effective implementation of IAEA safeguards. The resolution stresses the desire for a “peaceful resolution through dialogue to the DPRK nuclear issue, leading to a nuclear-weapon-free Korean Peninsula, with a view to maintaining peace and security in the region.” Another resolution requests IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei to continue consultations with the States of the Middle East to facilitate the early application of full-scope safeguards to all nuclear activities as a necessary step towards the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free-zone in the region. The Agency’s Board of Governors has elected Slovenian Resident Representative Ernest Petric as chairman for the two-year period 2006-2007 in succession to Japanese Permanent Representative Yukiya Amano. 2006-09-26 00:00:00.000 ___________________ For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news To listen to news and in-depth programmes from UN Radio go to: http://radio.un.org/ _______________________________ To change your profile or unsubscribe go to: http://www.un.org/apps/news/email/ ***************************************************************** 43 IEER update: Los Alamos and plutonium; Depleted uranium; Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:55:14 -0700 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (borg.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61] X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61 X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST Here are the latest postings to the IEER web site, plus some news about an upcoming release. Lisa Ledwidge, IEER de IEER comments on the Los Alamos Site Wide Environmental Impact Statement http://www.ieer.org/comments/lanlsweis.html Some reasons why expanded plutonium pit production at LANL is a bad idea. IEER Presentation on Disposal of Depleted Uranium from the National Enrichment Facility http://www.ieer.org/reports/du/comments0609.html Why DU waste belongs in a repository not shallow land burial. IEER Report: Shifting Radioactivity Risks: A Case Study of the K-65 Silos and Silo 3 Remediation and Waste Management at the Fernald Nuclear Weapons Site http://www.ieer.org/reports/fernald/ Our analysis of remediation at DOE's flagship cleanup site. Stay tuned for the November issue of IEER's newsletter Science for Democratic Action, where you can always find understandable science with a dose of humor. It will include a feature article on our Fernald study and the long-awaited return of Gamma, Dr. Egghead's dog. Try your hand at the Atomic Puzzler and win a prize! To unsubscribe from IEER Updates (less than one email per month on average), simply reply to this email with "Remove" in the subject line. Apologies for double postings. Lisa Ledwidge Outreach Director, United States, and Editor of Science for Democratic Action Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) PO Box 6674 | Minneapolis, MN 55406 USA tel. 1-612-722-9700 | fax: please call first | ieer@ieer.org | http://www.ieer.org IEER's main office: 6935 Laurel Ave. Suite 201 | Takoma Park, MD 20912 USA | tel. 1-301-270-5500 | fax 1-301-270-3029 ***************************************************************** 44 [southnews] Maralinga marks atomic test anniversary Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 19:48:10 -0500 (CDT) X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST The first British atomic bomb test was conducted at Maralinga in South Australia's outback 50 years ago today. Seven atomic tests were conducted there in 1956 and 1957 and minor trials continued into the early 1960s. Maralinga marks atomic test anniversary ABC News Online Wednesday, September 27, 2006. 9:23am (AEST) The first British atomic bomb test was conducted at Maralinga in South Australia's outback 50 years ago today.Seven atomic tests were conducted there in 1956 and 1957 and minor trials continued into the early 1960s. Maralinga was officially closed in 1967. Remediation work at the site began in 1996 and was completed four years later. Most of the former Maralinga test site is considered safe for unrestricted access although permanent residency is restricted to a small section. The anniversary will be marked by an anti-nuclear group this morning, with a mock red carpet ceremony in front of BHP Billiton's offices in Adelaide. The self-styled "world's largest diversified resources company" and "world's fourth largest producer of uranium", BHP Billiton operates the Olympic Dam uranium, copper, gold and silver mine in SA's north. The company will be awarded a "Blinky", a three-eyed goldfish statue, for its contribution to climate change. Joel Catchlove from the Friends of the Earth says the radioactive fallout from the Maralinga tests highlights why companies need to be environmentally responsible. "The patterns we see in the way that Indigenous communities in particular are continuing to suffer the legacy of Maralinga, we feel that's certainly being carried on in certain aspects of the nuclear industry today," he said. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200609/s1749681.htm ____________________________________________ Maralinga - Our Own Shame Britain actively used Australian soil and people to conduct it's nuclear testing program during the 1950s and 1960s. The 5 areas it conducted the tests are at Monte Bello Islands in north-western Western Australia (just off the mainland, near Monkey Mia); Emu Field in north-western South Australia; the infamous Maralinga in south-western South Australia; Christmas Island and Malden Island, both due south of Hawaii, on either side of the Equator. After the Grapple series of tests, the British lent the site to the US in 1962 for the Dominic series of 25 explosions. Britain detonated its first nuclear device, Hurricane, on Monte Bello Island on October 3, 1952, followed by tests on May 16 and June 19, 1956. The June blast had a 60 kiloton capacity. At one monitoring point, over 3,200 kilometres to the east, radioactive iodine concentrations increased a hundredfold. Two further atomic bomb tests, Totem 1 and 2, were carried out at Emu Field on October 15 and 27, 1953. The next series of atomic bomb tests were carried out at Maralinga between September 27, 1956 and October 9, 1957, along with a series of "minor" trials up to 1963. The Grapple series of tests were undertaken at Malden and Christmas Islands May 15, 1957, to September 23, 1958. During the mainland tests many army personnel were deliberately exposed to the blasts just to see what effect radiation had on troops. Security at the test sites was lax. The testing range boundaries were not properly monitored, allowing people to walk in and out. Any signs were in English, which the local Aboriginal population could not read. Fallout from the ground blasts led to massive contamination of the Australian interior. The fallout from Maralinga even reached Adelaide and Melbourne. Some places are still heavily radioactive due principally to the presence of 20 kg of plutonium, the most toxic element known to humans. Maralinga is Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal dialect for "Field of Thunder". Aborigines may have been directly affected by the blasts. Compensation is currently being sought in Australian courts. http://www.sea-us.org.au/thunder/britsbombingus.html ***************************************************************** 45 [NYTr] Maralinga marks atomic test anniversary Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 01:38:19 -0400 (EDT) X-Sender-Host-Name: olm.blythe-systems.com X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Dave Muller (southnews) ABC News Online (Australia) - September 27, 2006. 9:23am (AEST) http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200609/s1749681.htm The first British atomic bomb test was conducted at Maralinga in South Australia's outback 50 years ago today.Seven atomic tests were conducted there in 1956 and 1957 and minor trials continued into the early 1960s. Maralinga was officially closed in 1967. Remediation work at the site began in 1996 and was completed four years later. Most of the former Maralinga test site is considered safe for unrestricted access although permanent residency is restricted to a small section. The anniversary will be marked by an anti-nuclear group this morning, with a mock red carpet ceremony in front of BHP Billiton's offices in Adelaide. The self-styled "world's largest diversified resources company" and "world's fourth largest producer of uranium", BHP Billiton operates the Olympic Dam uranium, copper, gold and silver mine in SA's north. The company will be awarded a "Blinky", a three-eyed goldfish statue, for its contribution to climate change. Joel Catchlove from the Friends of the Earth says the radioactive fallout from the Maralinga tests highlights why companies need to be environmentally responsible. "The patterns we see in the way that Indigenous communities in particular are continuing to suffer the legacy of Maralinga, we feel that's certainly being carried on in certain aspects of the nuclear industry today," he said. *** http://www.sea-us.org.au/thunder/britsbombingus.html Maralinga - Our Own Shame Britain actively used Australian soil and people to conduct its nuclear testing program during the 1950s and 1960s. The 5 areas it conducted the tests are at Monte Bello Islands in north-western Western Australia (just off the mainland, near Monkey Mia); Emu Field in north-western South Australia; the infamous Maralinga in south-western South Australia; Christmas Island and Malden Island, both due south of Hawaii, on either side of the Equator. After the Grapple series of tests, the British lent the site to the US in 1962 for the Dominic series of 25 explosions. Britain detonated its first nuclear device, Hurricane, on Monte Bello Island on October 3, 1952, followed by tests on May 16 and June 19, 1956. The June blast had a 60 kiloton capacity. At one monitoring point, over 3,200 kilometres to the east, radioactive iodine concentrations increased a hundredfold. Two further atomic bomb tests, Totem 1 and 2, were carried out at Emu Field on October 15 and 27, 1953. The next series of atomic bomb tests were carried out at Maralinga between September 27, 1956 and October 9, 1957, along with a series of "minor" trials up to 1963. The Grapple series of tests were undertaken at Malden and Christmas Islands May 15, 1957, to September 23, 1958. During the mainland tests many army personnel were deliberately exposed to the blasts just to see what effect radiation had on troops. Security at the test sites was lax. The testing range boundaries were not properly monitored, allowing people to walk in and out. Any signs were in English, which the local Aboriginal population could not read. Fallout from the ground blasts led to massive contamination of the Australian interior. The fallout from Maralinga even reached Adelaide and Melbourne. Some places are still heavily radioactive due principally to the presence of 20 kg of plutonium, the most toxic element known to humans. Maralinga is Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal dialect for "Field of Thunder". Aborigines may have been directly affected by the blasts. Compensation is currently being sought in Australian courts. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 46 AU ABC: Maralinga marks atomic test anniversary. 27/09/2006. ABC News Online The first British atomic bomb test was conducted at Maralinga in South Australia's outback 50 years ago today. Seven atomic tests were conducted there in 1956 and 1957 and minor trials continued into the early 1960s. Maralinga was officially closed in 1967. Remediation work at the site began in 1996 and was completed four years later. Most of the former Maralinga test site is considered safe for unrestricted access although permanent residency is restricted to a small section. The anniversary will be marked by an anti-nuclear group this morning, with a mock red carpet ceremony in front of BHP Billiton's offices in Adelaide. The self-styled "world's largest diversified resources company" and "world's fourth largest producer of uranium", BHP Billiton operates the Olympic Dam uranium, copper, gold and silver mine in SA's north. The company will be awarded a "Blinky", a three-eyed goldfish statue, for its contribution to climate change. Joel Catchlove from the Friends of the Earth says the radioactive fallout from the Maralinga tests highlights why companies need to be environmentally responsible. "The patterns we see in the way that Indigenous communities in particular are continuing to suffer the legacy of Maralinga, we feel that's certainly being carried on in certain aspects of the nuclear industry today," he said. ***************************************************************** 47 Bradenton Herald: Tallevast plume investigation ends 09/26/2006 | DONNA WRIGHT Herald Staff Writer TALLEVAST - The investigation of the Tallevast toxic waste plume is over, state environmental regulators announced Monday. Lockheed Martin Corp., the state decided, has adequately defined the plume. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has approved Lockheed Martin Corp.'s latest plume maps as final despite objections raised by independent reviews of the defense giant's data. The approval was good news for Lockheed scientists who have been trying to define the plume to state requirements for the past six years. Lockheed is now moving ahead to complete a site-wide Remedial Action Plan or clean-up strategy based on the state's approval letter, said Lockheed spokeswoman Gail Rymer. "We have already begun the cleanup of the groundwater with the start up of the treatment system in August," said Rymer. "The Remedial Action Plan will include the continued operation of this treatment system along with a recommendation on addressing the entire plume." Those impacted by DEP's decision - Tallevast residents and businesses - have 21 days to appeal the DEP decision with the Department's Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee. Failure to file an appeal within the 21-day period would constitute a waiver of any right to an administrative hearing, the approval letter said. The clock started ticking, DEP said, with the receipt of the letter from William Kutash, professional geologist administrator for DEP's Southwest District. Copies of Kutash's letter addressed to Tina Armstrong, Lockheed's program manager for the Tallevast site, were sent via e-mail Monday to leaders of FOCUS - Family Oriented Community United Strong -a resident advocacy group in Tallevast. The toxic plume underneath Tallevast is now known to cover more than 200 acres and has been traced back to a broken sump on the site of the former Loral American Beryllium Co. plant site at 1600 Tallevast Road. Lockheed owned the beryllium plant when the contamination was discovered in 2000, when the defense giant was preparing the property for sale. While Lockheed never operated the facility, as the former owner when the contamination was found, the defense giant has the responsibility for cleaning up the mess. Independent experts, some county officials and Tallevast residents united under FOCUS have consistently questioned Lockheed's data on the plume. Those questions over the past two years- including a review by Wilma Subra, an environmental advocate and chemist who studied Lockheed's data for the Herald - pushed the DEP to require Lockheed to do additional testing that led to the current estimate of the plume's size at 200 acres. Originally Lockheed maintained that the plume covered just 50 acres and was confined to the plant site. Wanda Washington, vice president of FOCUS, said the advocacy group was studying DEP's approval letter. She said late Monday afternoon that there had not been any discussions yet on whether an appeal would be filed. Subra and other independent reviewers agreed that Lockheed's latest measurements on the horizontal delineation were correct, but they all objected to Lockheed's data on the vertical depth of the plume. Subra and others also said Lockheed had failed to adequately explain how groundwater was moving through the various underground soil layers beneath Tallevast. After a lengthy review of those independent reports, as well as Lockheed's data submitted in several documents filed with the state between April and August, DEP agreed that Lockheed has done all of the investigation required under state environmental laws. "Our review concludes that (Lockheed's data) have adequately characterized the geologic and hydrologic nature of the site as well as the lateral and vertical extent of contamination in both the soil and groundwater attributable to the former American Beryllium property," Kutash wrote. "The Department agrees with Lockheed Martin . . . that a site-wide Remediation Action Plan should be developed to rehabilitate the delineated contaminants," Kutash said. Those contaminants include industrial solvents and degreasers that have been traced to cancer and other medical disorders in humans. Kutash's letter did not address ongoing human health risk assessments. Washington said FOCUS would send the letter to the legal team representing more than 300 Tallevast residents and former residents in a lawsuit against Lockheed and others that claims damage from the plume. Calls to Tim Varney, the independent technical consultant for FOCUS, and to Michael Graves, an independent geologist who tested private wells in Tallevast for FOCUS, were not returned Monday evening. Varney and Graves both submitted critical reviews of Lockheed's data to DEP. Graves was hired to review Lockheed's latest reports by the legal team representing Tallevast residents. Lockheed has maintained from the beginning that the plume poses no health risk to residents and will have minimal if any impact on property values. Donna Wright, health and social services reporter, can be reached at 745-7049 or at dwright@HeraldToday.com. ***************************************************************** 48 AU ABC: Suzuki criticises NT uranium push ABC Northern Territory | Local News | Story September 2006. 15:30 (AWST) International environmentalist David Suzuki has criticised the Northern Territory Government's push for more uranium mining in the region. The Canadian author is travelling Australia to promote his recently released autobiography. NT Chief Minister Clare Martin says she supports increased uranium mining, but she is against the jurisdiction becoming home to a national nuclear waste dump. Dr Suzuki says the Government's policy is crazy. "Well, I mean, obviously there is a recognition that this is not material like chemical pollutants, this is something more different and I would say if a state or a country is not willing to ... deal with the waste it's manufacturing, they've got no business manufacturing it," he said. ***************************************************************** 49 Deseret News: A time of change — Industry plans cause discord in, out of tribes [deseretnews.com] Tuesday, September 26, 2006 A time of change — Industry plans cause discord in, out of tribes By Dennis Romboy and Lucinda Dillon Kinkead Deseret Morning News Third in a five-part series ['Image'] Keith Johnson, Deseret Morning NewsChildren play basketball during a lunch break at the annual tribal powwow at the Goshute reservation in Ibapah in August. Talk all you want about Utah Indian tribes reclaiming their sovereignty. Say what you will about self-advocacy and self-determination being the ticket to success for Utah's American Indians, who remain some of the state's most beleaguered people. The effort, tribes say, means the difference between a languishing culture and a promising future, but change is harder than it seems. When the Ute Tribe in eastern Utah changed its way of doing business, some of its 3,100 members balked at the profound change in philosophy. So did the companies that for years had sweetheart deals at the tribe's expense, said John Jurrius, who has guided the Utes back from the brink of financial hopelessness in the past few years. "I think it's fair to say that everyone threw a fit," he said. The Skull Valley Band of Goshutes' controversial plan to make millions of dollars on its land has caused nothing but contention in and out of the tribe. Politicians, environmentalists and residents line up to stop the band from contracting to store nuclear waste on its 18,000-acre reservation in the western Utah desert. The unpopular proposal also splintered the tribe to the point that elections were canceled. Leon Bear, recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as tribal chairman, was accused of misusing part of the $1.5 million Private Fuel Storage initially paid in anticipation of building a nuclear waste storage facility. "It's been a sad affair," Bear said. The BIA just this month denied a lease allowing PFS to store nuclear waste on the Goshute reservation, which may kill the project. In the decade since it proposed to turn a patch of sagebrush 50 miles outside Salt Lake City into a radioactive waste dump, the 126-member tribe has made little economic progress. Its only enterprise is a landfill that takes in municipal waste from Salt Lake County. "It gives our people a job," Bear said. The landfill currently employes three Goshutes. Finding a way Utah Indian tribes run into numerous external and internal obstacles when they try better their usually desperate financial circumstances. Leaders in several tribes complain that when they pitch an economic development idea or start to make a little money, outsiders try to hold them down. And when they don't make an effort, they're called government-dependent and lazy. It can be a no-win situation. "Everybody in Utah has prospered but the American Indian," said Forrest Cuch, Utah Office of Indian Affairs executive director. "I have a problem with that. It's not fair." Cuch, though, recognizes that some tribes have tried to do too much too fast. They put the cart before the horse, he said. "Tribes want to do big business before they have developed their work force and become stable in government," he said. Often, the quality of education has limited the tribes' success. His pyramid for success starts with education as the foundation, followed by leadership and community development. Quality management and governance are next with business development at the top. Tribes historically have tried to capitalize on their natural resources — land leasing, grazing rights, oil and gas leasing. Some still do. But others, particularly those with little or no reservation land, have had to find other means. The Ute Tribe was one of the first to embrace the technological revolution, just as it did the horse more than 150 years ago when the tribe roamed the Mountain West. ['Image'] Keith Johnson, Deseret Morning NewsA lone home sits on the Navajo reservation in Monument Valley. Homes can be separated by miles of open space, and many homes do not have modern conveniences. "For us this is a new way of survival, a new way of hunting," John Gamiochipi, a Uintah River Technology planning committee member, stated on the company Web site. Jonathan Taylor, a Massachusetts-based economic consultant to Indian tribes, sees that as the wave of the next two to 10 years. "That's a place where tribes that have struggled before have a real opportunity," he said. "There's a lot of variety." The track record Indian nations have traditionally dealt primarily with the federal government, but that, too, is changing. Tribes are now working more closely with state governments in many areas, including economic development. "We've had a very healthy and strong relationship with them in the last four years," said Chuck Spence, deputy director of the Utah Procurement Technical Assistance Center. The center helps tribes set up companies that qualify for government contracts, often in the Department of Defense. Tribal-owned businesses have preferred status because they're classified as historically disadvantaged. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has made a point to meet with every tribe in the state. Last month he held an American Indian summit that brought tribal and state government leaders together to discuss such issues as education, health care and business development. Utah tribes have a national reputation for delivering services on time and doing quality work, Spence said. Still, there is a level of mistrust of Indian-owned companies in the business world. Some are "actually bold enough" to question whether Indian tribes can be trusted to stand by the terms and conditions of commercial agreements they sign with those wanting to do business on tribal land, according to a May 2006 report to the departments of energy and interior. ['Image'] H. Josef Hebert, Associated PressGoshute tribal leader Leon Bear stands in front of bales of garbage at a landfill on the Skull Valley reservation in autumn 2005. Larry Blackhair knows that sentiment well. One of his duties as manager of Uintah River Technology is to market the Ute-owned business. "It's very difficult to convince companies that we do exist and that we do have a track record," he said from Washington, D.C., where he was attempting to secure new contracts. For the past five years, Uintah River has digitized and encrypted immigration documents for the Department of Homeland Security. It's currently looking to expand its services to keep up with new technology. Prosperity, controversy "You have to take a deep look at what your skill sets are," said Carey Wold, senior vice president for Suh'dutsing Technologies, a Paiute computer services company. "You can't bring jobs to people they can't do." Wold, who worked in economic development offices in Uintah County and the state, said tribal businesses become stigmatized if they don't succeed. "You have to make sure everything plugs in right. Failure is not an option," he said. Suh'dutsing, which means cedar tree, last month signed a five-year, $8 million contract with Dugway Proving Ground. The 2-year-old company also was recognized this year among the nation's top multicultural businesses exceeding $10 million in revenue. CEO Travis Parashonts made it clear when the company started that it was not a "jobs program." It exists to make money, and providing jobs is secondary. Suh'dutsing currently employs 28 people in its Cedar City headquarters and plans to hire nine more. "Best business practices is what these companies run by," Wold said. "They've done a good job not making these companies into political machines." ['Image'] Keith Johnson, Deseret Morning News"The most difficult thing is that some people don't fully understand where we are." — Maxine Natchees Still, pursuing a plan to prosper often causes disharmony within the tribe. The Ute Tribe has experienced much strife since adopting a financial plan to maximize returns on oil and gas leases in the Uintah Basin. The new vision was set in motion with the hiring of Jurrius, a Texas investment banker and financial consultant who turned the tribe's old way of doing business on its ear. Tribal Chairwoman Maxine Natchees, who stands firmly behind the aggressive proposal, has faced at least three recall elections. She is still in her first four-year term. Change, she said, has "been very difficult, painful." Natchees says her vision for the tribe is to follow the financial plan and gain financial stability and sufficiency. The tribe is well on its way, Natchees said. "The most difficult thing is that some people don't fully understand where we are." Challenge of change Not all tribal members see Jurrius in glowing terms. Controversy surrounding his financial vision continues to pick at the tribe. Former tribal council members Floyd Wopsock and Luke Duncan contend they were ousted two years ago because they disagreed with Jurrius' handling of tribal finances and energy resources. They continue to complain that Jurrius operates too much in secret, leaving people in the dark on his investment activities. Wopsock is among five Utes who filed suit against the tribe and Jurrius. At the core of the suit is an allegation of "wasteful, predatory or misguided business dealings." Wopsock contends Jurrius mismanaged and misappropriated tribal assets, including a mortgage on a shopping center that was used to "pay certain tribal members for their political support." The lawsuit also contends Jurrius' financial plan resulted in monetary and job losses as well as mismanagement of oil and gas leases. "Change is difficult," said Cameron Cuch, an analyst for Ute Energy. Because the tribe has voted on these changes and supported the changes, dissidents only send a dark cloud over the successes. "They make it very difficult for the tribe to step up and accomplish its goals," Cuch said. "Since making these changes, the tribe has been able to advance itself. We are just now starting to realize some of the real benefits." While the Goshutes have reaped next to nothing the past 10 years, the Utes, who nearly went bankrupt four years ago, turned their fortunes around. A better life? The pursuit of wealth often clashes with tribal tradition and values, particularly when it comes to the land. American Indians living on reservations don't want to see the earth raped to make a buck. "There's a fine line between tradition and economic development," Bear said eight years ago when the nuclear waste storage project was still new. "Without tradition there is no past, and without economic development there is no future." He feels the same way today. Opportunities like this don't come along very often, he said. "The reservation is a hard life," said Bear, who grew up in Tooele but moved to tribal land in 1980. Life without running water or electricity was hard for his young family. "But we survived." Now the tribe is looking for a better life. "We want to be just like the outside," Bear said. "When I turn on the light, I want electricity to be there. When I flush the toilet, I expect the waste to go away." © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 50 Times of India: Indo-US nuclear deal faces new roadblock Indrani Bagchi [ 26 Sep, 2006 2344hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ] NEW DELHI: The Indo-US nuclear deal is hanging by a thread. And it's all due to a single Democrat senator, Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader who has concerns about spent fuel from India coming to his native Nevada for disposal and who wants to introduce an amendment to the Bill. The Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada is proposed to be used by the US government as a terminal storage facility for nuclear waste — a controversial proposal. He has effectively held up what would have been an easy passage for the bill in the Senate — by utilising a procedural feature called "unanimous consent". This limits debate and amendments to the bill, making its floor vote a quick affair. But even one amendment throws this entire arrangement out of kilter and that's exactly what has happened. This consent route was adopted by Senate leaders to mark a quick passage in a crowded Senate calendar; the Senate disbands for elections on September 29, which means there are very few days to squeeze the India legislation in. Reid has reportedly refused to relent to persuasion thus far. Complicating matters on the Republican side of the floor is Larry Craig from Idaho, who also wants a similar amendment, but saying the opposite of Reid. Unless these are resolved, the Senate passage looks like a clap of distant thunder. To add to the dissonance, Democrat-Republican relations are not at their best right now, particularly in election season. In the past week, foreign secretary (and soon to be special envoy) Shyam Saran and senior officials from the foreign office have been stalking the corridors of New York and Washington. Saran met his counterpart Nick Burns for several meetings as well as Senate leaders to lobby for the legislation. Saran and Burns also worked on the 123 Agreement as well as coordinated positions on the forthcoming meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). But all of this will unravel if the Senate fails to mark a floor vote this week. In fact, as officials complained, extraneous factors have dogged the Indian deal for a while. First it was the Title II of the Bill, which was a ratification of the IAEA's additional protocol, and now the Yucca Mountain controversy, both of which have nothing to do with India but have muddied the Indian waters. Copyright ©2006Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. For ***************************************************************** 51 RIA Novosti: Russia, Serbia sign spent fuel removal contract 26/ 09/ 2006 MOSCOW, September 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russia and Serbia have signed a contract to remove 2.3 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from a Serbian research reactor, Russia's state-controlled uranium supplier and provider of uranium enrichment services said Tuesday. Russia said in late May it plans to complete a program to remove spent nuclear fuel from research reactors in 17 countries by 2012-2013. "The removal will proceed under the aegis of the IAEA, in line with a Russian-U.S. agreement on the removal of spent nuclear fuel from research reactors in Eastern European and CIS countries," a spokesman for Techsnabexport said. IAEA officials established earlier that spent nuclear fuel storage conditions at Serbia's Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences did not meet nuclear security standards set by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The reactor was built to Soviet designs in 1959 and decommissioned in 2002. That same year, Serbia transferred to Russia about 48 kilograms of highly enriched nuclear fuel. Techsnabexport deputy head Alexei Lebedev said earlier it will cost about $150-200 million to remove the spent fuel from 20 reactors built in the 1960s and 1970s in the former Soviet bloc. He said the company, which provides about 35% of global uranium supplies, has already completed the removal of spent fuel from Uzbekistan via Kazakhstan over the winter, and that the next countries in line were Latvia, the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan and Serbia. Work on removing Russian-produced uranium from foreign research reactors is being conducted within the framework of a Russian-U.S. agreement, and is financed by the United States. © 2005 RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 52 Platts: Areva proposes "two-stage" reprocessing-recycling plant london (Platts)--26Sep2006 Areva has proposed a "two-stage" reprocessing-recycling plantas part of the expression of interest in participating in the US DOE's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership this month, a company spokesman said September 25. Areva is proposing to work with Washington Group International and BWX Technologies, Inc. to develop an advanced spent fuel processing plant and deploy the technology commercially in the US by 2020. A commercial mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility is planned in a second stage. DOE has said it is not now interested in a MOX fuel plant. Areva's proposal also includes a sodium- cooled fast reactor of around 600 MW, based on technology being developed by the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique for deployment in France in 2020, according to an industry source. That "advanced burner reactor" would be able to transmute minor actinides separated in an advanced reprocessing facility. The Areva proposal is one of 18 submitted by the DOE's September 7 deadline for expressions of interest. Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 53 reviewjournal.com Opinion - LETTERS: Safe waste disposal Sep. 26, 2006 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal To the editor: In his Sept. 20 letter to the editor, Dan Kane criticized a Review-Journal editorial, saying "it is difficult to understand how any member of the public could fail to comprehend the need for more nuclear power." What Mr. Kane did not mention is that he is a longtime employee of the U.S. Department of Energy and an upper-level manager at the Yucca Mountain Project. The Review-Journal has correctly pointed out that for the last 10 years the federal government's own watchdog agencies have discovered serious quality problems and mismanagement at Yucca Mountain. The state of Nevada and more than 100 public interest groups called for the Energy Department to disqualify the site eight years ago when studies showed it could not meet standards. Instead, the rules have been continually weakened, and now federal legislation is being introduced to further water down and/or eliminate regulations for the project. For years, the Energy Department told public audiences that nuclear power was not the issue. The focus was only on scientific study to find out if Yucca Mountain could safely isolate nuclear waste for as long as it is dangerous to public health and the environment. The new director of the Yucca Mountain Project says that he has inherited a troubled operation with people who must learn to take responsibility for quality. Mr. Kane seems more interested in convincing us that our only hope for survival is more nuclear power. Is the unbridled obsession and commitment to expanding nuclear power more important than the responsibility for and quality assurance necessary for safe, permanent waste disposal? Judy Treichel Las Vegas The writer is executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006 Stephens Media GroupPrivacy Statement ***************************************************************** 54 The Hindu: Australia mulling civilian nuclear deal with India Wednesday, Sep 27, 2006 "It sounds like, on balance, quite a good idea," says Foreign Minister CANBERRA: Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on Tuesday said the Australian Government was considering entering into a deal with India similar to the United States-India civilian nuclear agreement. Mr. Downer hinted Australia might be willing to consider matching a U.S.-India agreement under which, the U.S. provide India with civil nuclear technology and nuclear fuel on condition that India separates its civil nuclear programs from military ones. In return, India has agreed to let 14 of its 22 reactors -- those used for its civilian needs -- be opened to international inspections. "We'd have to see all of that [U.S.-India deal] in operation to work out whether this was really going to be a satisfactory solution," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio. "It sounds like, on balance, quite a good idea," he said. "But whether it would be such a good idea that we would sell uranium to India, I don't know," he added. Uranium sale Mr. Downer's comments came a day after Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his Government is considering the possibility of selling uranium to India if the South Asian nation can guarantee its use for peaceful purposes. Australia's current policy prohibits the sale of uranium to countries who have not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. India has made it plain that Australia should follow the U.S. to change its policy. The U.S. Senate is expected to consider soon the nuclear deal with India, which was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in July. — Xinhua Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of ***************************************************************** 55 Sarasota Herald-Tribune: State ends Tallevast toxic groundwater pollution probe September 26. 2006 3:08PM ASSOCIATED PRESS TALLEVAST -- The state has ended its investigation into a vast plume of groundwater pollution near a former weapons manufacturing plant in Manatee County, clearing the way for a plan to clean it up. State environmental regulators said Monday that Lockheed Martin Corp., which owns the polluted property, has adequately defined the plume. With the approval, Lockheed can begin the cleanup, spokeswoman Gail Rymer said. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection approved Lockheed's latest plume maps as final, despite objections raised by independent reviews of its data. Those affected have 21 days to appeal the department's decision. The pollution emanated from the American Beryllium Co. plant, which operated for nearly 40 years before closing in 1996. Lockheed Martin bought the property that year. The plume covers at least 200 acres and contains several toxic chemicals. Lockheed maintained from the beginning that the plume poses no health risk to residents and will have minimal if any impact on property values. The company discovered the leak in 2000 while preparing to sell the property to WPI, a cable manufacturer that still operates the plant. Though the company told Manatee County and the Department of Environmental Protection about the problem, residents didn't know until nearly four years later. A group of more than 200 Tallevast residents have sued Lockheed seeking damages. Tallevast is about 38 miles south of Tampa. Tuesday, September 26, 2006, 6:32 pm By SNN NEWS 6 ***************************************************************** 56 AFP: Australia may match US deal, supplying uranium to India - FM Tuesday September 26, 08:44 AM SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia is considering whether to match a controversial US nuclear deal with India to allow Canberra to sell uranium to the New Delhi government, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said. He said that while cutting a deal with nuclear-armed India was not on the cards for the moment, it might happen in the future, despite the fact that New Delhi has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). His comments came a day after Prime Minister John Howard said his government was considering changing its policy of refusing to supply uranium to countries that have not signed the NPT. Downer said that Canberra had not ruled out a similar deal to the landmark US-India agreement of July, which allows for limited international inspections of Indian nuclear facilities in return for nuclear cooperation with Washington. "Now, we'd have to see all of that in operation to work out whether this was really going to be a satisfactory solution," he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio. "It sounds like, on balance, quite a good idea, but whether it would be such a good idea that we would sell uranium to India, I don't know," he said. But the minister also urged caution in allowing non-signatories of the NPT access to uranium, warning that such deals could undermine the treaty and set a dangerous new precedent. "I think, at the moment, it's best we stick with our current policy," he said, warning such a sale would raise questions as to whether Canberra should also supply material that can be used in nuclear weapons to countries such as Pakistan and Israel. "On balance you wouldn't sell to any country that hadn't signed the NPT. But having said that, this particular deal is a bit of a variation from the norm," Downer said, explaining that under the US deal, India would open 14 of its 22 nuclear facilities to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. Howard said Monday that while Australia would currently not bow to Indian pressure to sell uranium to New Delhi, it may reconsider its position in the future. "As time goes by, if India were to meet safeguard obligations, some Australians would see it as anomalous that we would sell uranium to China, but not India," Howard said. Australia, which holds 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves, earlier this year signed a deal with China to export 20,000 tonnes of uranium a year from 2010 to meet growing Chinese energy demands. In May, senior Australian and Indian officials met in New Delhi to discuss the US-India civil nuclear cooperation agreement, but at the time Downer denied Australia planned to lift the ban on selling uranium to India unless it signed the NPT. Copyright © 2006 AFP AFP. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 57 San Bernardino County Sun: Rialto, county square off again Article Launched: 09/26/2006 12:00:00 AM PDT Lawsuit focuses on perchlorates Jason Pesick, Staff Writer The city of Rialto plans to file another lawsuit against San Bernardino County in connection with the city's perchlorate contamination problem. The latest lawsuit, which the city plans to file today in state court, claims the county is violating a 1998 agreement made when the county was expanding the Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill. The landfill is leaking perchlorate, according to City Attorney Bob Owen. Owen said that when the county sought to expand the landfill, it agreed that the city would not be responsible for costs associated with the environmental impact of the landfill expansion, including potential lawsuits. In 2004, the city sued the county and 41 other entities, including the U.S. Department of Defense and a number of corporations, in an effort to force them to pay to clean up the contamination the city says was caused during landfill operations in the city's north end. Bob Page, Supervisor Josie Gonzales' chief of staff, said the agreement requires the county to protect the city only if it is sued. In addition, he said, the city is not incurring financial damage. "We haven't financially damaged the city in any way," he said. Scott Sommer, Rialto's external counsel in its perchlorate lawsuits, said the 1998 agreement is broader than merely forcing the county to protect Rialto against lawsuits. He contends the agreement covers the city's expenses for clean-up efforts. He said the city paid for perchlorate cleanup for years before the county began its cleanup effort. City residents have a surcharge on their water bills to fund the cleanup effort. Perchlorate is a chemical used in the production of explosives, rocket fuels and fireworks and can cause thyroid problems in humans. The new lawsuit is narrower than the 2004 federal suit because it is filed only against the county and focuses on the county's alleged violation of the 1998 agreement. The Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board issued an order compelling the county to investigate and clean up perchlorate contamination flowing from its property in 2003. Last year, city and county officials agreed to a tentative settlement deal to the overall federal lawsuit in which the county would have paid the city $2.5 million, but the settlement was never implemented. City and county officals met again on the issue in late August, but the meeting devolved into a shouting match. Page said the county is protecting the city's residents because it is providing them with clean water. He charged that Gonzales is focused on cleanup not lawsuits. Owen said the City Council voted to file the suit during the closed session of last week's meeting. He said the council voted to proceed because Gonzales has refused to negotiate with the city. Reached at home Monday, Rialto Mayor Grace Vargas, one of Gonzales' political allies, said she did not want to comment on the lawsuit or whether she voted in favor of filing the suit. She said she prefers to work with the county. "We get more done, I believe, if we work together," she said. Councilman Ed Scott said he does not recall Vargas raising serious concerns against the lawsuit. "There was no opposition to it," he said. Los Angeles Newspaper Group ***************************************************************** 58 Non-Proliferation: Critical Analysis on the Hill Today Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:19:56 -0500 (CDT) X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST Institute for Public Accuracy 915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org ___________________________________________________ Tuesday, September 26, 2006 Non-Proliferation: Critical Analysis on the Hill Today Hans Blix, the head of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Committee, is testifying on Capitol Hill this afternoon before a subcommittee on weapons of mass destruction and proliferation. The following analysts will also be testifying as part of the same proceedings and are available for interviews: Amb. THOMAS GRAHAM Jr., tgraham@cypressfund.org, http://www.gsinstitute.org Graham is a member of the Global Security Institute's Bipartisan Security Group and was involved in negotiations for every major international arms control and non-proliferation agreement of the past 30 years. He said today: "President John F. Kennedy truly feared that nuclear weapons might well sweep all over the world. In 1962 there were reports that by the late 1970s there would be 25-30 nuclear weapon states in the world with nuclear weapons integrated into their arsenals. If that had happened there would be many more such states today -- in September of 2004, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei, estimated that more than 40 countries now have the capability to build nuclear weapons. Under such conditions every conflict would carry with it the risk of going nuclear and it would be impossible to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of international terrorist organizations they would be so widespread. "One of the principal problems with all this has been that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty nuclear weapon states have never really delivered on the disarmament part of this bargain and the United States in recent years appears to have largely abandoned it. The essence of the disarmament commitment was that pending the eventual elimination of nuclear weapon arsenals called for in Article VI of the Treaty, the nuclear weapon states would agree to important interim steps including a treaty prohibiting all nuclear weapon tests, drastic reduction of their nuclear arsenals and a significant diminishment of the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies. None of this has been accomplished over 35 years later." JONATHAN GRANOFF, jgg786@aol.com, [PDF:] http://www.gsinstitute.org/docs/SNS_ATG_9.26.06.pdf Granoff is president of the Global Security Institute. He said today: "Nearly every country in the world has accepted the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a necessary legal instrument to address this threat. While simultaneously condemning the spread of nuclear weapons, this treaty sets forth a related obligation to obtain their universal elimination. In 1995, in order to obtain the indefinite extension of the NPT, now with 188 states [as] parties, commitments to nuclear elimination were confirmed and strengthened by the five declared nuclear weapon states -- China, United States, France, Russia, and Britain. However, the nuclear weapon states with over 96 percent of the weapons, the United States and Russia, have not fully addressed their fundamental dilemma: they want to keep their nuclear weapons indefinitely and at the same time condemn others who would attempt to acquire them." For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 _________________________________________________________________ You received this message as a subscriber on the list: public@lists.accuracy.org To be removed from the list, send any message to: public-unsubscribe@lists.accuracy.org For all list information and functions, including changing your subscription mode and options, visit the Web page: http://lists.accuracy.org/lists/info/public ***************************************************************** 59 Tri-City Herald: Audit shows DOE offered incentives for unrealistic goals Published Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer The Department of Energy has offered Hanford contractors incentives for work that cannot realistically be accomplished, then made partial payments when projects were canceled, according to an audit by the DOE Office of Inspector General. In many cases, incentive fees were to be paid only if projects were completed. DOE also has been slow to move money available for incentive fees from projects that could not be completed to other high-priority work that could have been accelerated with the fees, the audit, released Monday, found."To its credit, the department's intentions were to encourage contractors to become more aggressive in their schedule and to look for more efficient ways of completing the work," the audit said. But the incentive program has not worked when DOE has not first looked at factors that would prevent contractors from doing the work, such as regulations that first have to be changed or technological challenges, the report said. In one example, DOE promised an $8 million incentive fee for retrieving and treating waste from Hanford underground tanks that it wanted classified as transuranic waste, which is typically waste contaminated with plutonium. The waste was left from the past production of plutonium at Hanford for the nation's nuclear weapons program. But the state of New Mexico has barred the tank waste from being sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, in New Mexico, the nation's repository for transuranic waste. DOE was not able to get regulatory approval for the project and stopped work on it in April 2005, just two months before CH2M Hill needed to have finished retrieval and treatment and start shipping the waste to earn the incentive. CH2M Hill Hanford Group, the contractor on the project, was reimbursed for its work and given an incentive fee for its efforts, according to the audit. In another case, Fluor Hanford was offered an incentive fee to ship weapons-grade plutonium to an interim storage site to reduce Hanford security costs and allow work to continue to demolish the Plutonium Finishing Plant. However, DOE did not have a program in place to consolidate weapons-grade materials and the shipment had to be postponed. But under the Fluor contract, DOE still had to pay the contractor for its work and grant it a "significant incentive fee" for work that could not be completed, the audit said. Fluor Hanford also was offered a $40 million incentive to remove all the sludge and water from Hanford's K Basins by October 2005, even though DOE thought the contractor only had a 5 percent probability of meeting that goal, according to the audit. DOE mandated that the project be accelerated even though it was one of the most technically complex projects at DOE sites and Fluor Hanford had failed in the past, the audit said. Now the work is not expected to be completed until November 2009, or four years after the date for which the incentive fee was offered, the audit said. In at least one case, Fluor Hanford was paid more for accomplishing less work than it had been required to do before the fee incentives were offered for accelerated work, according to the audit. Fluor Hanford had been required to treat and dispose of about 12,766 cubic yards of low-level radioactive waste mixed with hazardous chemicals for a $7.75 million fee, the audit said. Under a new incentive fee, Fluor was paid $9.25 million for treating and disposing of 8,255 cubic yards. DOE objected to several conclusions reached by the audit, according to a letter from Charlie Anderson, principal deputy assistant energy secretary for environmental management. "We understand that many of our incentives are extremely challenging, but they are also directly responsible for our successes," he wrote. DOE did not pay for work that was not accomplished. Fees were paid only for completed work on projects that could not be finished, he said. The audit recommended that DOE appropriately evaluate the projects' probability for success when establishing performance incentives. Identification up front of possible barriers to the successful completion of work would allow the best use of available funding, it said. DOE said it had done that. The audit also concluded that a cumbersome administrative process prevented money allocated for incentive fees to be promptly shifted to other projects when it became apparent the incentives could not be earned. Changes require approval from two separate DOE Office of Environmental Management committees and the assistant secretary for environmental management. On the Net: www.ig.energy.gov/reports.htm © 2006 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 60 Tri-City Herald: DOE's looking for more feedback Published Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer Can the crews working for Hanford's newest contractor raise safety concerns without fear of retaliation? The Department of Energy has hired a consultant and ordered an investigation to answer that question because of worker complaints about Washington Closure Hanford and subcontractor Eberline Services Hanford. "It's to be a full, open and impartial review," said Colleen French, DOE spokeswoman. DOE has received 31 anonymous complaints about Washington Closure in the 13 months since it began cleaning up Hanford's river corridor, said Pat Pettiette, Washington Closure manager. DOE also has received about 20 complaints from workers who identified themselves, but whose names were kept confidential. The anonymous complaints have been difficult to resolve because Washington Closure has not known specifics about the situations involved and could only come up with broad fixes, Pettiette said. He's hoping the investigation will come up with information without violating worker confidentiality so Washington Closure can identify trends or areas of concern, he said. "If there is something broken out there, we want to get to the bottom of it," he said. He also pointed out that workers with concerns they don't want to raise with their manager can bring them to their organized labor steward, the organized labor safety representative, the site safety representative, the human resources department, the company site safety organization or the company's employee concerns programs. Interviews for the DOE investigation will be done through Wednesday at DOE's Employee Concerns Program office in Richland. That means workers who want to discuss concerns with the review team likely will need to arrange with their managers to leave their job sites. "Although your manager needs to know you are away from the site and that you will be participating in an interview, the content of the discussion with the review team should not be discussed with management," Pettiette said in a message to employees. Many employees may participate in the interviews because they have positive comments, he said. Managers should not question workers about what they plan to say, Pettiette said in the message. In some cases, managers or specific employees may be contacted by reviewers for information. Workers with concerns about the interview process may call 376-0000, the number being used to schedule interviews. Pettiette told managers he hopes the result of the assessment would be "a balanced report that tells us about both the things that are working and where we need to improve." DOE periodically orders investigations into contractor and employee relations. In January 2004, DOE investigated complaints of a hostile work environment for spent fuel workers at the Hanford K Basins. The investigation had no major findings. Later that year, DOE investigated whether workers feared retaliation for reporting safety and other issues at the vitrification plant under construction. The investigation found no instances of worker retaliation, but found some racial discrimination and sexual harassment problems traced to five of about 120 foremen and general foremen. In that investigation, about half of the employees were interviewed outside working hours because they preferred managers not know. © 2006 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 61 Hanford News: DOE official visiting Hanford to meet cleanup companies This story was published Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 By the Herald staff The head of the Department of Energy's new Office of Health, Safety and Security is visiting the Hanford nuclear reservation this week. Glenn Podonsky will meet with senior DOE officials at Hanford and with the presidents of companies that hold Hanford cleanup contracts. The new office was created at the end of August when the Office of Environment, Safety and Health was combined with the Office of Safety Performance Assurance. DOE said an office led by a career professional rather than an appointed assistant secretary would bring a more focused and integrated organizational approach to issues of worker safety and security. However, others, including Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said the change could weaken health and safety protections for workers. © 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 62 HDTV - Pantex Says NO Contamination 09.26.06 A land owner near Pantex raised concerns of water quality earlier this month and today new test results are returned. The rancher near the plant said that his water tested positive for chromium. Pantex had the water tested by The State Commission on Environmental Quality and they say there is no evidence of chromium. A report released today states the original water sample was not taken properly and should considered a reading of zero for contamination. Contaminated Well Water Found Near Pantex Contaminated water has reportendly been found by a landowner living near the Pantex Plant. Lab tests show hexavalent chromium was found two miles east of Pantex in a private well. The landowner addressed Pantex officials last night at a public meeting....and presented them with the data.... Last Modified 09/13/2006 04:44:27 PM .gif"> All content © Copyright 2000 - 2006 WorldNow and KFDA. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 63 KnoxNews: Nuclear facility call line on blink NRC investigates why daily check at TVA Sequoyah plant was unsuccessful By MICHAEL SILENCE, silence@knews.com September 26, 2006 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is investigating why it could not contact TVA's Sequoyah nuclear plant for more than two hours early Sunday morning through an emergency notification system. But the NRC pointed out Monday that the incident was "nonemergency" and did not affect any of the plant's emergency response measures and abilities, said Ken Clark, NRC spokesman in Atlanta. At about 4:30 a.m. Sunday, an NRC duty officer at the federal agency's offices in Washington, D.C., attempted to call the nuclear plant through an "Emergency Notification System" but was unable to get through, Clark said. The phone call was part of a daily systems check of all nuclear plants by the NRC, Clark noted. TVA's Sequoyah operation - in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., just north of Chattanooga - includes two reactors that can produce enough electricity to supply about 1.3 million homes a day. According to an incident report on the NRC's Web site, , "Communications via the ENS phone had apparently failed, and attempts by NRC to use the commercial lines for Unit 1, Unit 2 and the Shift Manager were also unsuccessful." The incident report adds, "Sequoyah staff was able to communicate with the NRC Duty Officer with a commercial line; however, the ENS phone line was not functional at that time." At about 7 a.m., the ENS phone line was "successfully utilized to communicate with the NRC Duty Officer," according to the Web site. Clark confirmed the events detailed on the Web site with NRC staff in Washington, D.C. The incident report concludes, "This event is being reported under Loss of Emergency Preparedness Capabilities. An investigation will follow to determine the cause and required corrective actions." Clark said the ENS phone line is controlled by the NRC and operates on phone company circuits. The NRC has not established why the line was apparently down, he said, noting that TVA's nuclear facility had other phone lines that worked. "Sequoyah could have gotten through to the local governments had there been a need to notify them of a problem, and the local governments would then decide whether to sound the alarm," Clark said. "This did not affect Sequoyah's ability to communicate with the local governments in the event there would have been a need to activate the emergency broadcast system or the sirens," Clark said. "The only problem was communication with the NRC operations center in Washington, D.C.," Clark said. "Sequoyah did not lose all their phones lines." "This did not affect the emergency response abilities," he said. He also said the outage did not affect the ability to activate a siren warning system, which can be heard in a 10-mile radius of the plant. TVA spokesman John Moulton said it appears the problem was with an outside line and "was not with the Sequoyah or TVA phone lines." He also said that after a preliminary review, it appears heavy rains caused the problem. "This didn't impact in any way the ability to respond to any emergency," Moulton said. Michael Silence may be reached at 865-342-6310. © 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************