***************************************************************** 12/04/06 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 14.286 ***************************************************************** 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 Guardian Unlimited: French: 6 Powers Near Iran Nuke Accord 2 Xinhua: Six nations to meet in Paris on Iran nuclear program 3 YONHAP NEWS: Former ruling party leader urges four-party talks at en 4 Guardian Unlimited: NKorean Nukes Boost U.S. Air Power Role 5 Council on Foreign Relations: How to Control a Nuclear North Korea? 6 US: BBC: Controversial US envoy quits post 7 US: UPI: Panel recommends RRW as new U.S. nuke 8 [NukeNet] Scotland: THE BRITISH CONNECTION 9 Guardian Unlimited: Why? And why now? 10 Guardian Unlimited: Blair to spell out nuclear future 11 Guardian Unlimited: A complete fantasy 12 Guardian Unlimited: Q: Trident 13 Guardian Unlimited: Replace or not? Experts speak on eve of Trident 14 Guardian Unlimited: Countering nuclear threats and anti-nuclear argu 15 BBC: UK nuclear weapons plan unveiled 16 Guardian Unlimited: Blair Unveils Plan for Nuclear Missiles 17 Independent: Britain needs Trident as it cannot rely on US, says Bla 18 AFP: Blair to announce retention of Britain's nuclear deterrent - 19 AFP: Blair unveils plans to keep nuclear deterrent, cut warheads - 20 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Russia stresses on further IRI ties 21 Guardian Unlimited: Blair opts to cut 20% of warheads 22 Guardian Unlimited: Blair: we must renew Trident NUCLEAR REACTORS 23 The Hindu: Kalam favours use of thorium for producing power 24 Guardian Unlimited: Anti-nuclear protests stepped up 25 AU ABC: New reactors 'cut nuclear waste' - 26 AU ABC: Carpenter confident WA opposes nuclear push 27 BBC: UK faces 'greater power cut 28 AFP: Austrian anti-nuclear protesters block Czech border - 29 McGraw Hill: Finland nuclear reactor delayed again 30 US: NRC: Meeting of the Acrs Subcommittee on Reliability and 31 IHT: Completion of Finland's 5th nuclear reactor further delayed unt 32 US: Detroit Free Press: EDITORIAL: Delaying nuke site purchase smart 33 Kommersant Moscow: Atomic Energy Agency Looking for Contracts in Jav 34 Prague Daily Monitor: Suits over Temelin to be filed with European C 35 SA Business Report: Westinghouse sees big growth in SA's nuclear out 36 US: Times Union: Nuclear power the way to energy independence NUCLEAR SECURITY 37 Guardian Unlimited: 4 in Japan Admit Nuclear-Related Exports 38 Daily Yomiuri: Mitutoyo execs plead guilty in N-tool export 39 AFP: Japanese executives admit nuclear exports - NUCLEAR SAFETY 40 US: North County News: Indian Point says irradiated water has 41 CNN News: BA planes, passengers deemed safe from radiation 42 Guardian Unlimited: Spy probe police head to Moscow 43 Guardian Unlimited: 'Radiation test' on British Embassy 44 Guardian Unlimited: Scaramella: No radiation poisoning 45 Helsingin Sanomat: Radioactive cobalt in luggage hold delays Finnair 46 US: arizona daily star: 2 groups appeal beryllium permit 47 US: arizona daily star: Sunnyside session to discuss beryllium monit 48 RIA Novosti: Russia issues visas to UK detectives in Litvinenko prob 49 RIA Novosti: Topol-M missile regiment put on active duty - minister 50 BBC: MSP awaits child 51 US: washingtonpost.com: Funding Continues for Illness Scientists Dis 52 AFP: Body of ex-spy's Italian contact high in polonium - 53 AFP: Police to head to Moscow as ex-spy probe widens - 54 Aftenposten.no: State accused of paying 'hush money' to cancer victi 55 Telegraph: Secret file shows risk 'vastly overstated' 56 UPI: Russia no longer producing polonium-210 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 57 US: [du-list] DOE selects recipients of GNEP Siting Grants 58 US: [du-list] GNEP/Piketon/PortsmouthOhio/ Gaseous Diffusion Plant 59 US: [shundahaialert] Nuclear weapons, nuclear waste and Shundahai 60 US: The Australian: Boost uranium mining, report urges | | 61 US: The Australian: ALP split on new uranium mining | | 62 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Envirocare's makeover 63 US: AU ABC: Uranium value-adding poses moral questions - expert 64 US: Teen Ink: Environment: Nuclear Waste 65 US: thewest.com.au: Vic won't be pushed into uranium: govt 66 US: thewest.com.au: States refuse to budge on uranium mining 67 US: The Spectrum: Utah loses in the name game 68 US: LA Daily News: Chemical research questioned 69 US: Salt Lake Tribune: A shopworn smokescreen 70 NRC: Maximum 40-Year Licensing Terms for Certain Fuel Cycle Faciliti 71 US: ITAR-TASS: Russia to handle uranium from East German research re 72 US: ITAR-TASS: Russia’s uranium reserves to guarantee 60-year supply 73 EDFP: Yucca Mountain Route County worried about nuke waste transport 74 US: Piketon Gazette: Group opposed waste site appeals to Pike rep 75 US: AU ABC: Uranium mining impediments should be removed - report 76 US: AU ABC: Greens slam 'misguided' uranium report. 77 US: AU ABC: Govt calls for states to dump uranium mining bans. 78 UPI: Analysis: Reid's Yucca and nuke waste plan PEACE 79 Cincinnati Post: U.S. plan invites nuclear attack US DEPT. OF ENERGY 80 AP Wire: End of Fernald cleanup means closure for many 81 AP Wire: Timeline in history of former uranium processing site 82 Beacon Journal: Cleanup of Fernald site finally finished 83 Cincinnati Post: History of the Fernald plant site 84 Inside Bay Area: At 75, Lab still smashes atoms with best of 'em 85 Cincinnati Post: Site becomes wildlife haven 86 Knox News: Y-12 manager speaks openly but cautiously 87 NewsBlaze: Nuclear Fuel Cycle Monitor Global Nuclear Renaissance Sum ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Guardian Unlimited: French: 6 Powers Near Iran Nuke Accord From the Associated Press [UP] Monday December 4, 2006 9:16 PM AP Photo VM128 By ANGELA CHARLTON Associated Press Writer PARIS (AP) - The six powers seeking a U.N. resolution to punish Iran for its nuclear program are nearing agreement on a text, France's foreign minister said Monday. High-ranking diplomats from the U.N. Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany will meet Tuesday in Paris to discuss imposing penalties on Iran for refusing to stop uranium enrichment. ``I think that we should now reach agreement on this,'' Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said in Brussels. He gave no details of the possible text, but indicated progress had been made in his talks in Brussels on Monday with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. ``We are in agreement with Russia to adopt sanctions against Iran's proliferation program, that is to say the sensitive nuclear activities and the ballistic missile program. ... We want to reach as broad an agreement as possible in the U.N. Security Council,'' Douste-Blazy said. The Security Council has been at odds over how to deal with Iran's defiance of an Aug. 31 U.N. deadline to halt uranium enrichment. The Europeans and Americans want tough sanctions. Russia and China have pushed for dialogue instead, despite the failure of a EU effort to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table. On Friday, Lavrov reaffirmed Russia's readiness to back a U.N. ban on exports of nuclear materials and sensitive technologies to Iran, but said U.S.-proposed sanctions were ``too tough.'' A European draft U.N. resolution in October would order all countries to ban the supply of materials and technology that could contribute to Iran's nuclear and missiles programs. It would also impose a travel ban and asset freeze on companies, individuals and organizations involved in those programs. The draft would exempt a nuclear power plant being built by the Russians at Bushehr in Iran, but not the nuclear fuel needed for the reactor. Russia want to scratch any travel ban, asset freeze, or mention of Bushehr. They proposed major changes that would limit sanctions solely to measures that would keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. ``We have taken the Russian amendments into consideration,'' Douste-Blazy said. ``We want to reaffirm the unity of the international community. We are trying to find a plan that is both firm and effective.'' A representative of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was expected to join Tuesday's talks in Paris with political directors of the foreign ministries of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany, ``for an update on the Iranian nuclear file,'' French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told reporters Monday. No other details of the meeting were immediately available. Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said Friday that he didn't expect the Iran resolution to make its way back to New York for discussion until at least Dec. 11. In Brussels, Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, said it was time to send a strong message to Tehran that ``we're all unhappy with Iran.'' ``We just wish the Iranian government would stop developing nuclear weapons, supporting ... terrorist groups in the Middle East and destabilizing Lebanon,'' said Burns, who will represent the United States at the meeting. ``We stand for peace and overcoming divisions in the Middle East and Iran stands for disrupting everything through the barrel of the gun.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 2 Xinhua: Six nations to meet in Paris on Iran nuclear program www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-05 00:15:52 Special report: Iran Nuclear Crisis PARIS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- High-level officials from six nations were set to meet on Tuesday in Paris to discuss Iran's nuclear program, the French Foreign Ministry said on Monday. Diplomats from Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States, and Germany, as well as the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana, would attend the meeting, the ministry said. Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy was optimistic on Monday in Brussels that the upcoming meeting would be a success. "We want to reach as broad an agreement as possible in the UN Security Council," said Douste-Blazy, according to the French Foreign Ministry. "Therefore we are gathering tomorrow in Paris, to discuss the text (of a UN draft resolution)." "I think that we can now reach an agreement on the text," he told reporters after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Douste-Blazy said he had discussed the Iranian situation with Lavrov. "We are in agreement with Russia to adopt sanctions against the Iranian program of proliferation," he said. The UN Security Council adopted a resolution in late July, urging Tehran to suspend by Aug. 31 all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, or face possible sanctions. But the Iranian government reiterated that the country would press ahead with its nuclear program despite the UN warning. Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear energy agenda is limited to generating electricity. The six nations have already held several informal meetings on the possible sanctions which are deemed as too tough by Russia. Talks on Iran will be constructive MOSCOW, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- The talks on Iran between the six-party political directors would be constructive, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday. "The results of our work and the efforts taken by Russia proved that the political directors of six nations would meet for talks on Iran on Tuesday. We hope that the conversation on a possible UN Security Council draft resolution will be constructive," Lavrov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying just upon arrival from Egypt. "We believe that the purpose of the document is not to punish Iran," he added. According to Lavrov, Russia, the United States, Britain, France,Germany and China who are negotiating Iran's issue will meet on Tuesday. Editor: Luan Shanglin ***************************************************************** 3 YONHAP NEWS: Former ruling party leader urges four-party talks at ending armistice 2006/12/04 23:41 KST SEOUL, Dec. 4 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's former ruling party leader on Monday called for holding four-nation talks to forge a peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula, his aides said. "To declare the end of the Korean War, China, the U.S. and North Korea, all signatories to the armistice treaty, and South Korea should hold dialogue," Chung Dong-young, a presidential hopeful for next year's election, was quoted as saying in a meeting with China's State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan in Beijing. Last month, the U.S. said it is willing to declare the end of the Korean War if North Korea dismantles its nuclear weapons program. Chung mentioned this during the talks with Tang. The 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice between the U.S.-led U.N. Command, North Korea and its main ally China. South Korea is not a signatory to the treaty. The two Koreas are still technically in a state of war due to the absence of a peace treaty. South Korea hopes to replace the 1953 armistice treaty with a permanent peace regime, but negotiations with North Korea have yet to materialize because of its prolonged boycott of international negotiations over its nuclear weapons program and its insistence on the dismantlement of the American-led UNC. "If the four-way talks start at an early time and they can discuss how to sign a peace treaty, it will help the U.S. and North Korea to overcome their distrust and be more earnest in six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program," Chung said. According to Chung's aides, Tang weighed in with Chung's idea, saying that it is consistent with China's position with regards to the issue. During the Korean War, the U.S. and 15 other countries fought alongside South Korea under the U.N. flag against the invading North and China. The six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, have been stalled since November due to a North Korea boycott. On Oct. 9, North Korea performed its first-ever nuclear test, provoking global condemnation. But the North agreed to return to six-nation negotiations on its nuclear weapons program on Oct. 31 after closed talks with the United States, brokered by China. (END) ***************************************************************** 4 Guardian Unlimited: NKorean Nukes Boost U.S. Air Power Role From the Associated Press [UP] Monday December 4, 2006 11:31 AM By AUDREY McAVOY Associated Press Writer OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea (AP) - U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets can fly to North Korea in minutes from this base 48 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone. Across the border are hundreds of North Korean artillery systems aimed at Seoul, and missiles capable of hitting Japan, Hawaii, and possibly the U.S. mainland. North Korea's recent tests of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, along with its continuing buildup of mobile artillery, highlight the importance of air power in deterring Pyongyang by giving the U.S. a way to strike moveable targets that appear increasingly threatening. The South Korean and U.S. armies still would play a critical role in any fight breaking the armistice that effectively ended the 1950-1953 Korean War. But U.S. Air Force officials say their planes are particularly suited to destroying North Korean weapons that would threaten not only South Korea but the United States and its allies. ``Air power is exceptionally important in the Korean fight,'' General Paul V. Hester, the Pacific Air Forces commander, told The Associated Press on a recent trip to South Korea from his Hawaii headquarters. ``Air power takes care of the deep targets in our business.'' Washington is counting on diplomacy to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, but Hester said that if fighting broke out, U.S. and South Korean planes would fly close air support sorties to assist their two nations' armies and ``go deep'' to strike artillery tubes that threaten Seoul and surrounding areas. Analysts say North Korea has moved more than 500 long-range artillery systems - including at least 300 that could target metropolitan Seoul - just north of the Demilitarized Zone over the past decade. Hester said his planes would also likely head further into the North to strike the second echelon of North Korean troops that would be moving south if fighting started. The United States keeps about 60 F-16 fighter jets and some 20 A-10 ``Warthog'' ground attack planes at its two bases in South Korea. It also has an unspecified number of U-2 spy planes on the peninsula. Some 7,500 airmen fly and maintain the planes and support the air crews. The United States also has forces at three air bases in Japan and one on the U.S. territory of Guam that could be sent to South Korea within hours if needed. In recent years, the Air Force has been rotating bombers - B-2s, B-1s and B-52s - and F-15 fighter jets through Guam to plug holes left when planes from other Pacific bases have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. A specialized bomber like the B-2 likely would be required to take out any of North Korea's nuclear or missile facilities, analysts say. North Korea still has a 1.2 million-member army but has since lost tanks and armored vehicles because it hasn't been able to maintain the aging equipment. It also hasn't significantly upgraded its air force since the 1980s. A fuel shortage also means North Korean pilots may get only 20 hours of flight time each year. Pyongyang's military strategy has shifted from maintaining forces for conquering South Korea to having forces that can threaten Seoul, Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., a professor at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Va., said in a 2005 essay, ``The Future of U.S. Airpower on the Korean Peninsula.'' In the meantime, the United States is cutting back the number of soldiers it has stationed in Korea as it prepares to hand over key responsibilities to South Korea, including wartime command of South Korean troops. Over the next three years, the overall U.S. troop presence should decline to about 25,000 from the current 29,500. Air Force personnel numbers, however, should stay steady as the U.S. role on the peninsula increasingly tilts toward air and naval power. Hester said the U.S. Air Force didn't put any of its planes on alert after the Oct. 9 nuclear test because Pyongyang had clearly signaled what it would be doing. North Korea also didn't move any of its ground, air, or naval forces to indicate it was planning anything more than a test, Hester said. It remains to be seen whether the test, or any future tests, will force the U.S. to change its military strategy toward the North, he said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 5 Council on Foreign Relations: How to Control a Nuclear North Korea? - Discussants: David C. KangAaron L. Friedberg December 4, 2006 For more than a decade, the United States and North Koreas neighbors have tried various tactics, from multilateral agreements to sanctions, in attempts to keep the rogue state from becoming nuclear. Six-Party Talks involving the United States, the Koreas, China, Japan, and Russia fell apart a year ago when North Korea walked away from negotiations and refused to abandon its uranium enrichment program. For its part, the United States has rebuffed Pyongyangs repeated demand for one-on-one talks. North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October, raising the concern level about the Kim Jong-Il regimes weapons arsenal as well as the possibility that nuclear materials could be spirited out of North Korea. Complicating the issue are the differing stakes for Six-Party Talk members; while the United States and Japan push hard line approaches to try to control Pyongyangs weapons capabilities, China, South Korea, and Russia worry about the possibility of handling a refugee influx if the Kim regime suddenly falls. , a Dartmouth College professor of government and coauthor of Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies debates with , a Princeton University professor of international affairs and former deputy national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, about the best approaches to influence a nuclear North Korea. Weigh in on this debate by emailing the editors at . To view other online debates .  [Aaron L. Friedberg] Most recent December 4, 2006 Aaron L. Friedberg Any attempt to devise a workable strategy must begin with an assessment of the opponent. Everything we know about North Korea suggests that it is, in effect, an absolute monarchy, ruled by a man who is monstrously indifferent to the welfare of his subjects, manipulative, deceitful, and suspicious to the point of paranoia in his dealings with others, but rational, calculating and with a highly developed instinct for self-preservation. The notion that Kim Jong-Il will agree to abandon his nuclear programs in exchange for written security guarantees or offers of economic assistance for his people is fanciful. To the contrary, he would likely regard moves to lessen tension and open North Korea to a flood of aid, trade, and outside influences as profoundly threatening. Kim has devoted decades and untold billions to acquiring nuclear weapons precisely because he believes they will help ensure his safety. He will give them up only if he becomes convinced that the alternative is his own imminent demise. Despite his carefully cultivated image of aggressiveness, unpredictability, and imperviousness to pressure, Kim has proven in the past to be highly responsive to what he regards as credible threats to his survival. In 1994, when he promised to freeze his nuclear activities, and again in the spring of 2003 when he agreed to enter what would become the Six-Party Talks, Kim apparently believed that he faced a real danger of direct U.S. military action. Today he likely calculates that the risk of attack is close to zero and, for a variety of reasons, he is probably right. Fortunately there are other, more subtle ways of applying serious pressure, including the use of targeted financial sanctions. A full-scale crackdown on North Koreas drug smuggling, arms dealing, and counterfeiting, and on the network of banks and front companies that it uses to funnel money back to Pyongyang, would put a crimp in Kim Jong-Ils lavish lifestyle. More important, it could also threaten his grip on power. Without a steady influx of dollars to pay for foreign-made medicines, cars, watches, and other luxury goods, Kim will find it much harder to buy the continued loyalty of the inner circle of military officers, security personnel, and Communist Party officials on whom his safety depends.  If it hopes to achieve a satisfactory negotiated settlement to the current standoff, the United States cannot simply choose engagement over coercion; it must pursue a strategy that combines continued offers of inducements with a considerable increase in coercive pressure.   [David C. Kang] December 4, 2006 David C. Kang Almost all observerswhether they favor the broad strategies of engagement or containmentagree on the basic goals of any approach to North Korea: at a minimum the abolition of the Norths nuclear program, at best a complete change of regime behavior or even the regime itself. Their disagreement lies in which strategy best reaches these goals. Furthermore, the basic contours of any deal over North Koreas nuclear program are well-known: The North abandons its nuclear program in exchange for U.S. security guarantees and normalization of ties. Indeed, this was the core of an agreement in principle reached during the Six-Party Talks in 2005. However, the 2005 agreement in principle almost immediately fell victim to issues of implementation: the United States wants the North to make major steps toward dismantling its programs first, while the North wants demonstrated commitment by the United States first. Both sides mistrust each other so much that they are unwilling to make the first move. Some believe that more pressure is the solution. However, sanctions or other coercive actions (even if China and South Korea go along with these measures) are unlikely to change North Korean behavior. Indeed, the United States needs to decide whether coercion is helping contain and resolve the North Korean nuclear threat, or whether it is in fact exacerbating that threat by prompting a response from North Korea. As is the case with most countries, North Korea has historically met external pressure with pressure of its own. Some believe that coercion will eventually cause the North to capitulate. Unfortunately, past history reveals that this appears unlikely. There is little reason to think that applying even more pressure on North Korea will finally result in a deescalation of tension.  Alternatively, a strategy of economic engagement that addresses North Korean security concerns while saturating North Korean citizens with capitalist ideas is the best strategy for the United States to pursue: It is transformative, gradual, and peaceful. Capitalism is a powerful force, and when it is unleashed, it is very difficult to turn it back. Give North Koreans a taste of economic freedoms and outside ideas and the next generation will view their own leadership and the world in different terms. Economic transformation is also the most likely strategy to help North Korean citizens: Our quarrel is not with the people of North Koreathey are the victims of a brutal and repressive regime.  Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved. [ /] ***************************************************************** 6 BBC: Controversial US envoy quits post Last Updated: Monday, 4 December 2006 [John Bolton sits behind President Bush] Mr Bush was for him, but Democratic senators were not The controversial US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, is to leave his post, the White House says. Mr Bolton looked unable to win the necessary Senate support for him to continue in the job, which he had obtained on a temporary basis. Critics have questioned factors including his abrasive style at the UN. Mr Bolton's move comes after US defence chief Donald Rumsfeld resigned following the Republican defeat in last month's mid-term elections. The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic Senator Joe Biden, said he saw "no point in considering Mr Bolton's nomination again". The White House said President George W Bush had "reluctantly" accepted Mr Bolton's move to step down at the end of the current Congress session in January. I am absolutely delighted. Bu signalled his complete disdain for the UN by appointing Bolton Rory Morty Mr Bush said he was "deeply disappointed that a handful" of senators were blocking Mr Bolton's confirmation. The departure would disrupt US diplomatic work at a sensitive time, the president said. The news comes days before a bipartisan panel is expected to suggest the US should begin talking to Iran and Syria, an initiative Mr Bolton has opposed. 'Ideal envoy' Mr Bolton took up the UN posting last year during a congressional holiday after his nomination stalled in the Senate. The president appoint ambassador Bolton because he knew he would represent America's values and would take head-on problems at the United Nations White House spokeswoman Profile: John Bolton Casualty of Bush weakness It was a procedural manoeuvre that avoided the need for him to be confirmed until the end of this year. That procedure cannot be repeated, and the new climate in Congress would make it all but impossible for him to win a two-thirds majority of senators. A White House spokeswoman said Mr Bolton had "served his country with distinction". His achievements included the assembling of coalitions addressing North Korea's nuclear activity and Iran's uranium enrichment and reprocessing work, Mr Bush said. Democrats said the move could prove a turning point for the administration. Senator John Kerry said it was an opportunity for Mr Bush to nominate an ambassador "who enjoys the support necessary to unite our country and the world and who can put results ahead of ideology". Correspondents say Mr Bolton personified Washington's view of the UN as an institution that was viewed as being wasteful and ineffective at best - and inimical to America's wider global interests at worst. Mr Bolton's critics said a man who once declared there was "no such thing" as the UN was hardly a suitable choice to join the body. His nomination incensed many former US ambassadors - 102 of whom signed a letter urging senators to reject his nomination. But his admirers said he was a bright, hard-working realist - whose scepticism about the UN's role made him an ideal envoy, particularly when the organisation was in need of deep reform. ***************************************************************** 7 UPI: Panel recommends RRW as new U.S. nuke United Press International - Security &Terrorism - 12/4/2006 12:04:00 PM -0500 WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Senior U.S. officials have recommended using a new nuclear warhead that does not require underground testing. The National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy announced in a statement Friday that that the proposed new Reliable Replacement Warhead, or RRW, "will enable long-term confidence in a smaller, safer, more secure nuclear weapons stockpile, without underground nuclear testing." The statement said the Nuclear Weapons Council, a body that included senior officials from the U.S. Department of Defense and NNSA, had concluded that deploying the RRW was "feasible as a strategy for sustaining the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile for the long-term." "The Reliable Replacement Warhead will provide means to ensure the long-term reliability of the stockpile and enable us to establish a safer and more secure nuclear deterrent," said NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks. "It will give us the tools we need to build on the president's vision of maintaining the smallest nuclear stockpile that is consistent with national security requirements." The NWC "made the decision after reviewing competing designs for a replacement nuclear warhead for the (U.S.) sea-based nuclear deterrent. They were submitted by the nation's two nuclear weapons design laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory," the NNSA statement said. The statement said that the NWC was headed by Kenneth Krieg, U.S. undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. The other members of the panel were Brooks, who is also undersecretary of energy for nuclear security; Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Ambassador Eric Edelman, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, and Gen. James Cartwright, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command. © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 [NukeNet] Scotland: THE BRITISH CONNECTION Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:19:25 -0800 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) http://www.sundayherald.com/news/specialreports/display.var.1054801.0.the_british_connection.php 6d46ae.jpg THE BRITISH CONNECTION A sushi restaurant in Piccadilly is as unlikely a place as any to start a murder trail. Doubtless the now boarded-up Itsu will one day become a stopping point on one of those themed London walks, part of a tour of Russian London. A trail already exists, a glowing radioactive one, criss-crossing London from Itsu, where Alexander Litvinenko dined with Mario Scaramella, to other locations the poisoned former KGB agent and his assassins probably visited. Itsu is where one month ago the lawless world of Putin's Russia collided with western democracy. Public assassinations over business or politics are common in Russia, but now appear to have seeped into the streets of London. Scaramella, who was yesterday declared "well" despite being contaminated with the same radioactive polonium-210 as Litvinenko, did not actually eat at the restaurant. The Italian terrorism expert had dined earlier, only sipping water as he passed Litvinenko a death list on which both their names appeared. Polonium-210 has left permanent fingerprints across London, a radiation trail that left a mark on everyone who came in close contact with it. Scaramella, already in protective police custody, was rushed to hospital on Friday after it was confirmed his body contained "significant amounts" of the deadly isotope, but a "considerably lower level" than Litvinenko's. Marina Litvinenko, the former spy's widow, was also contaminated with small amounts. The longer-term effects are unclear. From Piccadilly, the hospital and Litvinenko's Muswell Hill home the trail leads to several other London locations as well as to Moscow. Traces have been detected at 12 sites, including three British Airways planes which have flown between the UK and Russia. Anti-terrorist officers at Scotland Yard believe the polonium-210 was brought into London on a BA flight from Moscow a week before Litvinenko fell ill. Police are particularly interested in a flight from Moscow to London on October 25, carrying a number of football fans to a match at Arsenal's Emirates stadium. A section of the stadium has been checked and given the all-clear. Scientists at Aldermaston are reported to have identified the nuclear plant which manufactured the poison. This could prove embarrassing for the Russian government, which has denied any involvement and dismissed suggestions that it has lost any radioactive material. Yesterday the government's Cobra national security committee convened for the third time in a week. Twice, the home secretary has briefed the Commons. John Reid said Russian authorities at "the highest levels" had given assurances of cooperation. Traces of the radiation, so strong police believe them to be from the primary source, have been found in the Millennium Hotel in London, where he met Andrei Lugovoy, another former KGB spy, and another Russian contact, Dmitri Kovtun, on November 1, the day he fell ill. Lugovoy has since said people have been trying to frame him. Lugovoy was for two years the bodyguard of former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar, currently being treated in Moscow after falling ill in Ireland. During six years in Britain Litvinenko had made enemies, and not only former colleagues in Russian intelligence. He was a putative businessman who tried to muscle in on Russian deals in London. There is speculation that he fell out with his protector Boris Berezovsky. The inquest into Litvinenko's death was formally opened and adjourned on Thursday. But the radiation trail has not gone cold yet. 9:51pm Saturday 2nd December 2006 By Torcuil Crichton Back _______________________________________________________________________ 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 Attachment Converted: 6d46ae.jpg: 00000001,7f27a5c0,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 9 Guardian Unlimited: Why? And why now? Michael White: Political briefing Nuclear weapons Tuesday December 5, 2006 The Guardian The words "nuclear deterrent" occur more than any other in the defence white paper published yesterday, but at no point is the document clear about who or what a new generation of British nuclear weapons is intended to deter. A gamble against uncertainty, as the prime minister told MPs in his statement, the paper endorses a policy of inertia. It leaves Britain clinging to a security blanket which covered the country in the cold war but will be of untested effectiveness in the half-century ahead. The document is striking, not for the detail it offers about a decision which the government would like to be seen as both necessary and necessarily urgent, but for its failure to convince that it is either of those things. The prime minister almost accepted as much in his statement, going out of his way to say that "there are perfectly respectable arguments against the judgment we have made". But that sensible note, intended to limit dissent inside Labour, could not disguise the absolute nature of the decision endorsed by the cabinet yesterday. Nor does the government's nod towards political triangulation - renewing the Trident submarine fleet while aiming to cut both its size and the number of British warheads that could be deployed - make a difference. In the end, the decision is about whether Britain remains a nuclear power, and the impact that will have on national security and the country's role in world affairs. The choice is a subtle and difficult one, which is why it should be considered carefully and over time, without the pressure of false political imperatives. The question the government must answer in the debate it has promised before parliament votes next March is not just "why", but "why now?". Yesterday's white paper falls well short of an explanation. Neither the breathless impatience of the arms industry for multi-billion pound contracts that run for a generation nor the prime minister's theatrical desire to take a decision before he hands over to his successor justify the government's rush to secure Britain's place as a nuclear power for the next half-century. Both pressures are reasons for scepticism, not support. They should be tested by MPs before parliament gets its only and irreversible say in the matter. The manner in which this will happen is imperfect, not least because the outcome of the vote is a certainty given the Conservative party's eager backing for the prime minister's position. But the process is at least better than any government has allowed on past decisions about nuclear weapons. It offers a legitimate route for MPs to express dissent and raise questions, as many Labour MPs are likely to do. Rebel numbers are not certain and nor is the position of the Liberal Democrats, who may come to regret their leader's caution. Trident's critics have work to do, given the inadequate and unconvincing case made yesterday. The absences in the document only serve to fuel the suspicion that this was not the moment for the government to insist on a binding decision. The paper evades clarity on the number of submarines Britain will need to provide a constant patrol, on the missiles that will be used after 2040 (given the United States has not made its own decision) and about the costs, which will surely only escalate as they do on all military projects. Above all, the document is unclear about the strategic purpose both of nuclear weapons in general and a British nuclear system in particular. Intended as a gesture of seriousness to show Britain's intentions in the world, the weapons may or may not impress a future and unknown enemy. They are certainly not "critical" as the prime minister said yesterday. Even he admitted that they will not deter the greatest nuclear threat facing Britain, from terrorists. He could only suggest they might restrain some states from helping them. That too is uncertain. The government's decision is premature. Its white paper proves the need to think again. #comments { font-size:70%; [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 10 Guardian Unlimited: Blair to spell out nuclear future [UP] Press Association Monday December 4, 2006 6:58 AM Tony Blair is to set out plans to acquire a new generation of nuclear missile submarines to maintain Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent into the middle of the 21st century. The Cabinet will meet in special session to formally ratify what is expected to be one of the most controversial decisions of this Parliament before the Prime Minister makes the announcement in the Commons. The issue has deeply divided Labour MPs, with a CommunicateResearch poll for The Independent suggesting that as many as one in four opposes the retention of the nuclear deterrent. In a move to placate critics, it is reported that the White Paper, which sets out the detailed proposals, will leave open the option of cutting the submarine fleet from four to three and reducing the stockpile of nuclear warheads. Ministers have promised a Commons vote on the issue early next year, but there is deep anger among opponents who accuse the Government of trying to rush through a decision without a proper public debate. With the Conservatives expected to back the Government, the outcome of the vote is unlikely to be in doubt but the issue arouses strong feelings on both sides and has the potential to leave deep scars on the Labour psyche. Many in the party still recall when the bitter infighting over Labour's moves towards unilateral nuclear disarmament in the 1980s under Michael Foot helped to make the party unelectable. While Mr Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown, his expected successor, have put themselves at the head of the movement to retain the deterrent, former home secretary Charles Clarke and deputy leadership contender Jon Cruddas are among the prominent Labour figures who have spoken out against. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and left-wing Labour MPs will present an alternative White Paper at No 10 before Mr Blair delivers his Commons statement, while in Scotland protestors will stage a demonstration outside the Trident submarine base at Faslane on the River Clyde. Critics argue that with the Cold War over, the nuclear deterrent is no longer necessary and that the replacement of the Trident submarines breaches Britain's obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to work for nuclear disarmament. © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 11 Guardian Unlimited: A complete fantasy Comment Nuclear deterrence worked during the cold war, but replacing Trident is an expensive nonsense Roy Hattersley Monday December 4, 2006 The Guardian Strange that so many members of the cabinet who were passionate opponents of nuclear weapons when they were necessary to the country's security should support their retention with equal fervour now that they are irrelevant to Britain's defence. Thirty years ago - when, I will gladly gamble, Margaret Beckett and John Reid supported the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - the deterrent really deterred. Had there not been what was graphically called "the balance of terror", there would certainly have been war over Berlin, probably over Czechoslovakia and possibly over Hungary. The way the deterrent worked was always too subtle for CND to understand. Its members could not understand that the nuclear arsenal existed to prevent a war rather than to win one. Enthusiasts for the replacement of Trident make the same mistake. They seem to believe that we might actually need to use our nuclear capability against a new threat to which they often refer but never define. Article continues The deterrent kept the world at peace because, during the cold war, the west faced a sophisticated enemy. The Kremlin, like the White House, had no desire to bring the world to an end. Signals were sent across the iron curtain, defining how far the protagonists were prepared to allow their opponent to go. Both sides stuck, more or less, to the demarcation line. Playing the game required Nato to allow the Soviet Union to behave abominably within the boundaries of the Warsaw pact. That was the price that had to be paid to avoid nuclear annihilation. Even then it was easy to argue against what Harold Wilson called "the so-called independent, so-called British nuclear deterrent". America's firepower was enough to do the essential job. Soviet policy was unlikely to be changed by the knowledge that, after the US had blown several huge craters in and around Moscow, the United Kingdom would blow a small hole of its own. Going it alone was always inconceivable, and probably impossible. Providing bases for American forces was all that was required of a loyal ally. Supposing that we are under threat from "rogue states" as well as "international terrorists", does anyone really imagine that either of those enemies will be deterred in the way that the Soviet Union once was? If Bin Laden or al-Qaida are the enemy, on whom are we to threaten to unleash the holocaust? If it is Iran and North Korea that concerns us, is it remotely possible that those countries will react to the balance of terror as the Soviet Union did in the 1950s and 1960s? Our complaint against them is that they do not behave as rational states behave. Why should they respond rationally to a nuclear threat? The whole idea is clearly a fantasy. So why does the government propose to squander billions of pounds that could be used to fulfil the social purposes that ought to be Labour's overwhelming priority? A clue is provided by reference to the decision for Britain to become an atomic power back in 1947. Initially, Clement Attlee had hoped for close nuclear cooperation with the US, but President Truman reneged on the Quebec accords, which had guaranteed the pooling of information on both the peaceful and military use of atomic energy. Nato was still only an idea. American isolationism remained a prospect. The Soviet Union's aggressive intentions were clear. Britain, the prime minister decided, had to be able to defend itself. Looking back, he also revealed the other - and to him more compelling - reason for hanging the millstone round our necks. "For a power of our size and with our responsibilities to turn our back on the bomb did not make sense." In short, prestige and position required Britain to make its own nuclear device. It was necessary to make us a major "power". No doubt the present government feels the same. Admittedly, giving up the so-called deterrent is much more difficult than not acquiring it in the first place. And there is Tony Blair's reputation as the hammer of Labour's left to be protected. But to posture about the importance of nuclear independence is to fight the battles of the past. A truly modernising government would accept the world as it is today. The error continues. New Labour is neither as new or as Labour as it ought to be. comment@guardian.co.uk [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 12 Guardian Unlimited: Q: Trident Matthew Tempest, political correspondent Monday December 4, 2006 Guardian Unlimited [A Trident missile] A Trident missile. Photograph: AP. What is Trident? Trident is the name for the UK's nuclear missile system. The deterrent is entirely sea-based and in fact comprises three elements: the submarines, the missiles, and the nuclear warheads. Trident was the replacement for the similarly naval-based Polaris missile system and was commissioned by Margaret Thatcher in 1980. The UK has four submarines, housed at the high-security Faslane naval base on the Clyde in Scotland, and 200 operational warheads. Why does it need replacing? There are two debates here: whether the life of the existing system can be extended, and whether the nuclear deterrent should be scrapped entirely. The Ministry of Defence says that the four Vanguard-class submarines have an operations life of 25 years. The first went into service in 1994, meaning the fleet will start deteriorating from 2019. The warheads themselves will last well into the 2020s, according to the MoD, under money already put aside for maintenance. The delivery system comprises US missiles called D5s and also lasts 25 years. The UK has 58 D5s and could decide to join a modernisation programme which would see the missiles last until the 2040s. The Commons defence select committee has said that all the systems could last long enough to delay making a decision on replacement until 2010. The Lib Dems say a decision would not be absolutely necessary until 2014. Many Labour MPs would prefer a decision postponed at least until a new leader takes over, although Gordon Brown has already indicated he backs replacing Trident. Is it outmoded? The more wide-ranging argument against replacing Trident is that it exists to face down a conventional Cold War enemy that no longer exists. Trident and its predecessor Polaris were conceived as strategic weapons against the Communist bloc and the nuclear super-power of the Soviet empire. Under the Cold War doctrine of "mutually assured destruction" any nuclear attack on the west would be countered with an immediate nuclear response. Since the collapse of communism with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, such a conventional enemy appears remote, critics argue. Huge, expensive nuclear weapons systems - with the tacit understanding they would only be used in response - seem outmoded when faced with the "war on terror", or "long war" against Islamist terrorists, rogue regimes or failed states. Pro-Trident supporters point to the nuclear-armed dictatorship state of North Korea, and Iran's nuclear ambitions. But opponents also claim that renewing Britain's nuclear deterrent is also in contradiction to the UK's commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). What does the NPT say? Article VI of the treaty says that all parties must "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control". Opponents of Trident, such as CND and the Green party, say that replacing Trident breaches that treaty. Other say that the treaty only commits signatories to negotiate on effective measures to reduce nuclear weapons, not total disarmament. What happens next? Today sees the publication of the government's white paper outlining a variety of options on Trident. Although it did not have to, the government has pledged a vote of MPs on the issue, probably early next year. However, critics complain that the public is being bounced into committing to renewing Trident, with both the prime minister and the chancellor already signalling their support for the decision. With only a relatively small number of Labour backbenchers opposed, and the Tories united in championing a replacement, a Trident replacement vote will only be opposed by the Liberal Democrats and smaller nationalist parties, meaning the result is almost a foregone conclusion. CND, and other campaign groups such as Block the Builders, also claim that massive expansion work is already underway at the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment for the "Orion" laser system, which could test new nuclear warheads by computer simulation, suggest a decision has already been taken on replacing Trident. Email your comments for publication to: politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 13 Guardian Unlimited: Replace or not? Experts speak on eve of Trident paper As nuclear deterrent plans are unveiled today, specialists and politicians discuss path UK should take Monday December 4, 2006 Michael Clarke, professor of defence studies at King's College London "We should give a lot of consideration over the next two years to a careful analysis of the strategic environment, to make a proper case for maintaining the weapon rather than deploying the simple cliche of an uncertain future, which could be applied to any area of public policy. One option is to be 'virtually nuclear' like Japan, which could go nuclear inside six months." Sir Michael Quinlan, former top official at the Ministry of Defence, who earned the nickname of "high priest" of nuclear deterrence "I am in favour but not at any price. [We should consider] the option of cutting back a bit, with fewer boats and [a smaller] stockpile of weapons ... We should stop and think at each stage." Lee Willett, head, maritime studies programme, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies "Britain is a nuclear power with a desire to retain its current position on the world stage. With this core principle in mind, Britain needs to retain its independent strategic deterrent for four reasons. With nine nuclear powers in the world and with other states looking to join the nuclear club in a world where the risk of major state-on-state war has not reduced, the UK's strategic nuclear deterrent arguably reduces the risk of nuclear war. Second, while Britain's strategic nuclear deterrent has never been designed to deter terrorist threats, it can be used as a lever to deter rogue states who may consider sponsoring terrorist acts, particularly by supplying nuclear and other weapon of mass destruction materials. Third, being a nuclear power - with nuclear bargaining chips on the table - gives Britain credibility in leading or contributing to multinational disarmament. Finally, Britain's strategic nuclear deterrent gives Britain the ability to insure itself against the risks of an uncertain future, but one where nuclear knowhow is increasing. It is the 'just in case' for what we just don't know." Ian Davis, specialist in international nuclear security at the thinktank the British American Security Information Council "This will be a premature decision that locks Britain into an expensive and inappropriate nuclear weapon system that drives further proliferation and bequeaths a dreadful legacy to the next generation. The decision can be delayed for at least a decade to allow time for a proper public and parliamentary debate of all the options, and for the government to initiate a new multilateral disarmament initiative in advance of the 2010 non-proliferation treaty review conference. The option of adopting a virtual nuclear deterrence (ending the deployment of nuclear warheads but retaining the expertise at Aldermaston to reconstitute a rudimentary nuclear weapon quickly) would be the cheapest and least sophisticated insurance policy." Lord Hattersley, former deputy Labour leader, on GMTV "I'm certainly against the renewal of Trident. Given that I ever had a reputation in the Labour party, the reputation [was] of being on the rightwing. The great mistake of the 60s and 70s was unilateral nuclear disarmament, which was wrong. What we wanted [was] a deterrent because there was a threat that the deterrent could act against. To have a deterrent now is just a status symbol." Lord Moonie, defence minister 2000-03, responsible during that time for the maintenance of nuclear deterrence "I think we ought to be replacing it. I am not certain a straightforward replacement is best value for money unless we buy the submarines from the [United] States. We are probably buying the missiles from the States anyway. It is not premature, because the lead time is so long. What you are looking at is lengthening the life of the present submarines. The use of the word debate is an excuse of the antis to say we are taking a decision they disagree with. I have yet to hear one side or the other listen to the other." John McDonnell MP, Campaign group candidate for the Labour leadership "There is no policy imperative for a decision on Trident to be taken now. Blair and Brown are bouncing the cabinet without any meaningful debate or wider consultation within the movement and trying to lock the party into a nuclear-armed future. This announcement is all about securing the prime minister's legacy agenda ... There is overwhelming opposition within the Labour movement to the replacement of Trident ... if such a key decision is forced through on the whim of the prime minister and on the back of Tory votes it could split the party for a generation." Jon Cruddas MP, candidate for Labour deputy leader "I'm not convinced about the need for a renewed nuclear capability. I want to see the process, I want to see actually a debate across the party about it because I think this is so critical and such a profound issue that the party has to be involved." Sir Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat leader "There is a measurable danger that if North Korea and Iran are confirmed over the next decade as nuclear states, they will set in train a course of nuclear proliferation which will materially alter the strategic situation. It would be unwise at this time for Britain to abandon its nuclear weapons altogether. But a deterrent of approximately half the current size, and extending the life of the current submarine system, would be sufficient to provide for Britain's ultimate security until we have more certainty about proliferation." Lord Garden, Lib Dem defence spokesman in the Lords, former cold war bomber pilot and assistant chief of defence staff "I am surprised about the apparent urgency the government attaches to this decision. I would regret it if such a key national decision was being forced on us because of industrial pressure from BAE [manufacturer of Trident submarines]." · Interviews by Richard Norton-Taylor, Ewen MacAskill and Michael White Guardian Newspapers Limited ***************************************************************** 14 Guardian Unlimited: Countering nuclear threats and anti-nuclear arguments Richard Norton-Taylor and Ewen MacAskill Tuesday December 5, 2006 The Guardian [HMS Vengeance returns to Faslane submarine base on the river Clyde] HMS Vengeance returns to Faslane submarine base on the river Clyde. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images In his foreword to the white paper on the future of Britain's nuclear deterrent, Tony Blair refers to "regional powers developing nuclear weapons for the first time which present a threat to us ... We are already trying to counter the threat posed by a nuclear North Korea and by the nuclear ambitions of Iran." He adds: "And we need to factor in the requirement to deter countries which might in the future seek to sponsor nuclear terrorism from their soil." In its 40-page white paper published yesterday the government makes a point of addressing the arguments of those opposed to renewing the Trident deterrent in a special section devoted to what it calls "Responses to counter arguments". It lists the past cuts in the number of Britain's nuclear weapons and says the government stands by its "unequivocal undertaking to accomplish [their] total elimination". Key themes in the paper include the government's view of why a deterrent remains relevant after the cold war, why a decision in principle has to be taken now, and what decisions will be taken in future. Maintaining the deterrent HMS Vanguard, the first of Britain's four Trident submarines, will be "going out of service around 2022, and the second around 2024", it says. "Continuous deterrent patrols could no longer be assured from around this latter point if no replacement were in place by then ... A reasonable estimate is that it might take around 17 years from the initiation of detailed concept work to achieve the first operational patrol." The white paper emphasises: "There will be no enhancement of the capability of the missile in terms of its payload, range or accuracy." The white paper, as the Guardian revealed yesterday, says the government has decided to reduce the the number of "operationally available warheads" from fewer than 200 to fewer than 160, with a corresponding 20% cut in size of the overall stockpile. Britain's retention of a deterrent is "fully consistent with our international legal obligations", it says. Article 6 of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty does not "prohibit maintenance or updating of existing capabilities". The paper continues: "We would only consider using nuclear weapons in self-defence (including the defence of our Nato allies) and even then only in extreme circumstances." It lists a number of "enduring principles [that] underpin the UK's approach to nuclear deterrence". The UK's weapons "are not designed for military use during conflict but instead to deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression". The government "deliberately maintain ambiguity about precisely when, how, and at what scale we would contemplate use of our nuclear deterrent. We will not simplify the calculations of a potential aggressor by defining more precisely the circumstances in which we might consider the use of our nuclear capabilities." New threats In a section headed "Insuring against an uncertain future" the white paper says there are "limits to the extent to which intelligence can inform us about medium or long-term changes in the nuclear capabilities of others..." It adds: "The number of states with nuclear capabilities has continued to grow." In a point driven home yesterday by Mr Blair in the Commons, the white paper says: "While our nuclear deterrent is not designed to deter non-state actors, it should influence the decision-making of any state that might consider transferring nuclear weapons or nuclear technology to terrorists. We make no distinction between the means by which a state might choose to deliver a nuclear warhead whether, for example, by missile or sponsored terrorists." In its "Response to counter arguments", the paper says it would be "highly imprudent to mortgage our long-term national security" against the assumption that if Britain gave up its deterrent, others would be encouraged to follow suit. It says the money spent on renewing Trident would not be "at the expense of the conventional capabilities of our armed forces". It also rejects the suggestion - put forward by many independent commentators - that Britain could have a "dormant" nuclear capability. That, says the white paper, would mean that in the event of a crisis Britain would become an active nuclear weapons state in a move which could be seen as escalatory and thus potentially destabilising. Nuclear weapons capability The document says the deterrent has to be able to function even if there is a pre-emptive strike, and that the preference of the UK government is for an invulnerable and undetectable system. It also insists that it be independent: "The UK's current nuclear deterrent is fully operationally independent of the US." On the scale of destruction the UK system could deliver, the government says: "We need to make a judgment on the minimum destructive capability necessary to provide an effective deterrent posture." The conclusion is that the present ability to deploy up to 48 warheads on a submarine on patrol is sufficient. But the number of missiles and warheads could be varied - and their yield reduced - to "make our nuclear forces a more credible deterrent against smaller nuclear threats". Submarines and costs The intention is to begin detailed work on the concept of a new submarine shortly and that a contract for the detailed design could be placed by around 2012 to 2014. Although the document is vague enough to allow for the possibility that instead of building a new submarine from scratch, the new conventional Astute submarine could be modified. But officials say this is unlikely because the costs of modification would not be significantly lower than building a completely new submarine. Crucially, the government signals that the British nuclear submarine fleet will be cut from four to three, which would save £1-2bn. "We will investigate fully whether there is scope to make sufficiently radical changes to the design of the new SSBNS (Trident submarines), and their operating, manning, training and support arrangements, to enable us to maintain continuous deterrent patrols - with a fleet of only three. A final decision on the number of submarines that will be procured will be made when we know more about their detailed design." On overall costs, the document says: "Our initial estimate is that the procurement costs will be in the range of £15-20bn (at 2006/07 prices) for a four-boat solution, some £11-14bn for the submarines; £2-3bn for the possible future refurbishment or replacement of the warhead; and £2-3bn for infrastructure over the life of the submarines." It adds: "These costs will fall principally in the period 2012 to 2027. The comparable costs for the Trident system was some £14.5bn at today's prices." Despite claims that it would be cheaper to buy submarines from the US, the paper promises that the government's intention is to build the new submarines in the UK. At least two big decisions are postponed, in addition to whether the fleet should be four or three submarines. The first is on warheads. The existing system will likely last into the 2020s. A decision on whether it needs to be refurbished or replaced is likely to be necessary in the next parliament. The second issue, the subject of UK discussions with the US, is on developing a successor to the D5 missile. Guardian Newspapers Limited ***************************************************************** 15 BBC: UK nuclear weapons plan unveiled Last Updated: Monday, 4 December 2006 [HMS Vanguard] Trident will reach the en of its scheduled life in 2024 Trident statement Tony Blair has told MPs it would be "unwise and dangerous" for the UK to give up its nuclear weapons. The prime minister outlined plans to spend up to £20bn on a new generation of submarines for Trident missiles. He said submarine numbers may be cut from four to three, while the number of nuclear warheads would be cut by 20%. Mr Blair said although the Cold War had ended the UK needed nuclear weapons as no-one could be sure another nuclear threat would not emerge in the future. Submarine system The options of changing to a land-based, or air-based nuclear weapons system had been considered and ruled out. Instead the system would remain one based on a fleet of submarines which carry the Trident missiles, each of which can be fitted with a number of nuclear warheads. I am sure many Labour MPs wi be extremely angry because it is clear the prime minister has set out a pre-determined timetable Kate Hudson CND Send us your comments Reaction to the plans Mr Blair said between £15bn and £20bn would be spent on new submarines to carry the Trident missiles. The submarines would take 17 years to develop and build, and would last until about 2050. He said the UK would also join the US programme to extend the life of the Trident missiles until 2042 - and would then "work with" the US on successor missiles. A decision on the nuclear warheads themselves "is not needed now", Mr Blair said, although the white paper said a decision would be needed in the next Parliament. 'Nuclear terrorism' Mr Blair, who faces some opposition within the Labour Party to the plans, said there were "perfectly respectable" arguments about giving up nuclear weapons. But he said he had to make a judgement about the country's security and the consequences of misjudgement would be "potentially catastrophic". He denied that Britain was under an obligation to disarm under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and pointed out that new threats were posed by states like North Korea. TRIDENT MISSILE SYSTEM Missile length: 44f (13m) Weight: 130,000lb (58,500kg) Diameter: 74 inches (1.9m) Range: More than 4,600 miles (7,400km) Power plant: Three stage solid propellant rocket Cost: £16.8m ($29.1m) per missile Source: Federation of American Scientists How Trident works "In these circumstances it would be unwise and dangerous for Britain, alone of any of the nuclear powers, to give up its independent nuclear deterrent." He also said "it is not utterly fanciful" to "imagine states sponsoring nuclear terrorism from their soil". MPs will vote on the plans in March after a period of debate, he said. Conservative leader David Cameron said his party agreed with Mr Blair's position "on substance and on timing". "It is a vital matter for our national security but it requires a long-term approach. I hope we can work together on this issue for the good of the country," he told Mr Blair. But Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said proper consideration of all relevant factors could only be made if the decision was postponed until 2014. Security or legacy? He added: "Why is this decision being pushed through his own Cabinet, and through Parliament, just as the prime minister is about to leave Downing Street? Is this about Britain's interests or about his legacy?" Sir Menzies wants the number of UK warheads halved to 100 - a move he said could help kickstart multilateral disarmament. [BBC political editor Nick Robinson] src=] It's hard to see what the point of the Cabinet's discussion was... BBC political editor Nick Robinson Read Nick's thoughts in full Among Labour MPs who oppose replacing Trident former minister Michael Meacher asked: "How can this proposal really be justified in an utterly different post-Cold War environment?" He argued that the move would restrict conventional defence spending, undermine the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and would take money away from the fights against terrorism, climate change and "long term energy insecurity". A group of 28 Labour MPs, headed by Gordon Prentice, have written to the general secretary of the Labour Party asking for "wider and deeper consultation" among party members and affiliated organisations. And Kate Hudson, from the anti-nuclear pressure group, CND, said she was "very very disappointed" with Mr Blair's announcement. "He talked vaguely about reducing the number of submarines and warheads but it is not clear what that would mean," she said. "I am sure many Labour MPs will be extremely angry because it is clear the prime minister has set out a pre-determined timetable." ***************************************************************** 16 Guardian Unlimited: Blair Unveils Plan for Nuclear Missiles From the Associated Press [UP] Monday December 4, 2006 9:16 PM AP Photo LON822 By DAVID STRINGER Associated Press Writer LONDON (AP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair launched plans Monday for a new multibillion-dollar submarine-based nuclear missile defense system, warning lawmakers the future may hold perilous threats from rogue regimes and state-sponsored terrorists. In what is expected to be among his last major acts as premier, Blair told the House of Commons that despite the end of the Cold War, potential threats were posed by North Korea, Iran and others. ``In these circumstances, it would be unwise and dangerous for Britain alone of any of the nuclear powers to give up its independent nuclear deterrent,'' he said. Blair said Britain would cut back on its stock of nuclear warheads from 200 to 160 - a move intended to make the proposal more acceptable to detractors within his own party. But he said any decision to reduce the nuclear-armed submarine fleet from four to three would be made only after a new vessel is designed. Blair said advisers had ruled out land or air based alternatives as too costly and too vulnerable. The existing submarine fleet will be phased out from 2022, defense officials said. Blair also said a decision on whether Britain will build a new arsenal of warheads to replace current stocks - expected to last only until the 2020s - would not be made before 2009. That means Blair - due to stand down in 2007 - avoided the most contentious aspect of committing to a future nuclear defense program. Debates over a new warhead program are expected to stir up fierce divisions in his Labour party, once committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament Britain's conservative opposition leader, David Cameron, endorsed the new deterrent, though he urged options be kept open for fourth submarine. The replacement fleet would cost around $40 billion. Blair said Britain would join in a U.S. program to extend the Trident D5 missile, currently used by both countries, until the early 2040s. President Bush has assured Blair that Britain would also be included in designing a successor missile, defense officials said. Blair told legislators they would be asked to decide on the number of new submarines and a new missile design in the next Parliament, following national elections expected in 2009. Kate Hudson, chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said Iran and North Korea would see Blair's decision as a vindication of their own aspirations. Opponents of a replacement system - including nuclear disarmament campaigners - claim the new fleet is likely to cost as much as $150.6 billion. Lawmakers will be asked to vote on the proposal by March and senior officials said the plan was expected to win overwhelming support. Britain's first Trident submarine, the HMS Vanguard, went on a maiden patrol in December 1994. Britain's third party Liberal Democrats have argued that a decision could be put off until as late as 2014. The government claims a decision is urgent because it will take up to 14 years to design, commission and build the submarines. Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats, questioned the timing of the decision. ``Is this about Britain's interest or your legacy?'' he asked Blair in the Commons. A survey of members of the House of Commons indicated that Blair faces strong resistance within his party. Among 80 Labour lawmakers who completed a questionnaire, 39 percent were opposed to a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines, CommunicateResearch reported for The Independent newspaper. In contrast, 94 percent of 52 Conservatives supported a new generation. Beyond five formally declared nuclear weapons states - the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain - four others are known or thought to have such arms. They are India, Pakistan, Israel and, following its October missile test, North Korea. Of the nuclear powers, only the United States and Russia have submarine, air and land-based capability. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 17 Independent: Britain needs Trident as it cannot rely on US, says Blair By Andrew Grice and Colin Brown Published: 05 December 2006 Tony Blair has argued that Britain needs to buy a new generation of nuclear weapons because it might not be able to rely on the United States to protect it if it were attacked. The Prime Minister, who flies to Washington tomorrow to discuss an exit strategy from Iraq with George Bush, surprised MPs by suggesting Britain could not take America's support for granted as he announced the Government was backing a submarine-based "son of Trident" system. "Our co-operation with America is very close. But close as it is, the independent nature of the British deterrent is an additional insurance against circumstances where we are threatened but America is not," said Mr Blair. "These circumstances are also highly unlikely but I am unwilling to say they are non-existent." Critics claim the British deterrent is not independent because Trident's D5 missiles are made in America. While new submarines will almost certainly be built in Britain, the UK and America will work jointly on a new missile. Mr Blair insisted the submarines, missiles, warheads and command chain would be entirely under British control. The Prime Minister said it would be "unwise and dangerous" in an uncertain world for Britain to surrender its "ultimate insurance". He said there was a new and potentially hazardous threat from countries such as North Korea and Iran which were developing nuclear weapons and that rogue states would sponsor nuclear terrorism. Although the British deterrent would not deter terrorists, he admitted, it might have an impact on governments connected to them. "In the final analysis, the risk of giving up something that has been one of the mainstays of our security since the war, and moreover doing so when the one certain thing about our world today is its uncertainty, is not a risk I feel we can responsibly take," he said. Mr Blair denied that replacing Trident would breach the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and sought to head off a Labour backbench rebellion by saying that Britain's stockpile of warheads could be cut from 200 to 160 and the number of submarines reduced from four to three. He put the cost of the new system at between £15bn and £20bn. But there would also be running costs of more than £1.5bn a year, raising the total cost to more than £65bn over 30 years. Labour MPs opposed to a new Trident claimed the Cabinet had been " bounced" into supporting it after ministers rubber-stamped yesterday's White Paper only three hours before it was published. Downing Street insisted there were no dissenting voices and that ministers' views had been taken into account. Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, said: "I thought it through very carefully and with deep reluctance came to the conclusion that probably it is an even more unsafe world than it was and not therefore a world in which it is sensible for us now to abandon our nuclear deterrent." In the Commons, some Labour MPs expressed alarm. But Mr Blair was assured of victory when MPs vote on the White Paper in March when David Cameron assured him of the support of the Tory Opposition. He questioned whether the plan to cut the number of warheads might go too far. Michael Meacher, the former Labour minister, asked: "How can this proposal be justified in a post-Cold War environment?" He warned it would "severely restrict" expenditure on conventional defence and issues such as terrorism, climate change and long-term energy and security. Michael Ancram, the former shadow foreign secretary, asked Mr Blair: " Are we seriously to believe that we would ever use this most potent nuclear weapon against rogue states or terrorist organisations? Why don't you explore more credible non-nuclear alternatives." Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, argued that there was no need to rush a decision which could be delayed until 2014. He asked Mr Blair: "Is this about Britain's interest or your legacy?" The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament said the billions earmarked for a Trident replacement should be spent on vital public services. Kate Hudson, CND's chairman, said she was "very, very disappointed" with Mr Blair and accused him of not listening to the public. "He talked vaguely about reducing the number of submarines and warheads but it is not clear what that would mean," she said. © 2006 Independent News and Media Limited ***************************************************************** 18 AFP: Blair to announce retention of Britain's nuclear deterrent - by Phil Hazlewood Mon Dec 4, 5:46 AM ET LONDON (AFP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair" /> Tony Blairis to set out plans to replace the country's nuclear deterrent, but reports said he would announce a cut in warhead numbers to appease opponents. Senior ministers were to meet in a special session of cabinet to formally ratify what is expected to be one of the most controversial decisions of the current session of parliament. Britain's US-built Trident weapons system is a deeply divisive issue within Blair's governing Labour Party, as unilateral nuclear disarmament was once a key plank of its policy at the height of the Cold War during the 1980s. A CommunicateResearch poll for The Independent newspaper Monday found 50 percent of Labour lawmakers wanted to retain Trident against 39 percent who did not. There was overwhelming support for keeping the deterrent among opposition Conservatives (94 percent), while a slight majority of other parties (58 percent) were against. Blair, who was to announce the decision to the lower House of Commons at 3:30 pm (1530 GMT), has signalled that lawmakers will have a vote on the subject in the new year. But he faces a fight from left-wing Labour traditionalists, reported concern among several senior ministers and prominent party figures, and others who believe he is trying to rush through a decision without a proper public debate. Concern has also been expressed about the cost of replacing the system, with observers saying that it could cost anything from 25 billion pounds (37 billion euros, 49 billion dollars) upwards. The result, however, is unlikely to be in doubt: the government has indicated the vote will be "whipped" -- where lawmakers are told to toe the government's line rather than follow their conscience in a free vote. But Blair could make concessions: The Sun tabloid said Monday that the number of Royal Navy Vanguard class submarines which carry the missiles will be reduced from the current four to three. That would lead to a reduction in the number of stockpiled warheads from about 200 to 150. The government argues that a decision is needed now because the submarines begin to come to the end of their lives in 2019 and replacements take 14 years to design and build. The missiles also need updating in the 2020s. But the leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, Menzies Campbell, told BBC radio Monday that any decision should be postponed until 2014. "At that time we will have a better idea of the strategic environment and the threats we will face in the future," he said. The vice-president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which has planned protests ahead of Blair's announcement, rejected the government's argument that retaining Trident was prudent in an uncertain world. Unlike the Cold War, threats were now not from nation states with nuclear weapons but from terrorism and climate change, said Bruce Kent. "Trident seems to me to be a completely obsolete answer to a threat from yesterday," he told BBC radio. Retaining a nuclear deterrent would also increase proliferation and "give the green light" to states such as North Korea" /> North Koreaand Iran" /> Iranto obtain weapons, he added. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 19 AFP: Blair unveils plans to keep nuclear deterrent, cut warheads - Mon Dec 4, 11:08 AM ET LONDON (AFP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair" /> Tony Blairhas announced plans for Britain to retain its nuclear deterrent but promised to cut the number of nuclear warheads by 20 percent. Outlining the government's proposals to parliament, Blair said it would be "unwise and dangerous" for Britain to unilaterally give up the US-built Trident missile system in an uncertain world. Blair proposed building new submarines by the 2020s to deter nuclear threats, including from state-sponsored terrorists. "The government's judgment is that, though the Cold War is over, we cannot be certain in the decades ahead that a major nuclear threat... will not emerge," he told lawmakers in the lower House of Commons in a statement on Monday. "In these circumstances it would be unwise and dangerous for Britain alone of any of the nuclear powers to give up its nuclear deterrent." But he promised to cut the number of stockpiled warheads from under 200 to fewer than 160 as well as study whether it could offer a deterrent with just three new nuclear-powered submarines instead of the current four. The new proposals would protect Britain into the 2040s, when Trident would have to be replaced, the government said in a policy paper, which will be debated in parliament early next year. The government said a renewed deterrent force was needed amid a lack of certainty over whether the number of nuclear weapons states would continue to grow or whether rogue states would try to sponsor attacks by terrorists. Blair said the overall cost of developing the new system would be spread over three decades and come to between 15 billion pounds and 20 billion pounds (22.2 billion-29.7 billion euros, 29.6 billion-39.5 billion dollars). Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 20 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Russia stresses on further IRI ties 2006/12/04 A Russian official on Monday stressed the importance of bolstering ties with Iran and other Islamic states in the hope of finding solutions to the problems of the region. Russian President Vladimir Putin's representative for Islamic states' affairs and commissioner for relations with the Islamic world, Venyamin Popov, made the remarks during a meeting with an Iranian member of the Russia-Islamic World Strategic Vision Gro up, Mehdi Sanaei. Popov said he believes Russia's cooperation with Islamic states would help settle the problems in Iraq, Palestine and the Middle East region. He expressed Moscow's willingness to cooperate with bodies affiliated to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), including the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the OIC Scientific, Cultural and Art Organization, and called on Iran to cooperat e with Russia with regard to activities of the OIC secretariat in Tehran. Sanaei, for his part, expressed Iran's support for Russia's increasing role in issues affecting the region and the Islamic world and called for a more active role for Moscow in this regard. mk Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir ***************************************************************** 21 Guardian Unlimited: Blair opts to cut 20% of warheads Trident concessions in white paper unlikely to appease nuclear critics Richard Norton-Taylor and Michael White Monday December 4, 2006 [A Trident missile] The test-firing of a Trident missile. Photograph: AP Tony Blair will promise today to cut by a fifth the operational nuclear warheads on Britain's Trident submarines, from 200 to 160, the Guardian understands. The cut is part of the prime minister's campaign to persuade MPs that the government must start work almost immediately on plans detailed in a white paper to build a replacement fleet. He will personally announce the cabinet's decision in the Commons this afternoon, and is also likely to say that the number of new Trident submarines could be reduced from four to three without reducing the UK deterrent's effectiveness. The white paper will also say the new Trident system will cost less than £25bn. But it will say this figure represents 5% of the annual defence budget, and about 0.1% of GDP, Whitehall sources said yesterday. Ministers have rejected claims Britain no longer needs nuclear weapons to deter a potential enemy and have embraced the "insurance policy" argument that it is impossible to predict the shape of threats in 20 years. The promised reduction in Trident, whose warheads will have been halved from 300 since 1997 when Labour came to power, is unlikely to appease critics of nuclear weapons or MPs in all parties who challenge Downing Street's view that Trident must not only be renewed, but that a decision is urgent. With a public debate and then a Commons vote in February set to follow the white paper, ministers hope they will win the vote comfortably. But they accept they will need Conservative support to push it through. Up to 40 Labour MPs oppose nuclear weapons, but the key group Mr Blair seeks to persuade are those, including the Liberal Democrats, who think there is no need to take an early decision. The Tories remain pro-deterrent, but their defence spokesman, Dr Liam Fox, said yesterday they would only "replace it [Trident] when necessary". One Labour minister seemed confident the government would prevail: "There will be some trouble in the parliamentary party. My activists will not want it, but they will not object to it." The white paper will also reject arguments urging a delay on a decision to commission new submarines by at least five years, as the Lib Dem leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, and many independent analysts have proposed. Given the long lead times before operational availability - 14 years between the Trident decision and the day it replaced Polaris - it would be too risky. Delay would also not be cost effective, mainly because the nuclear reactors that propel the present boats need replacing soon. The white paper will say that a sea-based system is the only "credible" nuclear deterrent, rejecting arguments for land-based cruise missiles. The government has also rejected the argument that a Trident submarine need not be continuously at sea. Instead it will suggest that advances in technology may allow Britain to manage on three rather than four submarines, which would save up to £2bn, one minister said last night. Anti-nuclear campaigners will step up their protest today. CND and a number of MPs will hand an alternative white paper to No 10 and express concern over the short amount of time being given to discuss the issue. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is also expected today to signal his opposition to replacing the nuclear deterrent. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 22 Guardian Unlimited: Blair: we must renew Trident Matthew Tempest and agencies Monday December 4, 2006 Guardian Unlimited [A Trident missile] A Trident missile. Photograph: AP. Tony Blair today recommended that Britain renew its Trident nuclear deterrent into at least the middle of the century, calling it "the ultimate insurance". But the prime minister told MPs it would be possible to cut Britain's stockpile by 20%, leaving fewer than 160 operationally available warheads. However, he did not announce a reduction in the number of Trident-carrying submarines based at the Faslane base in Scotland from four to three, instead saying a decision would wait until more detailed designs of submarines was available. Mr Blair said it would be "unwise and dangerous" for Britain to unilaterally give up its nuclear deterrent. He added that, contrary to some predictions of a £25bn price tag, the overall cost spread over three decades would come to between £15bn and £20bn. Mr Blair ruled out land-based and air-based replacement systems for the Trident submarine-based system, saying that either would be easier targets for an enemy and would present a host of other problems. Mr Blair agreed with critics that it was highly unlikely a state would threaten the UK with nuclear weapons, but warned: "That isn't a fact; it's a prediction." Mr Blair warned of North Korea's supposed existing nuclear warheads and Iran's alleged attempts to build them, and warned of future "rogue governments" potentially "aiding" terrorists. "It's improbable but no-one can say it's impossible," Mr Blair said of future nuclear threats to the UK. The prime minister - despite criticisms from anti-nuclear campaigners - insisted that renewing Trident would still be "fully consistent with international commitments", saying that the UK had the lowest stockpile of warheads of any declared nuclear states. The importance of the issue was implicit in the fact that Mr Blair made the ministerial statement to MPs himself, rather than leaving it to the defence secretary, Des Browne. Today's white paperof options precedes a formal vote on the issue in March next year. A special meeting of the cabinet agreed the white paper this morning. So far 53 Labour MPs have signed an early day motion to scrap Trident, although with Tory backing for the scheme there is little prospect of a Commons defeat. No ministers opposed the plan at this morning's special meeting of the cabinet, when the final decision was taken to move forward with the white paper proposals, Mr Blair's official spokesman said. "It was decided to move forward on the basis of consensus, but it's fair to say there wasn't a dissenting voice," said the spokesman. The Tory leader, David Cameron, said he entirely agreed with the "substance and process" of the prime minister's statement. The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, was loudly jeered by Tory MPs and some Labour members for suggesting a delay on taking a decision until 2014. The Speaker had to intervene to scold Tory MPs. But Sir Menzies asked why the decision was being "pushed through" just before Mr Blair left office, saying it had more to do with the prime minister's legacy than Britain's national interest. Mr Blair said the Lib Dem position of reducing the warheads to 100 had no merit to it beyond being "a round number". The SNP and Plaid Cymru are opposed to renewal, but the Lib Dems are only officially committed for calling for a delay in making the decision, saying the lifespans of the existing submarines can be extended. Opposition to the scheme is expected to come later this afternoon from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. Lambeth Palace confirmed they would be issuing a response to Mr Blair's statement. Earlier, the Anglican Bishop of Bath and Wells, Peter Price, said that there was a moral case against the renewal of the Trident system. "Can we, with the kind of faith that we hold, believe that it is right to possess weapons of mass destruction of this nature? I personally take the view that it is not," he told BBC Radio 4's World at One. "I think if we were to invest the kind of resources (spent on nuclear weapons) on remaking the world, we could perhaps remove some of the threat and fear that causes nations to have to create weapons systems to defend them in the way that Trident allegedly does." He added: "I personally have lobbied and campaigned for Trident not to continue. That's been a long-held conviction... borne out of my profound belief that the gift of creation to us by God - which is held deeply within both Jewish and Christian tradition, and indeed widely within the Muslim tradition - means that we cannot plan the destruction of God's creation." Former environment minister Michael Meacher told the BBC that parliament was being "bounced" into a decision. He said: "What's really worrying about this is the fact that the country and parliament are being bounced and that we don't have to take this decision at breakneck speed. "The Vanguard submarines are going to be operational until about 2026, the missiles probably don't have to be changed until 2042. There's absolutely no reason why we can't take this decision next year or in five years' time. "It will severely restrict much more needed conventional defence expenditure, it will undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty worldwide and drain off a colossal sum of money from where it is most needed: dealing with the real threats we face from terrorism, climate change and long-term energy security." One Labour rebel, Linda Riordan, called for a free vote of MPs on all options and a longer timetable for discussing Trident. A number of Labour MPs joined CND officials handed an alternative white paperto 10 Downing Street, just hours before the PM spoke in the Commons. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 23 The Hindu: Kalam favours use of thorium for producing power Monday, December 4, 2006 : 1935 Hrs New Delhi, Dec. 4 (PTI): Charting out the vision for energy independence by 2030 and beyond, President A P J Abdul Kalam today said India should pursue nuclear power generation using thorium, which is abundantly available in the country. Inaugurating an international conference on 'India R 2006: Mind to Market' here, he said India would need to hike its nuclear power production capacity to 50,000 MW by 2030. "Nuclear power generation has been given a thrust by the use of uranium-based fuel. However, to meet the increased needs of nuclear power generation, it is esential to pursue the development of nuclear power using thorium, reserves of which are higher in the country," Kalam said. The President said technology development for thorium-based power plants was being accelarated. On the present nuclear power capacity scenario, he noted that 14 reactors in the country were producing a total of 3,900 MW, which is expected to go up to 7,400 MW by 2010 with the completion of nine more reactors. "Eventually, as per present plan of BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) and Nuclear Power Corporation the capacity by 2020 is expected to be increased to 24,000 MW," he said. Kalam said there was a need right from now to increase this capacity to 50,000 MW by 2030, considering the continuous depletion of fossil fuels across the globe, environment protection and availablity at an affordable cost. "Our target is to achieve energy security by 2020 leading to Energy Independence by 2030 and beyond," he said. Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. ***************************************************************** 24 Guardian Unlimited: Anti-nuclear protests stepped up [UP] Press Association Monday December 4, 2006 12:43 AM Anti-nuclear campaigners are to step up their protest against the multi-billion-pound replacement of Trident as the Government publishes a white paper set to back a new generation of weapons. CND and a number of MPs will hand in an "alternative" white paper to 10 Downing Street and express concern about the amount of time being given to discuss the issue. The cabinet is expected to endorse the replacement before the Prime Minister makes a Commons statement. MPs will vote on Trident in the New Year, with opponents predicting a rebellion by Labour politicians. Jon Trickett, Labour MP for Hemsworth, West Yorkshire, said: "There should not be a pre-determined outcome on a decision of this magnitude. There is more than one alternative to Trident replacement and there should be a full debate on each one." Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, said: "I very much fear that Blair's consultation will be in the form of pre-ticked "Yes" and "No" boxes. That would be Iraq Part Two, and many MPs are not prepared to make the same mistake. "The public and Parliament need a genuine consultation on all the issues including threat assessment, cost, international obligations and all options on offer including non-replacement. We need plenty of time to carefully consider these issues, not a mere three months to rush us into a endorsing a decision already made." John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, said: "There is overwhelmingly opposition within the Labour Party and wider trade union movement and this is such a serious issue that it should be put for democratic decision at Labour Party conference." © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 25 AU ABC: New reactors 'cut nuclear waste' - 05/12/2006 Judy Skatssoon ABC Science Online The future is nuclear, says a new report into Australia's rich uranium resources (Image: iStockphoto) New nuclear technology will cut waste so significantly that we may no longer need to dump it underground, according to an Australian government report. The , tabled in parliament this week, also says Australia should lift restrictions on uranium exploration, mining and export because at present nuclear power is the only "reliable and proven" way of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. "Advanced nuclear reactors and spent fuel reprocessing technologies are now being developed which will significantly reduce the quantity and toxicity of nuclear waste," says the report, Australia's uranium - greenhouse friendly fuel for an energy hungry world. "These technological advances could potentially obviate the need for geological repositories altogether." The new generation of reactors could also reduce the isolation period needed for waste to "just a few hundred years". But Dr Mark Diesendorf of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the , has dismissed these comments as "propaganda for the nuclear industry". He says the 440 nuclear reactors operating around the world today are "almost identical" to those of 25 years ago. "This is speculation about future reactors that are not on the market," he says of comments made in the report. Reducing waste Nuclear waste consists of spent uranium, plutonium and other by-products, which critics like Diesendorf say needs to be managed for up to hundreds of thousands of years. Professor Stephen Lincoln, an expert in nuclear energy and uranium from the , says it's possible to recycle some of this waste by turning it into a mixed uranium-plutonium oxide, or MOX. "So instead of just using uranium oxide in the fuel rods you use mixed uranium and plutonium. That burns up the plutonium but it also produces nuclear power," he says. Professor Leslie Kemeny, Australian foundation member of the and a consultant nuclear physicist, says three reactors around the world are already using this so-called MOX. [anti-nuclear activist] Many people oppose a nuclear industry. But a new report says critics need to rethink their opposition (Image: Reuters/Mark Baker) Kemeny says we'll also get better at developing ways of using waste from nuclear reactors, not only as an energy source but for use in industry and hospitals. "I firmly believe ... everything that is taken out of the reactor core to be put into a waste depository is highly valuable," he says. Improving safety Kemeny says new technology will not only cut back waste, but will make nuclear reactors safer. He says pebble-bed reactors are being developed that package the uranium in graphite balls rather than iron rods, making waste easier to handle. "With the generation IV reactors you will go for a fuel element that is enriched particles of uranium interspersed with silicon and carbon in a small ball or hexagonal shaped fuel element," he says. "You can circulate these balls in and out of the reactor or just drop in a set of orange-sized or tennis ball-sized and take out ones that have been there a long time." And because pebble-bed reactors are cooled by gas like helium or carbon dioxide they reduce the risk of overheating and a Chernobyl-style meltdown, he says. But Deisendorf says according to his calculations pebble-bed reactors would produce 13 times more nuclear waste than conventional ones. "You don't have rods but you have 13 times the quantity of nuclear waste because you're embedding the fuel in pebbles, and the pebbles occupy a lot of volume and it all becomes highly radioactive," he says. Lincoln says while pebble bed rectors are "fine in principle", none are currently being used to generate power and the fuel is more expensive to produce. "When you bring in any new technology it's got to be proved and tested and the final analysis is, is it commercially competitive in terms of producing electricity by comparison with the currently used reactors?" he says. Lincoln says no degree of technological sophistication will ensure 100% safety at nuclear reactors and adds it's difficult to imagine a reactor so advanced that it produces no waste at all. "It's true that modern reactors are better in that respect, they produce less waste. But they're always going to produce it," he says. "It's still quite a significant issue because at this point in time there is not one single permanent storage for high-level nuclear waste." ***************************************************************** 26 AU ABC: Carpenter confident WA opposes nuclear push ABC South West WA | Local News | Story 08:00 (ACST)Tuesday, 5 December 2006. 08:00 (AEST)Tuesday, 5 Premier Alan Carpenter says WA must resist any federal attempts to impose the nuclear industry on it against the will of the people. A federal parliamentary committee has called for the removal of all impediments to developing Australia's uranium industry. The bipartisan report has called on all governments to change laws preventing exploration and mining. Mr Carpenter says he is confident most Western Australians do not want nuclear power stations and waste dumps in their state. "The danger we face in Western Australia is that the Federal Government will seek to impose its will on Western Australia, irrespective of what the people of this state want," he said. "Now we've got to resist that. It's one of the issues that should be of major concern at the next federal election." Mr Carpenter says the state's position is well known. "We don't want to have Western Australia as a home for nuclear power stations, nuclear waste dumps, and what this report basically says is if we're going to mine uranium, we should probably take back the waste as well," he said. "I'm absolutely certain that the vast majority of West Australians do not want to see that happen." ***************************************************************** 27 BBC: UK faces 'greater power cut Last Updated: Monday, 4 December 2006 By Julian O'Halloran [Hinkley Point B] Six nuclear stations are out of action Could the lights go out across Britain this winter? Mark Hives fears they might. A utilities analyst at investment bank Societe Generale - and a qualified nuclear engineer, Mr Hives has been watching as nuclear utility British Energy has had to shut down six of its reactors at the same time for inspection or repairs. Two reactors each at Hinkley Point and Hartlepool in England, and at Hunterston in Scotland, are presently out of action. "I think the position this winter is potentially worse under the same temperature conditions than in previous winters," he told BBC Radio 4's File on 4 programme, to be broadcast on Tuesday. "We have British Energy reactors offline, and the UK's indigenous gas production is lower than in previous years, by 8-10% or so." Worse or better? Despite a new gas pipeline to Britain, Mr Hives said no more gas is available. What sort of situation is when the minister is running around every 10 minutes checking up if there's enough power stations available? Dr Dieter Helm, New College, Oxford "Yes, there is a new pipeline from Norway, and from next winter it will bring large volumes of gas, but this winter it's not operating," he said. "So there isn't more gas being produced than last year. Despite the pipeline being built, there is no extra gas." That makes the situation worse than it was last year, Mr Hives believes. "A third of the UK's electricity is gas-fired," he says. If we suffer gas shortages this winter there is an economic incentive on gas-fired generators to use that gas or sell it against the market and make money than make electricity from it." The Department of Trade and Industry, which has responsibility for energy policy, said that there was no reason to worry. "People should be reassured that the country always keeps a margin of spare generating capacity to help cater for circumstances such as this," a spokeswoman said. "We are never complacent, but we have no reason to expect blackouts this winter." Checking up But Dr Dieter Helm, one of Britain's leading energy economists, has highlighted what he believes is a chronic shortage of spare generating capacity. Dr Helm, of New College, Oxford, and an advisor to government and industry, said that last winter the energy minister was so concerned that he became involved in daily departmental efforts to monitor electricity supplies and check that enough power stations were available. "What sort of situation is it," Dr Helm said, "when the minister is running around every 10 minutes checking up if there's enough power stations available? "This is the sort of thing that happens in developing countries. Last winter there was a really severe problem and government ministers and officials were daily watching the margin to see if it was going to be quote 'alright'. "And that isn't a sensible position for any energy minister to be in." Margin of error Dr Helm is less worried about power cuts than the potential impact on wholesale power prices, in the wake of British Energy's nuclear power problems. "What I do think will happen is that prices will be higher than they otherwise would have been because these stations have gone off the system and that means that all of us will pay for the consequence of not having enough spare capacity on the regime," he said. National Grid, however, said that the UK had plenty of spare capacity to see it through. "The margin of generation over peak demand reported in our winter consultation report in September was a healthy 22%," the electricity distribution firm said. "The margin is there precisely to deal with eventualities like this when generation becomes unexpectedly unavailable. "Taking off the currently unavailable British Energy plant would leave the margin at around 18% which - although it is always important to avoid complacency - is the sort of level it was around three years ago or so." Andy Spurr, deputy chief nuclear officer for British Energy said to have its reactors operating is good for the nation and good for British Energy. "However, we do not and we will never take risks with safety and therefore we're actually keeping these reactors off-line until we've repaired them and we've made safety cases to put them back on-line," he added. Hear the full story on Radio 4: File on 4 Tue 5 Dec 2006 GMT or online at the File on 4 website ***************************************************************** 28 AFP: Austrian anti-nuclear protesters block Czech border - DOLNY DVORISTE, Czech Republic (AFP) - About 200 Austrian anti-nuclear demonstrators blocked the Czech border with tractors to protest against the notorious Czech nuclear power plant at Temelin. "This is the longest blockade since the year 2000," Roland Egger, spokesman for the "Atomkraftfrei Leben" (life without nuclear power) movement told AFP. The blockade, which began at 2:00 pm (1300 GMT) at the Wullowitz-Dolni Dvoriste border crossing, was to last six hours and authorities were expecting up to 500 protesters by 8:00 pm. The demonstrators want the Austrian government to voice an official protest against the Czech authorities' recent validation of the Temelin plant. They say the validation violates the Melk agreement signed by the two countries in 2000, as security measures required by the document have not been met. The protesters, whose gathering was sanctioned by the Austrian authorities, gave out yellow balloons, stickers and mulled wine to nearby residents who had turned up at the border crossing, which was decorated with banners reading "Stop Temelin". The neighbouring border crossing at Gmuend was also blocked for about an hour by about thirty protesters on Sunday afternoon. The demonstrators said they were prepared to organise as many blockades as necessary until their demands were met. Built in 1987 according to an original Soviet design with Western security systems added on, the Temelin plant, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of the Czech-Austrian border, was opened in 2000. But since then, it has been plagued by a series of problems, especially on its second unit, which have forced the plant to shut down its two reactors on several occasions. Non-nuclear Austria has questioned the safety of the power plant but the Czech authorities say it is in line with European regulations. AFP ***************************************************************** 29 McGraw Hill: Finland nuclear reactor delayed again December 4, 2006, 11:31AM EST HELSINKI, Finland The completion of Finland's fifth nuclear reactor will be further delayed, until early 2011, because of construction and planning complications, power company officials said Monday. The 1,600-megawatt reactor is now expected to be in operation almost two years later than originally planned, TVO project director Martin Landtman said. "Delays in the construction works and in manufacturing of the main coolant lines have an effect on the time schedule of the project," Landtman said. "Based on the current status, the plant supplier has now updated the overall time schedule and ... the Olkiluoto 3 plant unit can, according to the present outlook, be started at the turn of 2010-2011." Finnish power company Teollisuuden Voima Oy, or TVO, which ordered the plant from French-German supplier Areva-Siemens, has earlier announced several delays because of faulty concrete and problems involving manufacturing and planning. Originally, the power plant was to be commercially online during 2009. Construction of the $3.7-billion atomic reactor, the first to be built in the European Union in more than 10 years, began last year after the government gave it final approval. Some 1,000 people are currently working on the site in southwestern Finland. About 60 Finnish companies are involved in the Olkiluoto 3 project, the country's largest to date. It is situated 155 miles northwest of the capital, at the site of two 750-megawatt nuclear units. Besides the Olkiluoto units, there are two 500-megawatt reactors at Loviisa, 55 miles east of Helsinki. The four produce more than a quarter of Finland's electricity. Copyright 2000-2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved. [McGraw-Hill Logo] ***************************************************************** 30 NRC: Meeting of the Acrs Subcommittee on Reliability and FR Doc E6-20411 [Federal Register: December 4, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 232)] [Notices] [Page 70440-70441] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04de06-88] Probabilistic Risk Assessment; Notice of Meeting The ACRS Subcommittee on Reliability and Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) will hold a meeting on December 14 and 15, 2006, Room T-2B1, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. [[Page 70441]] The entire meeting will be open to public attendance. The agenda for the subject meeting shall be as follows: Thursday, December 14, 2006-8:30 a.m. until the conclusion of business. Friday, December 15, 2006-8:30 a.m. until the conclusion of business. The Subcommittee will review the PRA for General Electric's next generation simplified boiling water reactor, the ESBWR. The Subcommittee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff and industry regarding this matter. The Subcommittee will gather information, analyze relevant issues and facts, and formulate proposed positions and actions, as appropriate, for deliberation by the full Committee. Members of the public desiring to provide oral statements and/or written comments should notify the Designated Federal Official, Mr. Eric A. Thornsbury, (Telephone: 301-415-8716) five days prior to the meeting, if possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be made. Electronic recordings will be permitted. Further information regarding this meeting can be obtained by contacting the Designated Federal Official between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. (ET). Persons planning to attend this meeting are urged to contact the above named individual at least two working days prior to the meeting to be advised of any potential changes to the agenda. Dated: November 28, 2006. Michael R. Snodderly, Branch Chief, ACRS/ACNW. [FR Doc. E6-20411 Filed 12-1-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 31 IHT: Completion of Finland's 5th nuclear reactor further delayed until 2011 - International Herald Tribune The Associated Press Published: December 4, 2006 [ HELSINKI, Finland: The completion of Finland's fifth nuclear reactor will be further delayed, until early 2011, because of construction and planning complications, power company officials said Monday. The 1,600-megawatt reactor is now expected to be in operation almost two years later than originally planned, TVO project director Martin Landtman said. "Delays in the construction works and in manufacturing of the main coolant lines have an effect on the time schedule of the project," Landtman said. "Based on the current status, the plant supplier has now updated the overall time schedule and ... the Olkiluoto 3 plant unit can, according to the present outlook, be started at the turn of 2010-2011." Finnish power company Teollisuuden Voima Oy, or TVO, which ordered the plant from French-German supplier Areva-Siemens, has earlier announced several delays because of faulty concrete and problems involving manufacturing and planning. Originally, the power plant was to be commercially online during 2009. Construction of the ¬3-billion (US$3.7-billion) atomic reactor, the first to be built in the European Union in more than 10 years, began last year after the government gave it final approval. Some 1,000 people are currently working on the site in southwestern Finland. About 60 Finnish companies are involved in the Olkiluoto 3 project, the country's largest to date. It is situated 250 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of the capital, at the site of two 750-megawatt nuclear units. Besides the Olkiluoto units, there are two 500-megawatt reactors at Loviisa, 90 kilometers (55 miles) east of Helsinki. The four produce more than a quarter of Finland's electricity. ____ On the Net: TVO: http://www.tvo.fi [ width=] All rights reserved [IHT] ***************************************************************** 32 Detroit Free Press: EDITORIAL: Delaying nuke site purchase smart December 4, 2006 State officials did the right thing late last week by pulling the former Big Rock nuclear reactor site off the agenda for proposed purchases by the Natural Resources Trust Fund. The plan to make the property public wasn’t ready for prime time. But that doesn’t mean it should be abandoned. “Not everything was nailed down yet,” said Mindy Koch, deputy for resource management at the state Department of Natural Resources. That included unresolved financial issues. Perhaps just as pertinent for the many Michiganders who would be eager to use this magnificent stretch of shoreline just northeast of Charlevoix, the site cleanup has not yet gotten the official all-clear from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That is expected early next year, according to Tim Petrosky, a spokesman for Consumers Energy, which owns the land and ran the nuclear plant from 1965-97. It would be best to have that certification in hand before proceeding. State officials also have to make sure they’ve considered all the complications of running a park wrapped around a 107-acre parcel that will continue for years to be a storage site for the reactor’s spent fuel rods, complete with armed guard and dog. Although getting the price right is essential — and difficult under the circumstances — the state also must be sure park activity really can coexist with the security needed for storage of nuclear waste. The Department of Natural Resources had listed an expected purchase price of $19.3 million on its application to the trust fund. That would have included three $3-million installments from the fund and another $9 million that the state hopes to secure from the federal government. Donors would be solicited for the remainder. The trust fund, which gets its money from oil and gas royalties paid on wells on state land, always has more applications for grants than it can distribute each year. The Big Rock purchase would have crowded out other worthy projects, which was inherently unfair when so many crucial details remain nebulous. The 1.5 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline where the reactor once stood would no doubt be a wonderful addition to the state’s park portfolio. But the DNR is right to wait until it has all the answers that taxpayers and park-goers need to hear. To learn more about the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund, go to michigan.gov/dnrand search for MNRTF. Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc. ***************************************************************** 33 Kommersant Moscow: Atomic Energy Agency Looking for Contracts in Java - Sergey Kirienko, chief of Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin Dec. 04, 2006 Russia’s companies will bid for constructing a nuclear power plant in Indonesia, said Sergey Kirienko, chief of Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom). The sources say Indonesia will tie the $9-billion contract for building its nuclear plant in the Java Island to contracts for buying armaments of Russia. Past Friday, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and spokesmen of foreign ministry of the country sealed in Moscow a cooperation agreement for peaceful use of nuclear energy. Sergey Kirienko, who signed the document on behalf of Russia, said that Moscow stands ready to bid for constructing the Indonesian first nuclear plant, which tender could be announced in 2007 or in 2008 at the latest. The nuclear plant that will appear in the Java Island, Indonesia, will have four power units, 1000 MW each, while the project value is estimated at $9 billion. According to the sources, Indonesia will weigh Russia’s chances for success in view of the profit-yielding effect of contracts for buying weapons of Russia. Really, the top concern of the Moscow tour of Yudhoyono was military and industrial cooperation with Russia. © 1991-2006 ZAO "Kommersant. Publishing House". All rights ***************************************************************** 34 Prague Daily Monitor: Suits over Temelin to be filed with European Court - http://www.praguemonitor.com Vienna, Dec 2 (CTK) - Austrian opponents of the Czech Temelin nuclear power plant, as well as the Czech Republic plan to bring suits with the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg over Temelin, the Austrian daily Die Presse reported today. On Sunday, Austrian anti-atom activists are toblock Czech-Austria border crossings to protest against Temelin, south Bohemia, and legal suits are planned in the weeks after the blockade, the paper adds. The Czech Republic allegedly plans to file a complaint with the European Court of Justice due to restricting free movement of goods at the border by the Austrian authorities that approved the border blockade on Sunday. A trustworthy diplomatic source in Vienna, however, denied it, telling CTK that Prague does not intend to bring a suit, and moreover the European Court of Justice is not authorised to decide in such a dispute. Austria also wants to turn to the European Court of Justice to complain against putting Temelin into regular commercial operation after its approval for use was issued in early November, Die Presse says. Temelin opponents claim that the Czech Republic has thereby violated the Melk agreement, in particular the paragraph on exchange of information and on clear efforts to provide safety of Temelin before it is put into regular operation. The Austrian daily admits that the alleged necessity to prove safety measures in the power plant is an apparent weak side of the anti-atom activists´arguments. Austrian politicians who criticise Temelin have never officially said where Vienna should file a possible suit. Situated 60 kilometres from the borders of Austria and Bavaria, Temelin is sharply criticised by activists in Austria, Bavaria as well as the Czech Republic who say it is not safe because it combines Soviet design and western fuel and safety technology. These doubts were repeatedly dismissed by the Czech Republic. Die Presse noted that 58-year-old Czech-born Austrian citizen [Josef Vesely] could be the first to complicate the situation of the Temelin operator as the man claims he owns part of the plot where the power plant is built. The man who fled from the Communist Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 is still striving for the return of his land, allegedly an area of 56 square metres that could not be expropriated over unclear data in the land registry. Consequently, the piece of land is still owned by Vesely and his brother. Closely to this plot, the planned semi-store of burnt-out fuel from the power plant is to be constructed, Die Presse says. In the past few years, Vesely did not succeed in his dispute with Czech authorities as he had no Czech citizenship. Die Presse also quotes both parties in the dispute - Czech State Authority for Nuclear Safety (SUJB) head Dana Drabova and Upper Austrian governor Josef Puehringer, one of the major opponents of Temelin. Drabova confirmed her long-term opinion that safety measures and the protection level in the nuclear plant meets international regulations and practice. "However, we reckon with further power outages in the next two, three years," she admitted, referring to unplanned or early shut-downs of individual blocks of the Temelin plant. "I am no expert myself. I take experts´ professional opinions for granted. Their comments are clear. There are pieces of evidence [on shortcomings in Temelin´s safety]," Puehringer told Die Presse. He added that though he feels understanding for border blockades, some steps should be taken primarily by the Austrian government. hol/mr This story copyright 2006 CTK Czech News Agency. ***************************************************************** 35 SA Business Report: Westinghouse sees big growth in SA's nuclear output [South Africa's National Financial Daily] December 4, 2006 By Justin Brown Pretoria - Westinghouse Electric expected South Africa to add between 10 000 and 20 000 megawatts of nuclear power capacity over the next 20 years out of a total of 45 000MW in electricity generation, the US nuclear power company said on Friday. Westinghouse has a 15 percent stake in the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor Company, which is conducting a nuclear research and development project. Eskom spokesperson Fani Zulu said the government was looking to increase the amount of electricity generated from nuclear power. However, he said that there were only two nuclear projects in Eskom's project pipeline. These were a feasibility study into a 2 000MW conventional nuclear power station as well as the pebble bed project, in which the utility has a controlling stake. South Africa has just one nuclear power station at present - the 1 800MW Koeberg station near Cape Town. Construction on Koeberg started in 1976 and the station started to supply power to South Africa's grid from April 1984. Westinghouse chief executive Stephen Tritch said in an interview that 20 000MW of extra nuclear power would translate into 18 new nuclear power stations, each with a capacity of 1 100MW. Close to 95 percent of South Africa's electricity is generated from coal-fired power stations. Westinghouse's major competitors in the supply of nuclear power stations were French company Areva and US company General Electric, Tritch said. In mid-October Japanese conglomerate Toshiba bought a 77 percent stake in Westinghouse for $4.2 billion (R30.4 billion). Tritch said on his visit to South Africa last week that he had met Eskom chief executive Thulani Gcabashe, people at the pebble bed project and executives from engineering company IST. He said he would also be meeting with public enterprises minister Alec Erwin. Tritch said there was a possibility that Westinghouse could increase its stake in the pebble bed project in the future. Westinghouse bought its 15 percent stake in pebble bed for about $70 million and the company would be spending between $20 million and $30 million over the next couple of years. Westinghouse chief technology officer Regis Matzie said construction of the pebble bed demonstration plant at Koeberg was likely to begin in 2008, one year late, due to the need to receive approval for an environmental impact assessment as well as a record of decision to proceed with the project. The first fuel was likely to be delivered to the plant in 2012 instead of 2011 as previously scheduled, he added. Independent Online (Pty) Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 36 Times Union: Nuclear power the way to energy independence Albany NY First published: Monday, December 4, 2006 As the cost for energy remains high and concerns rise about possibly being denied oil from foreign suppliers who hate us, shouldn't America be turning to nuclear power as one source of vitally needed energy? The use of nuclear power to generate electricity is an American invention. France uses this technology to obtain 80 percent of its electricity. Yet, only 20 percent of the electricity in the U.S. is supplied by nuclear power plants. Some extreme environmentalists insist that the cost of nuclear power is prohibitive. But figures from England, where various forms of electricity generation are employed, show the following costs per kilowatt hour: 5 cents for nuclear; 12 cents for coal; 13 cents for gas; 10 to 16 cents for wind; and 38 cents for solar. Nuclear power is not only the least expensive way to generate electricity, it's the safest and cleanest way. Surely it's time to cut the government red tape, repudiate the anti-nukes, and start America back on the road to energy independence. DOMINIC FULGIERI Burnt Hills dfulgieri@nycap.rr.com All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2006, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y. ***************************************************************** 37 Guardian Unlimited: 4 in Japan Admit Nuclear-Related Exports From the Associated Press [UP] Monday December 4, 2006 3:16 AM By CARL FREIRE Associated Press Writer TOKYO (AP) - Four ex-employees of a Japanese company admitted illegally exporting measuring devices that can be converted for use in producing nuclear weapons, a company spokesman said Monday. Former Mitutoyo Corp. President Kazusaku Tezuka and three other men admitted the prosecutors' charges against them on the opening day of their trial, Mitutoyo spokesman Kazutoshi Sato said. Mitutoyo issued a statement last month admitting the company broke export and foreign exchange laws in the case, which involves the alleged export of three-dimensional measuring devices without proper government authorization. The company, which is also a defendant in the trial, said it would not contest the charges and pledged to cooperate fully with the investigation. ``We deeply regret the inconvenience and problems this matter has caused,'' Sato said. ``We are continuing our restructuring efforts to prevent it from happening again.'' A court spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity per court policy, said she could not comment on the trial's proceedings. Prosecutors suspect the company of exporting two of the devices illegally to its subsidiary in Malaysia via Singapore in 2001. The devices measure cylinders with great precision and can be used on centrifuges employed in uranium enrichment, a process that can produce civilian nuclear fuel or fissile material for a nuclear weapon, government officials say. Though Malaysia is not on Japan's export blacklist, Japanese laws still require companies to get government authorization for sensitive exports valued at over $8,500 regardless of the country. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 38 Daily Yomiuri: Mitutoyo execs plead guilty in N-tool export The Yomiuri Shimbun Former executives of Kawasaki-based precision instrument maker Mitutoyo Corp. pleaded guilty Monday at the Tokyo District Court to illegally exporting three-dimensional measuring devices that potentially could be used in the development of nuclear weapons. During the first hearing, the defendants--former Mitutoyo President Kazusaku Tezuka, 67, former Vice Chairman Norio Takatsuji, 71, former Managing Director Hideyo Chikugo, 66, and Director Tetsuo Kimura, 65--admitted to charges of violating the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law. Mitutoyo chairman Tomohide Numata pleaded guilty on behalf of the company, which was also indicted as a corporate entity. (Dec. 5, 2006) © The Yomiuri Shimbun. ***************************************************************** 39 AFP: Japanese executives admit nuclear exports - Mon Dec 4, 2:00 AM ET TOKYO (AFP) - Four Japanese executives have admitted illegally exporting equipment that can be used to build nuclear weapons and wound up in Libya and possibly Iran" /> , a report said. On the first day of their trial at the Tokyo District Court, the top officers of major precision equipment maker Mitutoyo said they did not obtain necessary authorization to export the devices to Malaysia. Kazusaku Tezuka, 67, the former president of Mitutoyo, and three other executives admitted charges in the indictment, with each saying in the courtroom, "What is written is true," as quoted by Jiji Press. Tezuka and three others -- vice chairman Norio Takatsuji, executive director Hideyo Chikugo and Mitutoyo factory chief Tetsuo Kimura -- violated the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law, the prosecutors have said. They exported to Malaysia, via Singapore, two three-dimensional gauge devices that can be used in the production of nuclear weapons. The export of such devices requires authorization by the Japanese ministry for economy and trade because of their potential military application. One of the gauges is believed to have ended up in Libya and was found by inspectors from the UN nuclear agency after the former pariah state in 2003 renounced its program to build weapons of mass destruction. Japanese police reportedly suspect that Mitutoyo also illegally exported devices to Iran through an Iranian trading company with offices in Tokyo. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 40 North County News: Indian Point says irradiated water has Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:22:24 -0800 Remember that the "allowable" levels of radionuclides are based on the obsolete "standard man", healthy, white, in the prime of life and ignores the more vulnerable foetus, growing infant and child, aged, those in poor health. This should be mentioned any time "allowable levels" are reported. Mitzi Bowman, coordinator, Don't Waste Connecticut (member Ct. Coalition Against Millstone) upthesun@cshore.com Indian Point says irradiated water has not spread New Leaks Found 11/30/06 North County News By Abby Luby Indian Point owner Entergy said the concentration of the newly found radioactive isotopes was above the standard drinking water level, but they declined to say how high the levels were A mix of radioactive isotopes is leaking from Unit 1 at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, officials from Entergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have confirmed.... Contents of the irradiated water show cobalt-60, nickel-63 and cesium-137. The newly disclosed isotopes were found in ground water that is being tested for tritium and strontium-90, radioactive isotopes that have long been leaking from unknown sources at the plant. The aging Unit 1 closed down in 1974, but the spent fuel pool remains filled. Entergy, the plant's owner, said the concentration of the newly found radioactive isotopes was above the standard drinking water level, but they declined to say how high the levels were. "We have identified these isotopes very close to the fuel pool at Unit 1," said Don Mayer, director of special projects for Entergy. The 40-foot-deep pool stores used radioactive fuel assemblies. "A monitoring well was drilled in an area where we expected to have a higher concentration of the radionuclides. These are at an elevated level, but there's no evidence of anything migrating beyond the immediate area." Concentrations of the radioactive isotopes from the well found downstream were close to or below the drinking water standard, explained Mayer. Neil Sheehan of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirmed the findings. "Samples are being taken to check for the presence of numerous radioisotopes," said Sheehan. According to Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a Los Angeles-based nuclear watchdog group, cesium, nickel and cobalt are far more dangerous than tritium. "Permissible concentrations in water for cobalt-60 and cesium-137 are very much smaller than tritium because they are vastly more dangerous in terms of health," said Hirsch. "When a nuclear power plant finds radionuclides other than tritium, it tells you that the plant is leaking everything." Health effects The Environmental Protection Agency says that that the maximum contaminant level for cesium-137 is 200 picocuries per liter of water. A picocurie is one-trillionth of a curie, the standard measure of radioactivity. The EPA says exposure to cesium results in concentrations in muscle, bone and fat and can result in malignant tumors. Cesium was widely dispersed over western Europe as fallout from the accident at Chernobyl. The standard drinking water level for cobalt-60 is 100 picocuries per liter. Cobalt-60 is widely used in cancer radiotherapy. The NRC also declined to provide specific concentrations of the radioactive isotopes. Entergy not surprised "Finding cesium and cobalt actually corroborated with what we expected about the leaks from Unit 1," said Mayer. "The fuel in Unit 1 is very old and was manufactured back in the 1960s, early 1970s. It has more radioactive material coming out of it. The newer fuel pool in Unit 2, for instance, has lower concentrations of radioactive materials." Mayer said that finding these specific radioactive isotopes helps to determine if the excessive tritium leaks are old ones or new ones. "The isotopes also tells us is how the ground water is behaving near Unit 1 and if the unit is the primary source of leaking strontium-90," said Mayer. But where there is one leaking radioactive isotope, there are usually many more, said Hirsch. "Cesium, one of the primary fission products, and cobalt, the primary corrosion product, are both very powerful emitters," explained Hirsch. "Along with cesium you usually find other radioactive materials like plutonium, tellurium and various iodines." Hirsch explained that during the process of uranium fission, atoms are split apart in the nuclear reactor, creating several hundred fission products. "You can't just have one because they are all mixed together," he said. "You have a mixed score of radionuclides that move at different rates, some more toxic than others, some more long lived than others and will be in this particular area potentially for centuries, long after the reactor stops running." Other leaks still a mystery In August 2005 officials at the plant publicly admitted to leaking water containing tritium. Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen and one of the many radionuclides released by nuclear power plants. At that time Entergy had dug about nine monitoring wells it hoped would pinpoint the leaks. Now, a year and a half later, there are 54 monitoring wells at the site. Water sampled from a well near the Unit 2 spent fuel pool was highly contaminated with tritium, measuring 600,000 picocuries per liter of water, or 30 times the EPA drinking water limit of 20,000 picocuries. Last spring, water sampled at a well less that 150 feet from the Hudson River showed strontium-90 at three times the amount allowed in drinking water. Strontium-90 is a dangerous radioactive isotope that increases the risk of cancer. Remediation test According to the NRC's Sheehan, Entergy recently conducted a limited remediation test using a single well near the Indian Point 2 spent fuel pool. "The company is now evaluating the data resulting from the test before deciding whether to pursue remediation," said Sheehan, adding that Entergy wants to know if pumping water from the well will affect the ground water flows at the site. Mayer said the test was a success. "The results told us we will be able to collect water near the fuel pool without having any impact on water from other sites," he said. Entergy spokesperson Jim Steets said the pumping near the Unit 2 fuel storage building started several weeks ago. "The goal is to remove the tridiated water without any impact on the area around Unit 1 where strontium-90 has leaked through a curtain drain into the ground water," he explained. Once the remediation gets under way, it will involve filtering the contaminated water, said Sheehan. "The plan would be to pump the ground water and put it into holding tanks to check on the radioactive count. Then we would release it into the Hudson River within allowable levels," he said. Hirsch said that filtering is not an easy business. "Normally what's done is that you pump up the ground water, treat it, and then either dump it into rivers or reinsert it back into the ground. It's hard to eliminate all the contaminated ground water," he said. Hirsch said when Entergy initially found the leaks, the company said not to worry because it was only some tritium. "Then there was strontium-90, now there are all these other radionuclides. What it's telling you is that they lost control and once the material is in the environment it's very difficult to clean it up. "It's a long-term problem. Even if some of the radiation levels are currently low, that doesn't mean they will stay low," Hirsch warned. ***************************************************************** 41 CNN News: BA planes, passengers deemed safe from radiation Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:24:37 -0800 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/02/uk.spywrap.0610/index.html 7209e9.jpg BA planes, passengers deemed safe from radiation Story Highlights •NEW: All three British Airways jetliners cleared to return to service •NEW: 33,000 customers, 3,000 crew members not considered at risk •Pathologists protect themselves during poisoned spy's autopsy •Alexander Litvinenko's widow tests positive for polonium-210 LONDON, England (CNN) -- Three British Airways planes, grounded while authorities examined them for traces of radiation, have been cleared to return to service, officials with Britain's Health Protection Agency said Saturday. Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB spy who was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210, had flown aboard the planes. Health officials said none of the estimated 33,000 passengers and 3,000 crew members aboard the 221 trips flown by those jets since October 25 were believed to be a risk. As the inquiry into Litvinenko's death continued, pathologists took extreme precautions Friday performing his autopsy, the coroner's office reported. Because of the dangers posed by the isotope, radioactivity levels were being monitored and those involved in the autopsy at Royal London Hospital were wearing protective clothing. (Watch how polonium-210 kills720a17.jpg) At the request of New Scotland Yard, the FBI was providing technical assistance, said Richard Kolko, FBI special agent. "This is common, as we often receive requests to assist our international partners," he said. Doctors completed the autopsy, but results won't be known until the criminal inquiry is complete. The former KGB spy, 43, died November 23, three weeks after claiming he had been poisoned. High doses of polonium were found in his body, and pathologists were trying to determine how the poison was ingested. The autopsy was attended by three pathologists -- one appointed by the British government; another preparing a report for defense attorneys, in case the death results in murder charges; and the third representing Litvinenko's family, said the office of coroner Dr. Andrew Reid. Last week, British officials confirmed that traces of radioactive material were found at Litvinenko's home and places where he ate and met others just before becoming sick. Before he died, Litvinenko -- a harsh critic of the Russian government -- accused the Kremlin of poisoning him. Russian officials have denied the charge. British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday in Jordan and asked for the Kremlin's cooperation in its investigation of the poisoning, said Paul Knott, a spokesman for the British Embassy in Moscow. The Russian foreign minister assured her that Russia is ready to help, said the diplomat. A spokesman for the Russian president had previously told CNN that Russia would cooperate in the investigation. A family source on Friday said Litvinenko's widow had tested positive for the isotope, though in levels thought too small to make her sick. "The levels are not significant enough to result in any illness in the short term, and the results are reassuring in that any increased risk in the long term is likely to be very small," Britain's Health Protection Agency said in a written statement. The agency has been testing urine samples from people who were in close contact with Litvinenko after he became ill on November 1. On Thursday, British Home Secretary John Reid said investigators had found traces of a radioactive material in 12 of 24 sites throughout London. The risk to public health is extremely low because polonium-210 must be ingested to be dangerous, Reid said. (Watch to see if you should worry about polonium-210 poisoning720a26.jpg) Late Friday, the Associated Press reported a hotel in rural southeastern England had been evacuated as police and health workers carried out tests for polonium-210. Also Friday, the health agency said a "significant quantity" of the radioactive substance ingested by Litvinenko before his death has been found in a person who had "very close contact" with him. The HPA did not identify the person, but Italian Sen. Paolo Guzzanti confirmed that it was Italian security expert Mario Scaramella, who was one of the last people to meet with Litvinenko before he was hospitalized. Scaramella tested positive for polonium-210, according to media reports, making him the first person to do so since Litvinenko's death. Scaramella told The Associated Press Wednesday doctors had originally cleared him after tests. It is not known what prompted the new diagnosis, and Scaramella could not be reached for comment. Scaramella told Reuters last month he met with Litvinenko at the Itsu sushi bar November 1 to warn him that he had seen materials suggesting both men were on a hit list, and needed to take precautions. Gaidar probe Meanwhile, Irish police announced they were launching an investigation into the possible poisoning of Yegor Gaidar, architect of Russia's market reforms. (Full story) Gaidar, 50, became violently ill at a conference in Ireland and was rushed to a hospital there, but was said to be improving in a Moscow hospital. Another attendee at the conference said Friday that Gaidar was ill before he arrived in Ireland. (Full story) 720a35.jpg _______________________________________________________________________ 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 Attachment Converted: 7209e9.jpg: 00000001,1b73c258,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 720a09.jpg: 00000001,1b73c259,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 720a17.jpg: 00000001,1b73c25a,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 720a26.jpg: 00000001,1b73c25b,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 720a35.jpg: 00000001,1b73c25c,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 42 Guardian Unlimited: Spy probe police head to Moscow From Press Association [UP] Press Association Monday December 4, 2006 5:03 AM Detectives will travel to Moscow "within days" to investigate ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko's fatal poisoning. The move came as the former spy's death is due to be raised with European interior ministers in Brussels. Mr Litvinenko died of radiation poisoning last month after falling ill on November 1. The dissident believed he had been the victim of a Russian murder plot. Italian academic Mario Scaramella remains in hospital after testing positive for polonium 210, the radioactive substance thought to have killed his friend. Police sources said the team of detectives will be going to Moscow within days, although the situation is described as "too fluid" to say for certain whether the officers will be flying out as soon as today. Among those police officers may want to interview is former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi - whose visit to Arsenal's Emirates Stadium on the day he met Mr Litvinenko is thought to be behind a radiation search at the football ground. Also among those police may want to see is former intelligence officer Mikhail Trepashkin, who is currently in jail in Russia for revealing secret information. In letters smuggled out of Russia last week Mr Trepashkin claimed that a secret hit squad had been set up to target Mr Litvinenko and others in 2002 and offered himself as a witness in the British investigation. Scotland Yard sources also revealed that police had travelled to Washington as part of the investigation. It is thought that the trip was to interview ex-KGB officer Yuri Shvets, a friend of Mr Litvinenko who may have compiled a dossier on issues relating to the Russian oil giant Yukos. The firm's assets were snapped up by Kremlin-backed company after its then owner billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed for tax offences. © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 43 Guardian Unlimited: 'Radiation test' on British Embassy [UP] Press Association Monday December 4, 2006 10:03 PM A team of experts from Britain investigating the death of former spy Alexander Litvinenko are to carry out "precautionary tests" for radiation at the British Embassy in Moscow, the Foreign Office has said. A Foreign Office spokesman said the tests will be carried out in one room of the embassy by a team of experts who have travelled to the Russian capital from Britain. Amid growing diplomatic tension over the continued furore, he stressed the tests were just being undertaken as a precaution and the experts "did not expect to find anything". The spokesman said: "Precautionary tests are taking place in one room in the British Embassy in Moscow. They are just precautionary tests and they do not expect to find anything." He added the team of experts had already arrived in the city after leaving Britain earlier but could not say when the tests would be completed. Nine Scotland Yard detectives flew to Russia on Monday morning to investigate the death of the former spy, who died on November 23 after allegedly being poisoned with the radioactive isotope Polonium-210. The officers plan to interview several potential witnesses in Russia, including those who met the 43-year-old on the day he was allegedly poisoned. A local Russian police force is likely to escort the British detectives during their trip, which could last several days or even weeks. Their arrival in Russia comes at a crucial period, not only for the police investigation but also for Anglo-Russian political relations. Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has warned that persistent suggestions that Russia was involved could harm diplomatic relations between London and Moscow. © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 44 Guardian Unlimited: Scaramella: No radiation poisoning [UP] Press Association Saturday December 2, 2006 12:58 PM Test results on Mario Scaramella, the man feared to be the second victim of a Russian hit squad widely blamed for the death of spy Alexander Litvinenko, shows no sign of radiation poisoning. The Italian academic who met the ex-KGB man on the day he was allegedly poisoned, was admitted to hospital on Friday having tested positive for a "significant" quantity of the radioactive substance. Health chiefs confirmed on Friday night that Mr Scaramella had traces of deadly polonium 210, which is believed to have killed Mr Litvinenko, in his body. But doctors at London's University College Hospital have said that preliminary tests had found "no evidence of radiation toxicity". A spokesman added "he is well". But doctors are continuing to monitor Mr Scaramella's condition and further tests are expected. A spokesman said: "He is well. Preliminary tests so far show no evidence of radiation toxicity." Doctors said on Friday that Mr Scaramella had a "considerably lower level" of the substance in his body than Mr Litvinenko, who died at University College Hospital last week. Mr Litvinenko believed he had been murdered for criticising Russian president Vladimir Putin. Mr Scaramella was a former consultant on an Italian government commission which investigated the KGB's activities in Italy. He met Mr Litvinenko at the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly on November 1 - a location where traces of polonium have since been found. As well as discussing the high-profile murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Mr Scaramella has said that the two men spoke about documents naming himself and Mr Litvinenko as potential targets. He later said documents he received included "alarming" facts that left both fearing for their lives. It has emerged that Mr Scaramella flew into the UK on easyJet flight EZY3506 from Naples to Stansted Airport on October 31 and flew back two days after the sushi bar meeting on the same route on November 3 on flight number EZY3505. Following the death of Mr Litvinenko, Mr Scaramella returned to the UK and had been staying in a hotel in East Sussex under police protection until being admitted to hospital. Over the past week, traces of polonium 210 have been detected at 12 sites, including three British Airways planes which have flown between the UK and Russia. All three planes have been given the all clear to return to service by the Health Protection Agency (HPA) including one which had been grounded in Moscow but flew back to the UK on Friday night. But it is understood that the plane on which Mr Scaramella flew back to Naples will not have to be tested based on an assessment of Mr Scaramella's situation. © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 45 Helsingin Sanomat: Radioactive cobalt in luggage hold delays Finnair flight from Moscow Radio Helsinki Tuesday 5.12.2006 Passengers on a Finnair flight leaving from Moscow to Helsinki had to wait for about four hours at Moscows Sheremetyevo Airport on Saturday as Russian officials took radiation readings in the front of the planes passenger cabin. Finnair reported late Saturday that elevated radiation readings had been caused by cobalt, which was being transported in the front of the luggage hold for industrial use. The package was en route from Germany via Helsinki to Moscow. Finnair says that radiation readings had been taken four times in Moscow. The first measurements were taken when the cargo was still inside the plane. At that time, the equipment showed a degree of radiation that exceeded normal levels. On three other occasions, when the cargo had been taken out, no more radiation was detected. Finnair said that this was the first time that any such measurements were being taken. Russia had announced already on Thursday that it was imposing a stricter policy on radiation monitoring for foreign planes. Finnair Communications Officer Taneli Hassinen says that all planes in Moscow had undergone radiation measurements. The 61 Finnair passengers on the plane were flown to Helsinki on an Aeroflot flight. The Finnair plane flew later with only passenger luggage on board. Hassinen and Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) inspector Teuvo Parviainen said that passengers had not been in any danger from the radiation. STUK does not plan to place the passengers under close monitoring. However, Hassinen says that Finnair will be in contact with passengers from the Helsinki-Moscow leg to assure them that the radiation posed no danger. One of the passengers was Harri Cavén, a high-ranking official at the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications, who had been in Moscow on Friday to negotiate with Russian road transport officials. "The plane was getting ready for takeoff when it was turned back. The flight attendant said that the plane and the passengers would undergo a radiation check. We were met at the airport by officials wearing rubber gloves. However, no radiation readings were taken from us", Cavén said. In his view, delaying the departure was "bullying" on the part of Russian officials. Cavén said that the reason for the action was that some at the recent EU-Russia summit had "the audacity to criticise President Vladimir Putin over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko". The atmosphere at the airport in the early evening did not differ much from the normal. Some of the officials knew that the departure of the Finnair flight had been delayed because of the inspections. Andrei Bagrationov, a security official at the airport, told the Associated Press that no traces of radioactivity were found on the plane. According to Taneli Hassinen, the sender of the package delivered by Finnair on Saturday is known, and is familiar with packaging regulations for radioactive substances. "These packages are transported on many flights and on all airlines every day. Our cargo monitors inspect the packages and papers of deliveries of dangerous substances, and we were told that there was nothing exceptional in the package. He had not heard if other planes had been stopped in Moscow because of radiation. On Saturday, Minister of Transport and Communications Susanna Huovinen (SDP) asked Finnair for a clarification of matters concerning the transport of hazardous materials. Air transport of radioactive substances is permitted, as long as safety regulations are met. Hospitals and industry use radioactive materials regularly. Fast transport is essential because the isotopes often have a short half-life. On Sunday, Finnairs Taneli Hassinen reiterated that Finland does not plan to cut back on the transport of radioactive materials, in spite of the problems that arose at Moscow Airport. "Even if increased levels of radiation were to be found, it would be unlikely to cause the same kind of uproar that happened this time." Finnairs flights on Sunday proceeded without problems. Radiation levels continued to be monitored at Moscow Airport. However, Finnair did not have any radioactive cargo on Sunday. Finnair did not incur any great financial losses from Saturdays delay in Moscow. Helsingin Sanomat 4.12.2006 - TODAY ***************************************************************** 46 arizona daily star: 2 groups appeal beryllium permit www.azstarnet.com By Erica Meltzer Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.04.2006 Two area environmental groups have appealed a county decision to renew Brush Ceramic Products' air-quality permit. The Pima County Department of Environmental Quality announced last month it would grant a five-year air-quality permit for the South Side plant. Brush Ceramic Products, part of Cleveland-based Brush Wellman Engineered Materials Inc., is the nation's largest producer of beryllium oxide products. Its local plant is at 6100 S. Tucson Blvd., near East Valencia Road. Beryllium, a naturally occurring metal used in industrial applications, can be toxic when particles are inhaled. Thirty-five Tucson workers at the plant have contracted incurable chronic beryllium disease, which slowly suffocates its victims. At least two have died. Trace amounts of beryllium also have been found in surface dust at Sunnyside High School, a half-mile west of the plant. In addition to the requirements of the permit, the company entered into a voluntary agreement to expand and upgrade monitoring at school and neighborhood sites. But critics say the community monitoring should have been required as part of the permit. As it stands, the county will not be able to take action if beryllium is found outside the plant. "That's just unconscionable. This is really dangerous stuff," said Rob Kulakofksy, president of the Center for Environmental Connections, one of two groups that appealed the permit. The other group was the Environmental Justice Action Group. The county must hold a hearing on the appeal within 30 days. No date has yet been set. Kulakofsky said the county should have the ability to shut the plant down if community monitoring detects beryllium. But Ursula Kramer, director of the county Department of Environmental Quality, said it wouldn't make a difference if the community monitoring were part of the permit. The county is constrained by federal requirements, and there are no federal standards for beryllium in the environment, just for the amount of emissions measured at the smokestack, she said. Kramer said there are advantages to the voluntary arrangement. The county will run the monitoring program and use an independent laboratory. If it were in the permit, the company would run the monitoring. Kramer said the community monitoring program will help the county figure out if the beryllium found at Sunnyside is naturally occurring or coming from the plant, and will provide an extensive record of any rise or fall in levels. "Beryllium is naturally occurring so we wouldn't expect to never find it," Kramer said. "We're looking for information that will help us track what might be coming from the plant." Kulakofsky also criticized the permit for giving the company 72 hours to report violations, not requiring filters on all vents and requiring testing of smokestack emissions just once a year. The company has tested four times a year for the last two years, but that testing was voluntary. "We need to make sure the permit is strict, as it should be, and protective of public health, which it is not," he said. Kramer said the permit is "light years" ahead of the previous permit. The permit focuses not just on smokestack emissions but on eliminating other sources of emissions, such as vents, doors and ducts. It guarantees county inspectors access to records and information about plant operations. Kramer said the company has 72 hours to file a formal report but must provide notice within 24 hours. The reason for not requiring filters is that the filters could clog and break if a large amount of beryllium powder were spilled, Kramer said. The permit instead requires that the vents be shut down immediately in case of a spill. Kramer said the county could not force the company to test four times a year, but it also doesn't see the need to. Tests over the last two years have not found beryllium at detectable levels. Company representatives could not be reached. In the past, they said the plant is already in compliance with many of the new requirements. ? Contact reporter Erica Meltzer at 807-7790 or emeltzer@azstarnet.com. ***************************************************************** 47 arizona daily star: Sunnyside session to discuss beryllium monitoring in area www.azstarnet.com ® If you go What: A public forum to discuss air-quality testing of beryllium dust near Brush Ceramic Products When: 6 p.m. Tuesday Where: The cafeteria of Sunnyside High School, 1725 E. Bilby Road Who: Representatives from the Sunnyside Unified School District and Pima County Department of Environmental Quality will participate Read the new Brush Ceramic air-quality permit: www.deq.pima.gov/permits/PDEQProposedFinalPermits.htm By Jeff Commings Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.04.2006 Now that Brush Ceramic Products has a new air-quality permit and has agreed to participate in more stringent off-site testing for beryllium dust, the Sunnyside Unified School District wants to talk to community members about the future of air monitoring at the schools near the industrial plant. A forum will be held Tuesday at Sunnyside High School, 1725 E. Bilby Road, moderated by Sunnyside officials and representatives of the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality, the agency now responsible for air testing. "If people are concerned about the amount of beryllium, this would be a good time for them to sit down and talk to the PDEQ people and get more information," said Gene Repola, the school district's assistant superintendent for facilities. For about five years, South Side residents have complained that the district and Brush Ceramics, part of Cleveland-based Brush Wellman Engineered Materials Inc., haven't done enough to ensure the safety of students and faculty at sites within a mile of the plant, which produces beryllium oxide products. In March 2005, a low level of beryllium dust was found in the Sunnyside High School administration building, though no one tested positive for illnesses related to beryllium dust. At least 30 workers at the plant, 6100 S. Tucson Blvd., have contracted incurable chronic beryllium disease. At least two have died. But the biggest complaint residents have made concerns district funds paying for air-quality testing at the sites on district property. The district paid at least $30,000 a year to test for beryllium at its four sites - now increased to six. Pima County now will pay for the testing, and Brush Ceramic will pay $80,000 to maintain the testing sites on district property. District officials now are only responsible for collecting the filters that would collect any traces of beryllium dust, Repola said. Though Brush Ceramic is only required to test for beryllium dust on its property once a year - the company formerly had volunteered to test there four times a year - Pima County officials will have more oversight into the company's operations. "Overall, it's going to be better because the permit has more teeth in it," Repola said. reporter Jeff Commings at 573-4191 or at jcommings@azstarnet.com. ***************************************************************** 48 RIA Novosti: Russia issues visas to UK detectives in Litvinenko probe 04/ 12/ 2006 MOSCOW, December 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russian visas have been issued for Scotland Yard experts investigating the death in London of ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, the Foreign Ministry said Monday. "The visas for a group of Scotland Yard representatives are valid as of today," a ministry information and press department spokesman said. Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin's administration and a close associate of exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, died in a London hospital on November 23. His body was found to contain a large dose of polonium-210, a radioactive isotope. British media reported earlier that Scotland Yard detectives may arrive in Moscow as early as Monday to interview several people who met Litvinenko around the time of his alleged poisoning at the beginning of November, including businessman and former KGB and FSB colleague Andrei Lugovoi. According to British newspaper The Guardian, two businessmen, Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, who contacted Litvinenko just before his death, will also be questioned by British detectives in Russia, along with another two witnesses, whose names have not been disclosed. After Litvinenko's death, Western media circulated a message purporting to be his deathbed note, in which he accused President Putin of orchestrating his death. The Kremlin has denied any involvement. An Italian contact of Litvinenko, Mario Scaramella, has also been diagnosed with Po-210 poisoning. He said Saturday that he and Litvinenko had been poisoned because of secret information they shared, but did not specify details. In ongoing investigations run by Scotland Yard, trace amounts of radiation have been discovered at 12 sites in Britain and on two BA planes that flew the Moscow-London route. The results of Litvinenko's post-mortem examination on Friday have been passed to toxicologists for analysis, and have yet to be announced. © 2005 RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 49 RIA Novosti: Topol-M missile regiment put on active duty - minister 04/ 12/ 2006 MOSCOW, December 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is completing the mobilization of a regiment of Topol-M mobile missile systems and placing it on active duty, the defense minister said Monday. "In the future, these complexes will constitute the foundation of the Strategic Missile Forces," Sergei Ivanov said. Ivanov said earlier Russia is planning to purchase 69 silo-based and mobile Topol-M ballistic missile systems in the next decade. He said the defense ministry was also planning to procure 60 Iskander-M tactical ballistic missile systems to equip five missile brigades, 57 Sprut-SD self-propelled guns, 499 Rakushka airborne armored personnel carriers, and several Bereg mobile coastal artillery systems. President Vladimir Putin said last month that developing the strategic forces is the main priority on the national defense agenda. The president told a meeting with top military officials, "Maintaining a strategic balance will mean that our strategic deterrent forces should be able to guarantee the neutralization of any potential aggressor, no matter what modern weapons systems he possesses." He called for the creation of cutting-edge strategic weapons, and emphasized quality over quantity. As of January 1, Russia possessed 927 nuclear delivery vehicles and 4,279 nuclear warheads for strategic offensive weapons, while the United States owns 1,255 and 5,966, respectively, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. © 2005 RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 50 BBC: MSP awaits child Last Updated: Monday, 4 December 2006 [Chris Ballance MSP] Chris Ballance now hopes to collate the child cancer information Secret information about childhood leukaemia cases in Dumfries and Galloway could be made public in weeks, according to an MSP. The South of Scotland Green MSP Chris Ballance said he hoped to have details of the cases soon. It follows a landmark ruling at the Court of Session when judges ordered the Common Services Agency to release the data. The agency was told to release the data under the Freedom of Information Act. Mr Ballance wants to examine potential links between child cancers and radioactive waste from Sellafield and Chapelcross nuclear plants. ***************************************************************** 51 washingtonpost.com: Funding Continues for Illness Scientists Dismiss - Gulf Syndrome Has Believers in Congress By David BrownWashington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 3, 2006; Page A01 Fifteen years after the end of the 1991 war with Iraq, a Texas researcher is in line to get as much as $75 million in federal funding to press his studies of "Gulf War syndrome," even though most other scientists long ago discounted his theories. Epidemiologist Robert W. Haley has been trying for 10 years to prove that thousands of Persian Gulf War troops were poisoned by a combination of nerve gas, pesticides, insect repellents and a nerve-gas antidote. With the help of $16 million in past funding obtained by his backers in Congress and the Pentagon, Haley has argued that his "toxicity hypothesis" is the best explanation for the constellation of physical complaints that many veterans reported after returning from the Gulf. [Robert W. Haley has championed the designation ] Robert W. Haley has championed the designation "Gulf War syndrome," an idea that has fallen out of favor with the scientific mainstream. (University Of Texas Southwestern Medical Center) Haley and his supporters, who also include a powerful cluster of veterans and government advisers, are undeterred by the scientific consensus against him. As recently as September, a panel of the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine reached the same conclusion that half a dozen other expert groups had: Gulf War syndrome does not exist. After reviewing 850 studies -- essentially all the scientific literature on the topic -- the 13 scientists wrote that "the nature of the symptoms suffered by many Gulf War veterans does not point to an obvious diagnosis, etiology [cause], or standard treatment." "Gulf War syndrome" became a catchall name for a spectrum of non-life-threatening complaints that up to 30 percent of the conflict's veterans say they have experienced at some point since the end of the war in 1991. The most commonly cited symptoms are fatigue, memory loss, poor sleep, mood changes, digestive troubles and rashes. The ground war lasted four days and resulted in 147 battlefield deaths, but almost 199,000 of the 698,000 people who were deployed have since qualified for some degree of service-related disability. Of those, 3,317 people are disabled by "undiagnosed conditions." From 1994 through 2003, the departments of defense, veterans affairs, and health and human services sponsored 256 studies of Gulf War syndrome, at a total cost of $316 million. Scientists Cry Foul The size, timing and purpose of the latest appropriation has elicited muffled outrage among scientists who say there is little more to gain from pursuing Haley's ideas. "This is a tremendously egregious misuse of government funding," said Gregory C. Gray, who headed the Navy's Gulf War illness research center in San Diego before retiring in 2001. He now directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Iowa's College of Public Health. "After hundreds of millions of dollars and a decade or better of research, we really haven't made any significant findings," said John R. Feussner, who was VA's chief research officer from 1996 to 2002 and is now chairman of medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. "What is the chance we will find something now? Not as high as zero." At VA, people will not talk on the record about the appropriateness of Haley's grants -- almost all awarded outside the usual competitive routes. "This is a very sensitive topic around here right now, in part because this might be seen as an apparent shift in how VA selects and funds research," said one official, speaking anonymously so as not to offend members of Congress. A former VA official, also unwilling to be quoted by name, was more straightforward: "Everyone is dismayed." Haley's research was originally underwritten by billionaire H. Ross Perot. It later gained the support of VA's Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, on which Haley sat until recently, and of a politically diverse group of legislators that includes Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) and Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio). Haley's chief congressional patron is Texas's senior senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R), who chairs the Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on military construction and veterans affairs. A year ago, she inserted an earmark in the 2007 federal budget that will channel $15 million to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where Haley is a professor and chief of epidemiology. The grant can be renewed four times, for a total of $75 million over five years. VA cemented the arrangement Nov. 14 when it signed a contract saying UT Southwestern will "conduct and manage research projects in order to answer central questions on the nature, causes and treatments of Gulf War veterans' illnesses," said VA spokeswoman Karen Fedele. Hutchison twice declined a request to talk to The Washington Post for this article, as did Haley. Just how much money will go to Haley's research is unknown. Other scientists will be able to apply for funding, but the awarding of grants will bypass VA's usual mechanisms and instead go through "a process established by and headed by the dean of the medical school" at UT Southwestern, Fedele said. Haley's backers say a lack of focus and money are the chief reasons a cause and treatment for the Gulf veterans' ailments have not been found. Hutchison spokesman Marc Short said the senator "doesn't want people to stop doing Gulf War illness research as long as there are symptoms out there that we don't understand." The Conventional Wisdom Outside Haley's circle, most experts think the syndrome is rooted more in medicine, psychology and culture than in toxicology. They have concluded that it is the product of a medley of factors, including the stress of the war and the fear that Saddam Hussein might use chemical or biological weapons. For some people -- particularly reservists, in whom the symptoms are more common -- it may be a physical expression of the disruption that deployment caused in their lives. Some of the physical complaints may simply be the ordinary ups and downs of people's health, magnified by public and media attention. Gulf War syndrome may also be the military manifestation of something long seen in civilian medicine: symptoms whose cause is never found despite extensive testing and diagnostic studies. Haley adamantly rejects that view, especially the stress argument. In three papers published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in January 1997, he outlined six distinct neurological syndromes he identified in several dozen former members of the Navy Reserve "Seabees" construction unit who served in the Gulf. He has spent much of the past decade studying them, focusing on the three most disabling syndromes. For one series of papers, he took 165 measures of neurological function. Among the things he and his colleagues reported was that in 12 veterans with the most severe complaints, a deep-brain structure called the left basal ganglion was smaller than usual. (The right one was normal.) He also found that some ill veterans tended to have a less active version of the enzyme paraoxonase-1, which breaks down the nerve agent sarin. Veterans with symptoms were also more likely to have abnormal eye reflexes and subtle changes in the daily variation of heart rate. What remains unclear is the significance of these results. Poisoned on the Battlefield Haley's most controversial claim is that many veterans suffering from the syndromes were probably exposed to a nerve agent during the war. Nerve gas was released after the war, during the destruction of 816 pounds of sarin and cyclosarin at a storage complex in Khamisiyah, Iraq, in March 1991. The Defense Department modeled the "plume zone" from this explosion and in 1997 notified 98,910 veterans that they may have been briefly exposed downwind of Khamisiyah. That number was later increased to about 102,000. Haley's backers consider those letters proof that the veterans were exposed to nerve gas. That is the view of James H. Binns Jr., a retired businessman and former deputy assistant secretary in the Defense Department who chairs the VA Gulf War illnesses research panel. "There is no contradicting that there was low-level exposure to sarin gases as a result of destruction of Iraqi weapons depots," he said in an interview. Defense officials, however, have always been careful to talk of "potential exposures," not definite ones. No one doing the demolition reported any symptoms of sarin poisoning at the time. Neither did anyone in the plume zone. Few doubt that air containing the vaporized compound drifted over troops, but there is no evidence that anyone actually came in contact with sarin. Furthermore, the Seabees Haley studied were far outside the plume zone, as were most other soldiers who later complained of persistent symptoms. For sarin to be part of the mix of toxins causing Haley's syndromes, there would had to have been other releases -- something experts say is extremely unlikely. "I haven't spoken to anyone in the military or in intelligence who believes it is credible that there was deliberate use of sarin and nobody noticed," said Simon Wessely, a psychiatrist and leading British researcher of Gulf War illness. Evidence that low-level exposure to sarin can lead to chronic illness is equally sparse. Brain-wave tracings of monkeys exposed to low doses sometimes show changes, although the animals' behavior does not change. Rats exposed to low doses of nerve agent and pesticide perform worse in mazes, but most are back to normal in three months. The relevance of those findings to human illness that includes symptoms as diverse as joint pain and chronic diarrhea is unknown. The few studies of people who were exposed and survived are also not very enlightening. American and British soldiers exposed to non-fatal doses of nerve gas as human guinea pigs decades ago suffered no chronic illness, but some survivors of two sarin attacks by terrorists in Japan in the 1990s reported tiredness, headaches and vision changes up to five years later. There is also little evidence that simultaneous exposure to toxins -- even without nerve gas -- has lasting effects. A study published in October found that, properly used, DEET insect repellant, the anti-nerve-gas pill pyridostigmine bromide and insecticide-impregnated uniforms did not cause physical or mental impairment. Overall, most scientists who have investigated the question share the same conclusion: The chance that thousands of people suffered poisoning they did not recognize at the time, and are now ill with a disease that has never been seen before, is close to nil. But while the scientific establishment has always been skeptical of Haley's findings, 10 years ago Pentagon officials saw them as possibly the key to the mystery of Gulf War syndrome. Support Lost, and Regained "In my opinion, Haley was researching the very essence of Gulf War illness," recalled Bernard Rostker, an economist who headed the Defense Department office devoted to that subject. In 1997, his office provided $3 million to Haley out of discretionary funds when the Dallas scientist failed to win a grant through the military's usual competitive funding mechanism. They money was to give Haley a chance to confirm his findings in a larger, representative sample of veterans. But he did not do that, which became clear when Rostker toured the Dallas research ward in 1998 and encountered only previously examined veterans. "I thought Dr. Rostker was going to blow a gasket right then and there," recalled Michael E. Kilpatrick, deputy director of deployment health support at the Pentagon, who was on the visit. Haley eventually did test 336 additional veterans reached through the Dallas VA hospital, identifying 29 with one of his six syndromes. Among the 249 Seabees he had examined earlier, he found 25. "Basically, Haley stiffed the government," Rostker said recently. He refused to give Haley more money, and Hutchison began inserting budget earmarks to fund Haley's work. Pentagon and VA officials still say the crucial question that needs answering is whether Haley's syndromes can be found in a larger group of veterans. To that end, the government is spending more than $10 million to ask a random sample of 10,000 veterans about symptoms, and to study the brains of several hundred who are clearly ill, using MRI scanners. Along with the new appropriation, that will extend efforts to examine Haley's theory to almost the 20th anniversary of the conflict. Copyright 1996- The Washington Post Company | User ***************************************************************** 52 AFP: Body of ex-spy's Italian contact high in polonium - by Prashant Rao Mon Dec 4, 12:52 AM ET LONDON (AFP) - Mario Scaramella, who met with ex Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, said he had five times the amount of the radioactive substance polonium considered deadly in his body, as British police officers prepared to travel to Russia to continue their inquiry. Scaramella, an Italian self-styled security expert who met with the former spy at a central London sushi bar on November 1, three weeks before Litvinenko died, was said to be "well" in University College Hospital (UCH). "I have an amount of polonium in my body which is five times higher than the dose considered deadly," he said in a telephone interview which was aired by Italy's RAI 1 television. The Italian "remains well, the results of his pathology tests to date remain normal," said a spokesman for University College Hospital, where Litvinenko died on November 23, with large quantities of polonium-210 in his urine. Scaramella's lawyer Sergio Rastrelli said his client had either "ingested or inhaled" the polonium and had not been contaminated by Litvinenko. Meanwhile, police confirmed that counter-terrorism officers were expected to leave for Moscow "very soon", and the BBC said nine officers could travel to Russia as early as Monday. A spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police, however, declined to comment. According to a report in The Guardian daily on Monday, the officers were to interview the three Russian men who met Litvinenko on the same day as the ex-spy's meeting with Scaramella, about three weeks before he eventually died. The three men -- Andrei Lugovoi, Dmitri Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko -- have all protested their innocence, and Lugovoi has said that he believes they are being framed by the real culprit. Former KGB man Lugovoi denied involvement in any plot against Litvinenko, telling The Sunday Times: "We suspect that someone has been trying to frame us. The Guardian also reported that police wanted to interview two other men in Moscow -- whose names have not yet appeared in public -- who may have met with Litvinenko on a trip to London. Home Secretary John Reid said he was confident London was getting the necessary assistance from Moscow over what happened to the former Russian agent. But as the police probe into Litvinenko's mysterious radiation poisoning entered its third week, reports said Britain feared a long-term diplomatic fall-out with Russia from the affair. Reid, who was to meet European counterparts in Brussels over Monday and Tuesday, vowed that all information would be followed up wherever it led. "Over the next few days, I think all of these things will widen out a little from the circle just being here in Britain," he told Sky News television. "Tomorrow I will be at the European Council (of Ministers) and I will certainly be sharing information, getting what we can from European counterparts; the health authorities have already started to liaise with their European colleagues and the police will follow wherever this investigation leads -- inside or outside of Britain." The Sunday Times reported that British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett had told senior ministers that Russian President Vladimir Putin" /> had expressed his anger at Britain's failure to gag Litvinenko after he was poisoned. The former Russian agent wrote a letter on his death-bed which pointed the finger directly at Putin, whom he described as "barbaric and ruthless". Foreign Office officials later confirmed that Russia had raised the letter with Beckett. The Observer newspaper said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had accompanied Scotland Yard detectives during questioning of another Russian exile, former KGB agent Yuri Shvets, in Washington. Shvets -- who has links to London-based dissident Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky -- reportedly compiled a file Litvinenko had in his possession containing potentially damaging revelations about Moscow and the state takeover of Russian oil company Yukos. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 53 AFP: Police to head to Moscow as ex-spy probe widens - Mon Dec 4, 5:22 AM ET LONDON (AFP) - Police have prepared to head to Moscow as part of a widening probe into the death of ex Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who accused the Kremlin of being behind his radioactive poisoning. Officials said nine counter-terrorism officers were expected to leave "very soon" for the Russian capital, where President Vladimir Putin" /> Vladimir Putinhas dismissed the allegations as politically motivated. According to a report in The Guardian daily, the officers were to interview the three Russian men who met Litvinenko on November 1, the day he fell ill, about three weeks before he eventually died. The trio -- businessmen Andrei Lugovoi, Dmitri Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko -- have all protested their innocence, while Lugovoi has said that he believes they are being framed by the real culprit. A spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police, however, declined to comment on Monday. Former KGB man Lugovoi denied involvement in any plot against Litvinenko, telling The Sunday Times: "We suspect that someone has been trying to frame us. The Guardian also reported that police wanted to interview two other men in Moscow -- whose names have not yet appeared in public -- who may have met Litvinenko on a trip to London. Home Secretary John Reid said he was confident London was getting the necessary assistance from Moscow over what happened to the former Russian agent. Reid, who was to meet his European Union" /> European Union(EU) counterparts for regular talks in Brussels Monday and Tuesday, vowed that all information would be followed up wherever it led. "Over the next few days, I think all of these things will widen out a little from the circle just being here in Britain," he told Sky News television Sunday. The Sunday Times reported that Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett had told senior ministers that Russian President Putin had expressed his anger at Britain's failure to gag Litvinenko after he was poisoned. The former Russian agent wrote a letter on his death-bed which pointed the finger directly at Putin, whom he described as "barbaric and ruthless". Foreign Office officials later confirmed that Russia had raised the letter with Beckett. The Observer newspaper said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had accompanied Scotland Yard detectives during questioning of another Russian exile, former KGB agent Yuri Shvets, in Washington. Monday's developments came after an Italian contact of Litvinenko who was confirmed last week to have also been contaminated with polonium 210 said he had five times the fatal level of the substance in his body, Scaramella, an Italian self-styled security expert who met the former spy at a central London sushi bar on November 1, three weeks before Litvinenko died, was said to be "well" in University College Hospital (UCH). "I have an amount of polonium in my body which is five times higher than the dose considered deadly," he said in a telephone interview which was aired by Italy's RAI 1 television. The Italian "remains well, the results of his pathology tests to date remain normal," said a spokesman for University College Hospital, where Litvinenko died on November 23, with large quantities of polonium-210 in his urine. Scaramella's lawyer Sergio Rastrelli said his client had either "ingested or inhaled" the polonium and had not been contaminated by Litvinenko. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 54 Aftenposten.no: State accused of paying 'hush money' to cancer victims - [Aftenposten Nettutgaven] First published: 04 Dec 2006, 12:26 Norwegian state compensation has secretly been paid out over the past 10 years to students and employees who worked with dangerous substances at a makeshift lab in Trondheim. Some of the compensation has gone to the families of lab workers who developed cancer and died, reported newspaper VG on Monday. Now some of them are regretting that they agreed to secret compensation deals. "We let ourselves be bought to keep quiet," the widow of one cancer victim told VG. "The state has put a lid on the entire scandal." Eva Hestnes' husband Arnold died in 1997 at the age of 49, just six months after he was diagnosed with cancer. He had studied and worked in a laboratory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim that since has been torn down. Hestnes was one of thousands who worked in NTNU's Rosenborg lab in the 1970s and 1980s. Several later developed cancer believed linked to the substances they handled, including benzen and radioactive isotopes. Hestnes' short and losing battle with the cancer known as non-Hodgkins lymphoma prompted NTNU to approach his widow with a compensation offer. NTNU also has struck deals, all of them confidential, with around a half-dozen others, while negotiations are proceeding with three former students who now are sick. NTNU earlier had claimed that it was only in the 1970s that some students fell ill, but VG reported the cancer scandal continued through the 1990s. The government minister in charge of education claimed NTNU acted properly in the case, but promised an investigation. Aftenposten English Web Desk Publisher: Aftenposten Multimedia A/S, Oslo, Norway.Telephone: +47 - 22 86 30 00. All rights, including copyright and database right, are owned by or licensed to Aftenposten Multimedia.© Aftenposten Multimedia. ***************************************************************** 55 Telegraph: Secret file shows risk 'vastly overstated' Tuesday 5 December 2006 By Ben Fenton Last Updated: 1:50am GMT 05/12/2006 Criticism of the Government for unnecessarily alarming British Airways passengers last week about traces of alpha-radiation found on jets will be strengthened by the discovery of top secret files from the Atomic Weapons Establishment. Scientists have said that the chances of passengers picking up any kind of health threat from residual traces of polonium-210 are infinitesimal and so it was pointless to alert 33,000 people who may have flown on the three Boeing aircraft. [BA planes] Scientists have said that the risk from residual traces of polonium-210 are infinitesimal Now the AWE files show how small that risk really is because they record the only known secondary contamination with the element. The Establishment, Britain's most closely-guarded nuclear weapons site in Aldermaston, Berks, was the only place at which polonium-210, the substance which killed Alexander Litvinenko, was regularly handled in Britain because it was used in the 1950s as a trigger for early atom bombs. Only on two occasions did the metal, potentially lethal if swallowed or inhaled in large quantities, cause a health scare at the AWE, according to the files, unearthed at the National Archives in Kew. On the first occasion, in 1953, a worker in the polonium department was found to have high levels of alpha radiation in his routine urine test. It was found that the man was "a bad nail-biter" and this was why he had ingested enough tiny traces of polonium over a period of months to show up on the scan. It appears that he did not use gloves when working around the material. The unnamed man returned to work after a short period. The second, much more serious incident occurred in 1955, when 15 workers in the section where polonium was processed were exposed when a load of waste material was spilled over a table. The material was gathered up into a large paper bag, but then the worst happened. "While collecting the waste into the bag, it was accidentally compressed and a puff of air came up into the faces of two men," the report said. "Because it was known that the waste was grossly contaminated, it seems reasonable to assume that the doses were received by inhalation." This level of direct exposure by inhalation must be many times greater than any passenger would be likely to receive from sitting on a plane, according to Dr Paddy Regan, a reader in nuclear physics at the University of Surrey. "They effectively breathed this in directly from a powerful source and the dose they got would have been several orders of magnitude greater than anyone could have got from simply sitting on a plane," he said. And the top secret files show that the peak level of radiation detected in the two men was 0.6 microcuries in one and 0.2 microcuries in the second. A lethal dose for ingestion or inhalation by a human being would be between 500 and 5,000 microcuries, according to calculations by Dr Regan and his colleagues. "Even though inhalation is the most dangerous form of receiving this stuff, these two men got very small doses, so it shows what little risk there is to BA passengers." Although they are not named, there is no suggestion in the file that either man suffered any kind of health setback from their exposure. In 1957, the fire and explosion at the nuclear reactor at Windscale (now called Sellafield), Cumbria, released 240 curies of polonium into the atmosphere, enough to kill thousands of people if ingested, but rendered harmless by being diffusion in the atmosphere. The British government made no mention of the polonium leak at the time, not to avoid frightening the public, but because the element was considered a very primitive atomic trigger and they did not want the Americans or Soviets to know that Britain was still reliant on it for their nuclear weapons. © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2006. ***************************************************************** 56 UPI: Russia no longer producing polonium-210 United Press International - NewsTrack - 12/4/2006 10:46:00 AM -0500 MOSCOW, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Russia's nuclear agency said the country is no longer producing radioactive polonium-210, the substance that killed a former KGB spy in Britain. An unidentified spokesman for the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power in Moscow said Monday that the only facility capable of producing the isotope was closed two years ago, the Novosti news agency reported. The spokesman said just 8 grams of polonium-210 have been created from reserve stocks of uranium. "We have supplied it (polonium-210) to U.S. companies, and there were deliveries to British firms. The 8 grams we have produced cannot have disappeared in Russia, but we do not keep track of the material after selling it," the source said. Outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, former KGB spy and defector Alexander Litvinenko died of polonium-210 poisoning in a London hospital on Nov. 23. This week, Scotland Yard is sending nine investigators to Moscow to investigate contacts Litvinenko had with at least five people. © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 57 [du-list] DOE selects recipients of GNEP Siting Grants Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:20:05 -0800 Susan Gordon posted Tomorrow check out daytondailynews.com for another story. Subject: DOE selects recipients of GNEP Siting Grants November 29, 2006 Department of Energy Selects Recipients of GNEP Siting Grants Eleven sites to be analyzed for potential nuclear recycling facilities WASHINGTON, DC ? The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced that 11 commercial and public consortia have been selected to receive up to $16 million in grants, subject to negotiation, to conduct detailed siting studies for integrated spent fuel recycling facilities under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) initiative. DOE will award the grants early next year after negotiations are completed with prospective awardees. ?As our economy grows so will the need for reliable, emissions-free energy generation. Nuclear energy can help meet that need and GNEP can do it in a way that maximizes the benefit of nuclear fuel while minimizing the risk of nuclear proliferation,? DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon said. ?That is why we are pleased that so many communities across the country are interested in hosting the initial facilities necessary to support this exciting project. These selections are an important initial step in proceeding to evaluate and select locations to host GNEP facilities.? Of the 11 sites located throughout the country, six are currently owned and operated by DOE. The study sites and sponsors are: 1. Atomic City, ID EnergySolutions, LLC 2. Barnwell, SC EnergySolutions, LLC 3. Hanford Site, WA Tri-City Industrial Development Council/Columbia Basin Consulting Group 4. Hobbs, NM Eddy Lea Energy Alliance 5. Idaho National Laboratory, ID Regional Development Alliance, Inc. 6. Morris, IL General Electric Company 7. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee 8. Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, KY Paducah Uranium Plant Asset Utilization, Inc. 9. Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, OH Piketon Initiative for Nuclear Independence, LLC 10. Roswell, NM EnergySolutions, LLC 11. Savannah River National Laboratory, SC Economic Development Partnership of Aiken and Edgefield Counties The grantees will perform detailed siting studies related to hosting one or both of the Consolidated Fuel Treatment Center and the Advanced Burner Reactor. The subsequent awards will be for a 90-day period of performance to complete a detailed site characterization study of each sponsored site. Congress provided up to $20 million in FY 2006 for integrated spent fuel recycling facilities siting studies. The remaining funds will be held in reserve to potentially fund supplemental activities if required. Information generated from the detailed siting studies of non-DOE sites is expected to address a variety of site-related matters, including site and nearby land uses; demographics; aquatic and riparian ecological communities; terrestrial plant and animal habitat; threatened or endangered species; historical, archaeological and cultural resources; geology and seismology; weather and climate; and regulatory and permitting requirements. Information requirements for the DOE sites are more limited due to the availability of previous studies. The information may also be used in the environmental impact statement (EIS) that will evaluate the potential environmental impacts from each proposed GNEP facility. At the conclusion of the EIS, DOE will make decisions about whether to move forward with the facilities, and if so, where to locate them. Fourteen applications were originally submitted, and twelve were selected to receive a comprehensive merit review under the criteria listed in the Financial Assistance Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) issued in August 2006. Two of the twelve recently decided to collaborate and team, as they proposed the same site for study. An advanced nuclear fuel recycling center contains facilities where usable uranium and transuranics are separated from spent light water reactor fuel for use in producing new fuel that can be reused in a power reactor. An advanced recycling reactor is a fast reactor that would demonstrate the ability to reuse and consume materials recovered from spent nuclear fuel, including long-lived elements that would otherwise have to be disposed of in a geologic repository. Both facilities could be located at the same site. The development and deployment of advanced nuclear fuel recycling facilities is a major element of GNEP, part of President Bush?s Advanced Energy Initiative. In general, these technologies focus on separating commercial light water reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) into its usable and waste components, fabricating and recycling fast reactor fuel containing transuranic elements from the usable components of SNF, and converting those transuranics into shorter-lived radioisotopes while producing electricity in an advanced recycling reactor. For more information on GNEP, visit: http://www.gnep.gov/. Additional information on DOE?s nuclear energy program may be found on http://www.nuclear.energy.gov/. Media contact(s): Craig Stevens, (202) 586-4940 Vina Colley Vina Colley __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. 6de16d.jpg Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Visit Your Group SPONSORED LINKS * California energy * Science lab equipment * Increase energy level * Life science research * Life sciences Yahoo! News Sports News Get up to the minute sports news New web site? Drive traffic now. Get your business on Yahoo! search. Sell Online Start selling with our award-winning e-commerce tools. . 6de17e.jpg __,_._,___ Attachment Converted: 6de16d.jpg: 00000001,1dafa4eb,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 6de17e.jpg: 00000001,1dafa4ec,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 58 [du-list] GNEP/Piketon/PortsmouthOhio/ Gaseous Diffusion Plant Press Release: December 1, 2006 From: PRESS (Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety & Security) National Nuclear Workers for Justice Contact: Vina Colley, email vcolley@earthlink.net, (740) 353 2275, cell 357-8916 (606) 932 2383, (740) 947 9162 Local Group Joins National Opposition to Nuclear Waste Dump and Plutonium Reprocessing Plans for Piketon With the DOE announcement this week that the PGDP is one step closer to becoming a high-level nuclear waste dump and a plutonium-reprocessing center, a local watchdog group, PRESS, along with 35 other national organizations issued a strong condemnation to this proposal. (The DOE proposal is part of a Bush administration plan to jump-start the ailing nuclear industry and is being referred to as GNEP or Global Nuclear Energy Partnership). PRESS (Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security) is a member of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, an umbrella group of community organizations that are downwind and downstream from nuclear facilities that have already suffered first-hand effects of environmental degradation from nuclear weapons production. PRESS is also affiliated with the Military Toxic Project. "As PRESS members, we have often spoken out about worker illnesses and deaths attributed to chemical and radiological contamination from the Piketon facility, but these new GNEP proposals are guaranteed to take us even deeper into environmental, economic, national security and nuclear proliferation disasters," says Vina Colley, President of PRESS. The Piketon site was named as one of the eleven "finalists" that will now be considered for storing large amounts of highly radioactive spent fuel rods that will be shipped in from the 103 nuclear reactors around the country. Each shipping container that would bring the waste to Piketon by truck, train and barge will hold 40 or more times the radioactivity released by the Hiroshima bomb. Another aspect of the GNEP plan is to resume reprocessing plutonium from the spent fuel, a practice that was abandoned in this nation over 30 years ago due to the unprecedented disasters it brought to areas in which it was practiced. Decades later all of these sites remain dangerously contaminated. Of all the steps in the nuclear chain, reprocessing is the most perilous to human life and has the highest routine discharge of emissions. The process also leaves enormous quantities of highly radioactive, acidic, liquid waste that ends up buried in tanks that eventually leak threatening crucial water supplies. While the DOE is trying to claim that reprocessing is a sound alternative based on "recycling" principles, nothing could be further from the truth. Rather than reducing the amount of poisonous waste requiring long-term isolation from the human biosphere, the waste left from reprocessing is actually hotter than the original spent fuel, and additional large quantities of other contaminants are created in the process. The DOE is calling their plan for reprocessing plutonium and uranium into a mixed oxide fuel "consolidated fuel treatment." However, according to Piketon area resident, Nathan Noy, the technology for the creation of this experimental fuel is yet to be proven and developed. "The Nuclear Information Resource Service points out that one of the many problems with mixed oxide is that as a reactor fuel it is known to be harder to control. If control is lost, it is twice as deadly as uranium fuel and at least 20 times more expensive to produce," says Noy. None of the 103 nuclear power plants in the U.S. are equipped to operate on a mixed oxide fuel that would be produced under GNEP. Therefore the DOE plan calls for building a pilot fast reactor that might or might not work with the mixed oxide fuel. The National Academy of Sciences and the Union of Concerned Scientists have both gone on record stating that the entire GNEP plan is totally indefensible. PRESS member, Lorry Swain, warns "the greatest lie in the GNEP proposal is that it will make us safer from the threat of nuclear weapons. North Korea recently tested a nuclear weapon it produced from plutonium obtained through reprocessing. The necessary step between a nuclear reactor and a nuclear bomb is reprocessing plutonium. This step makes the weapons-grade plutonium available for sabotage and terrorist weaponry. That's the other reason that plutonium reprocessing was banned in the U.S. in the 1970s." The DOE has yet to explain where the billions of dollars will come from that would be needed to enact this ill-advised GNEP proposal. Meantime, funding and work on the long-ago, promised clean-up of the contamination already present at Piketon remains stalled and uncertain. And dying workers from Piketon, Hanford, Savannah River and other nuclear sites are still getting the run-around from the EEOICPA, the program that was supposed to compensate them for their nuclear-related illnesses. Vina Colley ***************************************************************** 59 [shundahaialert] Nuclear weapons, nuclear waste and Shundahai Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:23:53 -0800 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 <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Shundahai Network E ­ News December 2006 <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Contents Include: Shundahai Network in transition; Corbin Harney - an update and appeal; Bombplex 2030 ­ The U.S. plan for new nuclear weapons; Yucca Mountain ­ new developments and actions; Updates on Divine Strake, nuclear power, nuclear waste, and indigenous peoples news; Upcoming events; An invitation to be a part of the Shundahai Network website collective; and, A message from the new editor and internet coordinator <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Shundahai Network in transition After a three year run, the Salt Lake City office has closed due to funding and related time and personnel constraints. Most of the equipment has been put into storage, and Pete Litster is continuing his efforts as Executive Director from his apartment while working overtime at an outdoor gear warehouse to pay the bills. Shundahai Network's Board of Directors is considering the future long-term direction for the organization. Your continued support is needed to help in this process. There are some exciting proposals being looked at. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#transition We plan on expanding our web presence and becoming a stronger resource for indigenous and minority communities regarding nuclear and environmental justice issues. We are forming a collective of volunteers to continue this work. If you are interested in participating please see our proposal below. <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Corbin Harney - an update and appeal Many of you know Corbin or know of his life’s work over the past couple of decades. He has had a profound impact on almost everyone he has met. This past summer, Corbin was diagnosed by western doctors with prostate cancer which has reportedly spread to his bones. Due to the healing ceremonies, prayers and help of many people, his health has been improving but he still needs our prayers and any good energy that you could send him. We are asking that if anyone would like to help in the expense of Corbin’s medical treatments, exams, herbs, transportation costs, and other related expenses, please send checks to Corbin Harney, P.O. Box 187, Tecopa, CA. 92389 We are collecting messages to send to Corbin towards the end of December in a care package. If you know Corbin, please consider writing a short statement that we can include. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#corbin <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Bombplex 2030 - The U.S. plan for new nuclear weapons The Department of Energy (DOE) has released a Notice of Intent to prepare a programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) for a massive reorganization and refurbishment of the nuclear weapons complex. This giant shift in operations is being offered as a supplemental environmental impact statement to the 1996 Stockpile Stewardship and Management PEIS in an attempt to mask the scale of the proposed changes. Bombplex 2030 essentially seeks to replace old nukes with new and more usable nukes. They are proposing to consolidate and renovate nuclear weapons facilities that are located all around our country. The plans will lessen the number of nukes currently on hand, however, it will give the U.S. the power to build new nukes at an astonishing rate. Is this your vision of the world in 2030? Take action and add your voice. Public comments are due by January 17, 2007. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#bombplex <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Yucca Mountain ­ new developments and actions The U.S. Department of Energy has issued a new call for public comments on Yucca Mountain. The comments are for two new Environmental Impact Statements. One for a plan for new facilities at Yucca Mountain and one for a new possible railroad transportation route to Yucca Mountain. Add your voice and demand responsibility and accountability from the U.S. government to protect the environment and honor the human rights of the Western Shoshone Nation. The deadline for public comments is December 12, 2006. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#yucca <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Divine Strake The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) had scheduled a weapons test, code named "Divine Strake" originally for June 2, 2006 at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). The test was postponed due to lawsuits and public outrage including a protest at NTS that we helped organize. Other sites were considered for the massive explosion including sites in Indiana and New Mexico, but after local activists mobilized in those states it has now been moved back to NTS and U.S. hopes to conduct it in 2007. Stay tuned for more updates as the Stop Divine Strake coalition prepares new strategies to cancel this test once and for all. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#updates <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Nuclear Power Efforts are being pursued in at least Georgia and Idaho to build or develop new nuclear power reactors and modify current ones to produce more electricity, but also more deadly waste. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#updates <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Nuclear Waste Energy Solutions, a Utah based nuclear waste company has proposed new nuclear waste reprocessing plants and has sparked local fury when a Salt Lake City Arena was renamed the Energy Solutions Arena. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#updates <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Indigenous news Highlighted story - Native American fights corporations For more than 30 years, Carrie Dann, a native Shoshone American, has been fighting the US government for her people's rights to their ancestral land. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#indingeous <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Upcoming events >From the Western Shoshone Defense Project - 2nd Annual Women’s Gathering, December 15 ­ 17th, 2006, Poo-Ha-Bah Native Healing Center (Tecopa, California). Discuss Traditional Roles of the Female and Women in the Nature Way of Life. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#events <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> An invitation to be a part of the Shundahai Network website collective We are looking for five activists to be a part of a dynamic collective of volunteers who would commit to 3 ­ 5 hours a week on helping to design the website, do research and post information on our issue pages, and do outreach to prospective participating organizations. This could be an exciting possibility to be part of a creative team of dedicated activists addressing important concerns affecting indigenous and minority communities regarding nuclear and environmental justice issues. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#collective <|>|<|>|<|>|<|> Message from the new editor and internet coordinator I am Reinard Knutsen. Some of you may know me from my past work with Shundahai Network. I have always remained involved at some level and am pleased to continue my service as an internet coordinator and editor for the E-news. I have not personally sent out an email newsletter since 2002 and I admit to being rusty in my editorial skills. Please forgive any mistakes you might find in this first attempt. Read more >>> http://www.shundahai.org/enews1206.htm#message In Peace, Respect, Solidarity and Love, Reinard Shundahai Network www.shundahai.org P.O. Box 1115 Salt Lake City, UT 84110 Phone- 801.533.0128 Fax- 801.533.0129 shundahai@shundahai.org Online Fundraising Store- www.cafepress.com/shundahainet If you are a Myspace user, you can now add us! www.Myspace.com/shundahai Shundahai is a Newe (Western Shoshone) word meaning "Peace and Harmony with all Creation" ***************************************************************** 60 The Australian: Boost uranium mining, report urges | | + NEWS.com.au | This story is from our news.com.aunetwork Source: AAP December 04, 2006 THREE opposition MPs are backing a government push to take on the Labor states over their refusal to agree to open up uranium mining. A House of Representatives report on uranium, tabled in parliament today, recommends that, at the next Council of Australian Governments (CoAG) meeting, the federal resources minister "encourage state governments to reconsider their opposition to uranium mining''. It also wants the minister to urge the states to abolish legislative restrictions on uranium mining and exploration. The report, by the 10-member House Standing Committee on Industry and Resources, includes Labor MPs Michael Hatton, Dick Adams and Martin Ferguson. In the report's foreword, Committee chairman Liberal Geoff Prosser pointed out that the committee had been unanimous in its view on opening up uranium mining and exports. "It is notable that on such an historically controversial subject as uranium mining and exports, the committee has produced a unanimous report,'' he said. "All members are agreed that the present restrictions on uranium exploration and mining are illogical, inconsistent and anti-competitive. "Restrictions have impeded investment in the industry and have resulted in a loss of regional employment and wealth creation opportunities, royalties and taxation receipts. "The committee concludes that state policies preventing development of new uranium mines should be lifted and legislative restrictions on uranium mining should be repealed.'' The report backs the argument for Australia to grow its current uranium exports, saying the nation has the ability to help ease the global warming problem by supplying the fuel to uranium-hungry countries. "The committee wholeheartedly agrees with a submitter who stated that through its supply of uranium 'Australia should throw the world a climate lifeline','' Mr Prosser said. In an effort to address community concern about nuclear issues, the committee has suggested a number of ways to address misinformation and public ignorance about nuclear matters. The committee recommended stronger measures to protect nuclear workers, as well as a renewed effort to boost nuclear non-proliferation efforts. It also wants further examination of how Australia could benefit from its uranium resources, including the establishment of facilities for uranium conversion and enrichment. "The committee further recommends that such examination take account of full life cycle costs and benefits of the proposed facilities,'' the report said. Terms © The Australian ***************************************************************** 61 The Australian: ALP split on new uranium mining | | + NEWS.com.au | This story is from our news.com.aunetwork Source: AAP By Sandra O'Malley and Susanna Dunkerley December 04, 2006 LABOR states are refusing to soften their stance against the expansion of uranium mining, despite opposition MPs supporting a Government push to take them on over the issue. Three federal Labor MPs added to the momentum for Labor to abandon its no new uranium mines policy as they supported a Government report which took issue with states for refusing to agree to open up uranium mining in Australia. The House of Representatives report on uranium, tabled in Parliament today, recommended the Commonwealth encourage state governments to reconsider their opposition to uranium mining at the next Council of Australian Governments (CoAG) meeting. It also wants the minister to urge the states to abolish legislative restrictions on uranium mining and exploration. Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane called on the states to repeal laws which he said were strangling the nation's uranium export industry. Committee chairman Liberal Geoff Prosser said the present restrictions on uranium exploration and mining were illogical, inconsistent and anti-competitive. "Restrictions have impeded investment in the industry and have resulted in a loss of regional employment and wealth creation opportunities, royalties and taxation receipts," he said. The report is by the 10-member House Standing Committee on Industry and Resources, which includes Labor MPs Michael Hatton, Dick Adams and Martin Ferguson. But Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland showed few signs of changing their opposition to uranium mining today. South Australian Premier Mike Rann and Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin back expanded mining. A spokesman for NSW Premier Morris Iemma said the state Government was not considering introducing legislation to repeal the ban. Victoria, too, says it won't be pushed into changing its laws. The issue will come to a head next April at Labor's national conference, when the party is set to vote on a push to abandon the policy. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie will abide by the conference decision. But, at present, Mr Beattie said his Government doesn't support uranium mining. WA Premier Alan Carpenter remains firmly in the no mining camp. "They do not want to see West Australia become a nuclear waste dump and if they don't want that, they won't be supporting uranium mining either, because one thing will lead to the another," he said. However, Mr Ferguson, a long-term advocate for change, expects Mr Rudd will be able to convince the party to abandon the current policy. "With Kevin as leader he reaffirmed last Friday at the media conference his support for changing our policy on uranium for preventing additional mines in Australia my view is that Kevin will win the day at the national conference," he said. While the Labor members support the call for a relaxation of the rules on uranium mining, they are against a recommendation for a further examination of how Australia could benefit from its uranium resources, including the establishment of uranium conversion and enrichment facilities. "We are not in the mind to support the rest of the committee in regard to enrichment in Australia or a nuclear industry for Australia," Mr Ferguson said. The committee also recommended beefed up measures to protect nuclear workers, as well as a renewed effort to boost nuclear non-proliferation efforts. In an effort to address community concern about nuclear issues, it has suggested a number of ways to address misinformation and public ignorance about nuclear matters, including more school programs. © The Australian ***************************************************************** 62 Salt Lake Tribune: Envirocare's makeover Last Updated:12/02/2006 EnergySolutions' claim that the massive amounts of radioactive waste it brings into our state are no threat to our health or safety sounds eerily similar to the very same claim made when the atomic bomb was tested in the Nevada desert. Envirocare has changed its name and now is trying to piggyback on Larry Miller's good name. Will this extreme makeover work? I hope not. I hope that Larry Miller will do the hard - but right - thing and change the name of his arena. Until he does, I am going to spend my theater, sports event and automobile money elsewhere. Brad Parker Salt Lake City © Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 63 AU ABC: Uranium value-adding poses moral questions - expert ABC Northern Territory | Local News | Story Monday, 4 December 2006. 21:34 (AEDT)Monday, 4 December 2006. The report calls on all governments to reconsider opposition to uranium mining. ABC TV The head of the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE) says he supports the broader issues of a federal report on Australia's uranium industry published today. The bipartisan report by the House of Representatives Committee on Industry and Resources has called for all governments to reconsider opposition to uranium mining and change laws preventing exploration and mining. The committee found nuclear power significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions and is the only energy alternative to fossil fuels for reliable electricity on a large scale. The report says Australia must also consider how to value-add by developing industries in uranium enrichment, nuclear waste treatment and disposal. AINSE's Professor John White says he is still checking the report but believes if those industries are developed, Australia will have to be more involved in what becomes of uranium when it is exported. "It's absolutely morally necessary for us to take a lead in international affairs at the [International] Atomic Energy Agency, and in the matters that are discussed in a couple of recommendations relating to taking a lead internationally on anti-proliferation measures and so on, because we'd undoubtedly be caught up in that and the sooner we get into [that] the better," he said. The report also calls for the Government to pursue a stronger global non-proliferation regime, give money to rehabilitate mine sites and provide greater scientific scrutiny of the industry. Meanwhile, the Northern Territory's Environment Centre says the public remains opposed to nuclear power and increased uranium mining. "I think the Government's actually helping us in a way by being gung-ho about this campaign to push nuclear power," centre spokeswoman Emma King said. "The community is actually going, 'Hey, hang on a sec, we know that historically there's been a lot of problems with the nuclear industry'." Ms King says a public education plan on uranium would not work. "I find it very cynical that community concerns about uranium mining and the nuclear industry are being seen as to be able to be addressed by a PR campaign," she said. "I think that the Government should be taking those concerns much more seriously and addressing them with a real community debate." ***************************************************************** 64 Teen Ink: Environment: Nuclear Waste by Nancy R., Roslyn, NY Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, we are still left with nuclear waste from the arms race. Nuclear waste is highly poisonous and can remain like that for 100,000 years. As we learned after the disasterous 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl, the results of not handling nuclear waste properly can be devastating. The disposal of nuclear waste is clearly a reason for concern, so how can we ensure that it will remain undisturbed for these extended periods of time? Scientists have proposed a number of solutions, though each has drawbacks. In order to understand how important nuclear waste management is, we need to realize the dangers of mismanagement. Low doses of radiation are suspected of causing genetic defects. At Chernobyl, people were exposed to higher doses of radiation, which caused an increase in cancers and genetic mutations. Another problem was the long-term exposure to radiation since these nuclear substances were dispersed in an extremely large area. (The accident contaminated 125,000 square miles in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.) The death toll from the accident is controversial but a 2006 Greenpeace report estimates that the full consequences of the Chernobyl disaster could top a quarter million cancer cases and nearly 100,000 fatal cancers. If nuclear waste is not managed properly, this could happen again. Nuclear waste that needs disposal comes from two sources: nuclear reactors and decommissioned nuclear weapons. These wastes can be classified by their radioactive half life. Low-level waste (objects exposed to radioactive substances including suits, test tubes, an actual nuclear facility or syringes from hospitals) can be stored for a few years and be completely safe. High-level waste (actual nuclear substances) have half-lives of thousands of years and require extremely long-term storage away from human contact. This high-level waste is the most controversial and there is currently no solution for its storage. One of the most appealing solutions is to shoot the waste into space but there are a number of problems with this idea. If we could get the waste into space, how far away would it need to be? If it remained in orbit around Earth, it could bump into a satellite and potentially fall back to Earth. Furthermore, launching waste into space could be dangerous; if the rocket malfunctioned and exploded, the waste would be dispersed and irreparable damage done. Finally, theres the issue of the price tag. Another solution that is slightly less popular is to bury the waste under the tectonic plates in the ocean floor. When buried, the waste would be virtually unreachable, but it would be extremely costly to build machinery that could get to the ocean floor and bury the nuclear substances encased in something that could withstand the extreme pressure of the depth. Another issue is that we do not have encasements that exceed the half-life of the radio-isotopes and when the encasement disintegrates, there could be a negative impact on the ocean. The most accepted solution for long-term storage is burial inside mountains. The plan is to create long caverns, bury the waste, and then close the caverns. This seems the most feasible option and the government has designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a burial site. There are, however, some drawbacks to this plan as well. The site is only 90 miles from Las Vegas and close to the citys only water supply, so there is a fear of contamination. Nevertheless, it seems fairly certain that it will be the site for nuclear waste burial. There is a lot of controversy surrounding nuclear waste management. Though it is one of the largest issues that the world faces (and there does not seem to be a simple answer), action must be taken. By Kaelee L., Petersburg, MI Teen Ink - PO Box 30, Newton, MA 02461 - (617) 964-6800 - editor@teenink.com Published by The Young Authors Foundation, Inc. - A 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Copyright 2006 by Teen Ink, The 21st Century and The Young ***************************************************************** 65 thewest.com.au: Vic won't be pushed into uranium: govt [Opinions] [Community] 4th December 2006, 15:44 WST The Victorian government says it will not be pushed into changing its existing laws preventing uranium mining in the state. It comes after three federal opposition MPs on Monday backed a Howard government push to take on the Labor states over their refusal to agree to an opening up of uranium mining. A House of Representatives report on uranium, tabled in parliament recommended that, at the next Council of Australian Governments (CoAG) meeting, the federal resources minister "encourage state governments to reconsider their opposition to uranium mining". The report also urges the states to abolish legislative restrictions on uranium mining and exploration. But a spokesman for Premier Steve Bracks said Victoria would not be bullied into changing its existing policy on uranium mining. "Steve Bracks made it clear in the election campaign that Victoria will not be part of (Prime Minister) John Howard's nuclear plan and will retain existing laws that prevent uranium mining," a spokesman for Mr Bracks said. "Victoria will continue to be nuclear free under a Bracks Labor government," he said. AAP thewest.com.au] 'The West Australian' is a trademark of West Australian Newspapers Pty Ltd 2006. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 66 thewest.com.au: States refuse to budge on uranium mining [Opinions] [Community] 4th December 2006, 17:12 WST Labor states are refusing to soften their stance against the expansion of uranium mining, despite opposition MPs supporting a government push to take them on over the issue. Three federal Labor MPs added to the momentum for Labor to abandon its no new uranium mines policy as they supported a government report which took issue with states for refusing to agree to open up uranium mining in Australia. The House of Representatives report on uranium, tabled in parliament, recommended the commonwealth encourage state governments to reconsider their opposition to uranium mining at the next Council of Australian Governments (CoAG) meeting. It also wants the minister to urge the states to abolish legislative restrictions on uranium mining and exploration. Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane called on the states to repeal laws which he said were strangling the nation's uranium export industry. Committee chairman Liberal Geoff Prosser said the present restrictions on uranium exploration and mining were illogical, inconsistent and anti-competitive. "Restrictions have impeded investment in the industry and have resulted in a loss of regional employment and wealth creation opportunities, royalties and taxation receipts," he said. The report is by the 10-member House Standing Committee on Industry and Resources, which includes Labor MPs Michael Hatton, Dick Adams and Martin Ferguson. But Western Australia, NSW, Victoria and Queensland showed few signs of changing their opposition to uranium mining. South Australian Premier Mike Rann and Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin back expanded mining. A spokesman for NSW Premier Morris Iemma said the state government was not considering introducing legislation to repeal the ban. Victoria, too, says it won't be pushed into changing its laws. The issue will come to a head next April at Labor's national conference, when the party is set to vote on a push to abandon the policy. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie will abide by the conference decision. But, at present, Mr Beattie said his government doesn't support uranium mining. WA Premier Alan Carpenter remains firmly in the no mining camp. "They do not want to see West Australia become a nuclear waste dump and if they don't want that, they won't be supporting uranium mining either, because one thing will lead to the another," he said. However, Mr Ferguson, a long-term advocate for change, expects Mr Rudd will be able to convince the party to abandon the current policy. "With Kevin as leader - he reaffirmed last Friday at the media conference his support for changing our policy on uranium for preventing additional mines in Australia - my view is that Kevin will win the day at the national conference," he said. While the Labor members support the call for a relaxation of the rules on uranium mining, they are against a recommendation for a further examination of how Australia could benefit from its uranium resources, including the establishment of uranium conversion and enrichment facilities. "We are not in the mind to support the rest of the committee in regard to enrichment in Australia or a nuclear industry for Australia," Mr Ferguson said. The committee also recommended beefed up measures to protect nuclear workers, as well as a renewed effort to boost nuclear non-proliferation efforts. In an effort to address community concern about nuclear issues, it has suggested a number of ways to address misinformation and public ignorance about nuclear matters, including more school programs. AAP The West Australian' is a trademark of West Australian Newspapers Pty Ltd 2006. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 67 The Spectrum: Utah loses in the name game www.thespectrum.com - The Spectrum, St. George, UT "What's in a name" is a question with several answers. A name connotes identity, disposition, beliefs, origin and myriad of other characteristics that speak volumes about a person or place. So what image is Utah portraying by renaming the Delta Center EnergySolutions Arena? According to published accounts, since its new name reflects that of a company that disposes of high-level radioactive waste at a landfill in Utah's west desert, it's a profile of condescending nicknames that include The Dump, Tox Box, Area 51, the Melta Center and Radium Stadium. On Wednesday, several dozen Utah members of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, referred to as "HEAL Utah," chanted and held up signs with these tags that were also published in various print media across the nation. Couple that with the fact that the Southern portion of the state is battling the likelihood of radioactive fallout stirred up from the detonation of a low-yield nuclear simulation planned at Nevada's test site in 2007, and the northern portion of the state publicizing that it is welcomed on the state's largest indoor arena, and the hypocrisy is sure to give leverage to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's setting off of Divine Strake. We're quite sure this wasn't the type of exposure or reaction Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr., was aiming for when he created his 10 Point Plan that includes incorporating tourism into mainstream economic development by enhancing Utah's national and international image. Drawing tourists to a state that has named its 20,000 seat indoor arena after a company that has aspired to bring hotter nuclear waste into the area is going to be a challenge. As is Utah residents' willingness to call the facility anything other than the Delta Center - it's name for the past 15 years. We acknowledge as a business decision, there was nothing wrong with Jazz owner Larry H. Miller awarding the 10-year naming rights agreement to EnergySolutions. Ethically, giving that contract to a company that whined before the Legislature's Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee just days before the announcement of its larger-than-life publicity purchase that it could not afford to pay the $400,000 a year for perpetual care of its landfill is questionable. EnergySolutions can afford to spend millions of dollars - estimated to be $20 million - to advertise its name on a building, but kicks and screams at spending money to take care of its own nuclear waste landfill? That doesn't sound too environmental friendly or concerned about Utah residents, let alone tourists. It's another contradiction that is going to brand Utah with more derogatory nicknames and a whole new image problem littered with more labels and stereotypes. Utah loses in this name game - in more ways than one. Originally published December 4, 2006 Print this article + www.southern utahblog.com Copyright ©2006 The Spectrum. ***************************************************************** 68 LA Daily News: Chemical research questioned Report says group under thumb of perchlorate manufacturers BY ALEX DOBUZINSKIS, Staff WriterArticle Last Updated:12/03/2006 07:37:19 PM PST An environmental group has accused perchlorate manufacturers of using a page from the tobacco industry's playbook - promoting bad science to downplay the rocket fuel component's threat to drinking water. An Environment California report argues that the industry-backed Perchlorate Study Group performs the same function that The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition did for the tobacco industry in the 1990s, when that industry was under fire. Federal and state regulators are evaluating the threat perchlorate - found in Santa Clarita's groundwater system - could pose to drinking water. Study co-author Sujatha Jahagirdar said a policy to deal with perchlorate should only be based on government or university studies. "When you have such an enormously influential group peddling misleading information, it's going to lead to skewed regulations and skewed standards for cleanup," she said. But any influence the Perchlorate Study Group may have remains difficult to determine. The group does not have a headquarters unto itself, but rather is made up of an alliance of several companies. Representatives from two of the companies involved, Aeroject and Intertox, did not return calls. But a statement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency indicated the agency is less influenced by the Perchlorate Study Group than it is by a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study highlighting the dangers of perchlorate. "EPA is committed to continually examining perchlorate science to ensure that our policies best protect public health," the statement said. "EPA is interested in the CDC's findings, and CDC recommends that further research be conducted to confirm these findings." In Santa Clarita, officials plan to purge drinking-water supplies of perchlorate, which has been found in high levels on the Whitaker-Bermite site in the center of town. The chemical has been linked to thyroid problems. The EPA is considering regulating perchlorate in drinking water, but it hasn't done it yet. California is considering adopting a standard of 6parts per billion, but some environmental groups want a level of 1or 2parts per billion. Even as state officials debate adopting their own regulations, officials with the Castaic Lake Water Agency say the chemical poses a threat, and they want to remove it to undetectable levels when they start a program next year to pump and treat it from two contaminated wells. The agency manages state water for the area, but it owns a retail division that uses well water. In its report released Friday, titled "The Politics of Rocket Fuel Pollution," the Los Angeles-based Environment California found the Perchlorate Study Group or its members funded more than half of all studies from 1996 to 2005 on the effects of perchlorate exposure. "Independent sources" funded less than 10percent of the research, according to the nonprofit Environment California. "I don't think polluters that have billions of dollars to lose if strong standards are set should play a part in the scientific debate," Jahagirdar said. alex.dobuzinskis@dailynews.com (661) 257-5253 Los Angeles Newspaper Group ***************************************************************** 69 Salt Lake Tribune: A shopworn smokescreen Editorials Article Last Updated:12/04/2006 12:30:15 AM MST This is a response to Kevin Carney's praise for the so-called benefits of nuclear energy (Forum, Nov. 28). The people he has branded “anti-nuke” should in fact bear the title “pro-life” because they see nuclear waste for the lurking death that it is. The arguments for nuclear power - nuclear medicine, etc. - are nothing more than a shopworn smokescreen for the real question, which is why Utah needs to propose any ideas whatsoever for disposing of waste created elsewhere. If my neighbor's dog messes in his backyard, he shouldn't be able to toss it into mine, and yet that is basically what is under discussion (aside from the fact that canine waste lacks the potential to cause inheritable genetic damage and make entire counties unlivable for tens of thousands of years). After reading Mr. Carney's analysis, I am curious as to whether he is a longtime resident of Utah or a recent transplant. If he is the former, then he should know better than to believe the hype a second time, and if he is the latter, then he might want to do a little reading of his own. I suggest Carole Gallagher's radical anti-nuke manifesto “American Ground Zero” for starters. William Love Sandy © Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 70 NRC: Maximum 40-Year Licensing Terms for Certain Fuel Cycle Facilities FR Doc E6-20412 [Federal Register: December 4, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 232)] [Notices] [Page 70441] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04de06-89] AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Notice. SUMMARY: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has established a new policy extending the maximum license term for certain 10 CFR Part 70 fuel cycle licensees who are required to submit Integrated Safety Analysis (ISA) summaries for approval. Such license terms are being extended from the current 10-year period to a 40-year period, on the next renewal of the affected license. The NRC is also extending the maximum license term to a 40-year period for new 10 CFR Part 70 license applicants, where the applicant is required to submit an ISA summary for approval. The 10-year term has been a matter of policy and practice since 1990 (55 FR 24948; June 19, 1990); it is not codified in the regulations. The NRC added Subpart H requirements to 10 CFR part 70 on September 18, 2000 (65 FR56211). The Subpart H requirements apply to licensees possessing greater than a critical mass of special nuclear material. Under Subpart H, both new applicants and existing licensees are required to conduct an ISA and submit an ISA summary to the NRC for approval. An ISA is a systematic analysis to identify facility and external hazards; potential accident sequences, including likelihood and consequences; and items relied on for safety to prevent potential accidents or mitigate the consequences. Licensees are required to keep their ISAs up-to-date. In addition to the initial ISA summary, licensees must submit the following information to the NRC: certain facility changes for the NRC's approval; annual summaries of facility changes that did not need the NRC's preapproval; and annual updates to the ISA summaries. Before the Subpart H requirements were implemented, the NRC relied on the 10-year license renewal as the main opportunity to review the facility safety basis. Now, along with the annual updates of the ISA summaries, the NRC is conducting more frequent reviews of the licensees' facility safety basis. Through the annual update of the ISA summaries, the NRC is kept informed of changes due to material degradation and aging throughout the lifetime of a facility. Thus, the Subpart H requirements permit the NRC to continue to support safe operations of licensed facilities on an ongoing basis, regardless of the duration of the license. On August 24, 2006, the NRC staff provided the Commission with a paper, SECY-06-0186, `Increasing Licensing Terms for Certain Fuel Cycle Facilities,' which recommended that the Commission approve a maximum license term of 40 years for certain fuel cycle facilities. The paper provided the basis for the staff's recommendation, including a description of the link with 10 CFR Part 70 reviews and a discussion of consistency with the NRC strategic goals for safety and effectiveness. In response to SECY-06-0186, the Commission issued a staff requirements memorandum (SRM) establishing the new policy described above. The Commission also approved of license terms for less than 40 years, on a case-by-case basis, where there are concerns with safety risk to the facility or in cases involving a new process or technology. SECY-06-0186 and the SRM on SECY-06-0186 are available in the NRC's Public Document Room or electronically from the ADAMS Publicly Available Records (PARS) component on the NRC Web site, http://www.nrc.gov (the Electronic Reading Room). FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Breeda Reilly, Project Manager, Fuel Manufacturing Branch, Fuel Facility Licensing Directorate, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555. Telephone: (301) 415-8103; fax: (301) 415-5955; e-mail: bmr@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland this 21st day of November, 2006. For the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Gary S. Janosko, Deputy Director, Fuel Facility Licensing Directorate, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. E6-20412 Filed 12-1-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 71 ITAR-TASS: Russia to handle uranium from East German research reactor 04.12.2006, 15.16 MOSCOW, December 4 (Itar-Tass) -- Both highly-enriched and low-enriched uranium from former East Germany’s nuclear research center will be taken to Russia for processing and storage, Russia’s atomic energy agency Rosatom told Itar-Tass. An Itar-Tass Berlin correspondent says Germany’s federal radiation safety department has issued permission to recover the 200 kilograms of highly enriched uranium and 100 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, currently kept on the premises of the nuclear research center in Rossendorf, near Dresden, in Saxony. Saxonia’s Science Minister Eva-Maria Stange believes that the transportation of radioactive materials to Russia for recycling and storage would help Germany avoid major spending on their safekeeping in its own territory. The costs average over one million euros a year, Stange said. The radioactive materials will be taken to Dresden’s airport in special containers, and then airlifted to Russia. Rosatom’s processing plant in the town of Podolsk, the Moscow region is the end recipient. Rosatom said “such operations have been carried out many times over the past two years under the Russian-US agreement on the removal of highly enriched uranium from research reactors of US and Soviet design built in third countries.” “The date of the forthcoming operation is kept secret for security reasons,” Rosatom said. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 72 ITAR-TASS: Russia’s uranium reserves to guarantee 60-year supply to n-plants 04.12.2006, 15.48 MOSCOW, December 4 (Itar-Tass) - Russia’s uranium reserves will guarantee a 60-year-long supply of nuclear fuel to the country’s nuclear power plants as well as to those plants that are being build by Russian specialists in foreign countries, the head of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, told a State Duma meeting on Monday. “We do not take into account those reserves that may create fast neutron reactors,” he said. The Natural Resources Ministry and Rosatom surveyed Russia’s uranium fields. At present, Russia ranks third in the world by natural uranium reserves. “As world uranium prices go up, the country’s uranium fields become profit-making,” Kiriyenko said. He recalled that Russia and Kazakhstan inked an agreement on creating a uranium development joint venture. The joint venture’s total reserves make up 173,000 tonnes of Kazakhstan’s uranium. Kiriyenko said a Rosatom delegation would visit Kazakhstan on December 6 to mark joint development of a first kilogram of uranium. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 73 EDFP: Yucca Mountain Route County worried about nuke waste transport Elko Daily Free Press By JOHN SENTS - Staff Writer Saturday, December 2, 2006 11:01 AM PST This map of Nevada highlights two possible routes that may be constructed to Yucca Mountain. The purple route is dubbed the Mina Rail Corridor and the blue route is dubbed the Caliente Rail Corridor. (Courtesy illustration) ELKO  Before the U.S. Department of Energy decides whether to transport spent nuclear fuel through Elko County, the Elko County Commission wants to say a few words about it. The department recently expanded the scope of an environmental impact statement to consider an alternate transportation route to the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository. If constructed, the Mina Rail Corridor would run over about 240 miles between Hawthorne and Yucca Mountain in Nye County. The line would connect to the Union Pacific Railroad near Hazen. Department of Energy spokesman Allen Benson stressed that the departments report will address the rail corridor options, but not the existing rail corridors that would connect to them. However, the Mina route may necessitate that nuclear waste be shipped over existing rail lines through Elko County, and the Elko County Commission will discuss this possibility Wednesday. In a memo to the Humboldt River Basin Water Authority, Intertech Services Corp. Executive Director Mike Baughman said the Mina route would require most shipments of nuclear waste to enter Nevada near West Wendover on the Union Pacific mainline. According to Baughmans memo, accessing the Mina route from the Union Pacific mainline at Hazen would require nuclear waste be shipped along rail lines that run near West Wendover, Wells, Elko, Carlin, Battle Mountain, Winnemucca, Reno and Sparks  among other areas. The Department of Energy is also considering constructing a Caliente Rail Corridor that runs over about 320 miles from near Caliente west to Yucca Mountain. Whatever route is eventually chosen, Benson said the nuclear material will be safely contained in heavily fortified casks certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He said the likelihood of one of these casks being penetrated is very, very small. In addition, he said the Department of Energy has been moving nuclear material around the country for a long time and has an outstanding safety record. We are confident we can protect the public health and safety and that is our first priority, Benson said. The department already held eight public meetings to discuss the rail corridor. However, none were in Northeastern Nevada. Benson said the department may hold additional public hearings once the draft EIS is finished. He said he doesnt know whether there will be any hearings in Elko County. The purpose of the hearings is to get input on the corridor itself, not the whole rail system, Benson said. The department is continuing to accept public comments for the EIS until Dec. 12. Benson said the department will continue to take comments afterwards for the maximum extent possible. Elko County Commission Chairman Warren Russell said the Department of Energy has a responsibility to answer questions and provide details for people in Elko County to convince them that the nuclear transportation is safe. (Elko County residents) ought to have some say in it, and Im not sure they are going to, Russell said. I would hope (the Department of Energy) would be smart enough to have a meeting here in Northeastern Nevada ... If they dont, then they wont be able to convince anyone in Elko County that it is safe to bring it through here. It is their job and responsibility to do that. Russell said he wants to send comments to the Department of Energy; request that they extend the deadline for public comments; and strongly advise them to have some meetings here in Elko County. Elko County Commissioner Mike Nannini said he is concerned nuclear shipments through Elko County would create costly expenditures for the county to train emergency personnel and procure all the necessary equipment in case of an emergency. He said he hopes the department provides some funding if they decide to ship nuclear waste through rail lines in the county. Benson said the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires the department provide training to first responders if they ship waste through a jurisdiction. He said this funding, which is provided to states, hasnt been allocated yet. He said the department is not planning on shipping any nuclear wastes until at least 2017 and wont provide the training until three to five years before shipping starts. The department began reconsidering the Mina route after the Walker River Paiute Tribe withdrew an objection to the EIS. The Mina corridor offers some potential advantages over the Caliente route, including being shorter and cheaper. Benson said some rough estimates put construction of the Caliente route at $2 billion and the Mina route at $1 billion. For more information on the Yucca Mountain project and transportation lines, go to http://www.ymp.gov. Also at the Wednesday meeting, the Elko County Commission will: + Consider contributing funds toward a USGS study of eight hydrographic areas in Elko County and Northeastern Nevada. + Consider contributing funds to restore and add new features to Johnny Appleseed Playground in Elko. + Consider appointing an individual to serve on the Elko County Planning and Zoning Commission. + Continue an appeal hearing of a planning commission denial of a conditional use permit for an outdoor advertising billboard along Lamoille Highway. + Consider an agreement with TranSystems Corporation for engineering consulting services on the Northeastern Nevada Regional Railport. + Make comments on proposal issues that will allow the county to acquire more land associated with the Jarbidge Cemetery. + Make comments on an exploration project near Coffin Creek in the Independence Mountain Range. + Make comments on mining exploration activity near Jarbidge. The meeting begins at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in room 105 of the Elko County Courthouse. For information, call the county at 738-5398. Copyright © 2006 Elko Daily Free Press ***************************************************************** 74 Piketon Gazette: Group opposed waste site appeals to Pike rep December 02, 2006 The Gazette Staff PIKETON - Part of a group trying to stop a nuclear waste processing site from locating at a former gaseous diffusion plant in Pike County now is asking help from another congressman. Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environment Safety and Security (PRESS) sent a letter to Rep. David Hobson, R-Springfield, Friday asking him to help them stop the move. The letter was written by Vina Colley, who has been a long-time activist for sick workers in the area, and Nathan Noy, a former lobbyist who now lives in Piketon and ran as a write-in candidate in the recent 2nd District congressional race. In it, the group urges Hobson to make the halting of the nuclear waste processing site his "lasting legacy." PRESS acknowledged Hobson as the current chair of the House Appropriations Committee, which has oversight over the Energy Department. "The people of Southern Ohio need your immediate assistance in helping us to stop what will be a horrible decision by the DOE," the letter reads. "We feel you are the most appropriate person to intervene on our behalf." The Piketon site - which was proposed by the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative and a Cleveland-based group - was one of 11 semi-finalists for the federal facility that would recycle spent nuclear fuel rods and is opposed by SONG (Southern Ohio Neighbors Group). Piketon will now receive part of $16 million in federal grants to study whether the site is feasible for such a facility. ***************************************************************** 75 AU ABC: Uranium mining impediments should be removed - report 04/12/2006. ABC News Online The report calls on all governments to reconsider opposition to uranium mining (file photo). (ABC TV) A federal parliamentary committee has called for the removal of all impediments to developing Australia's uranium industry. The bipartisan report by the House of Representatives Committee on Industry and Resources has called for all governments to reconsider opposition to uranium mining and change laws preventing exploration and mining. The committee found nuclear power significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions and is the only energy alternative to fossil fuels for reliable electricity on a large scale. The report says Australia must also consider how to value-add by developing industries in uranium enrichment, nuclear waste treatment and disposal. But the report also calls for the Government to pursue a stronger global non-proliferation regime, give money to rehabilitate mine sites and provide greater scientific scrutiny of the industry. ***************************************************************** 76 AU ABC: Greens slam 'misguided' uranium report. 04/12/2006. ABC News Online Federal Greens Senator Christine Milne says a House of Representatives report on the uranium industry is misguided and a distraction from moves to address global warming. The report has called for all state and federal governments to review opposition to uranium mining and exploration and to change laws hampering mining and exploration. The committee also wants a public campaign promoting the benefits of nuclear energy, including a review of information taught in schools. But Senator Milne says the committee has lost a valuable opportunity to look at alternative energy sources. "What it provides is a complete distraction from what we should be doing and that is having a serious look at greenhouse and what we can do about it," she said. Senator Milne says the report is misguided. "It's a disgrace that Martin Ferguson and his Labor associates are out there in complete contravention of Labor Party policies supporting lifting the bans on uranium mines around the country," she said. "It's also appalling they are supporting the Government in using the curriculum in schools to run a propaganda line for the uranium industry." But committee chair Geoff Prosser says nuclear energy is the only alternative to fossil fuels, and it is time to turn around public opinion. "In the last 30 years this has been driven by fear, not facts," he said. SA mining South Australian Premier Mike Rann says the report's advocacy of uranium enrichment has not altered his stance. Mr Rann says he does not support enrichment. "We do support uranium mining - we've got the world's biggest mine, one that's going to be even bigger - but we don't believe that there's an economic case in South Australia for either enrichment or for nuclear power," he said. "I have to say that no-one else that I meet does either." ***************************************************************** 77 AU ABC: Govt calls for states to dump uranium mining bans. 05/12/2006. ABC News Online Federal Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane is calling on the states to remove bans on uranium exploration and mining. Mr Macfarlane says there are 13 projects in three jurisdictions that will not go ahead if the state governments do not remove the bans. Applications for uranium mines in the Northern Territory are decided by the Federal Government and are overseen by the Territory Government. Mr Macfarlane says there is an opportunity for the NT Government to take control of the approvals process if it has a practical approach to uranium mining. "Then the Commonwealth Government would be more than happy to pass the oversight of that back to the Territory Government," he said. "But while ever they have a philosophical approach to uranium mining, then they're basically foregoing their rights to approvals." Mr Macfarlane says the Territory should not get tied down by Federal Labor's stance on uranium mining. "The Territory Government currently opposes approvals to new mines for uranium, yet they have an existing uranium mine and they also allow exports out of the Northern Territory as well as exploration for uranium," he said. "That just doesn't make sense to anyone. "If the Territory Government was fair dinkum then they would allow the approval process to be handled by the Territory Government." Meanwhile, the federal Member for Kennedy in northern Queensland, Bob Katter, has welcomed a parliamentary committee report supporting the establishment of uranium mines in his electorate. The seat of Kennedy has about 25 uranium deposits and Mr Katter says mining them would create about 400 jobs. "The committee weighed the evidence put before them and clearly it is ridiculous to restrict uranium mining," he said. "Now also the committee said that there was no justification or cause or reason to proceed with nuclear power - so it was a very fair outcome." ***************************************************************** 78 UPI: Analysis: Reid's Yucca and nuke waste plan United Press International - Energy - 12/4/2006 6:38:00 PM -0500 By BEN LANDO UPI Energy Correspondent WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Sen. Harry Reid becomes the most powerful person in the U.S. Senate next month and the Nevada Democrat says he'll oversee the killing of a decades-long, multibillion dollar plan to store nuclear waste inside a mountain in his state. Fellow opponents of the Yucca Mountain Project say the site is unsafe to hold spent nuclear fuel and transporting it there is a security risk. The nuclear industry calls it a business liability if nuclear waste isn't taken off its hands, warning it may hinder a resurgence of nuclear power in the country. But after three decades of exploration at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and $10 billion (15 percent of the project's total expected cost for its first 100 years), the U.S. Energy Department is 20 years behind schedule to get federal regulator approval for the site, let alone open it. "Yucca Mountain is dead. It'll never happen," Reid told United Press International in an exclusive interview in his Las Vegas office. As a powerful Democratic Party member, Reid has been able to engineer regular funding cuts to the project, though scientific exploration of the mountain-as-repository continues. Beginning January, he'll be in charge of the Senate, already pledging to block bills aimed at maneuvering the project via legislative mandates, like the failed Bush administration-prompted "Fix Yucca Bill," which would have bolstered the project's funding and allowed the Energy Department to receive permits easier, among other aspects, introduced earlier this year. Reid also plans to further trim Yucca's annual budget, cut to just over $300 million in fiscal year 2006. "That's a tremendous waste of money," Reid said. "Just forget about that. It's not going to happen. So why continue this game?" Nuclear power is getting a fresh look as an alternative energy source to oil and gas, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects around 30 applications for new reactors soon. "To realize fully the benefits that nuclear power offers, however, the country must resolve outstanding issues related to the ultimate disposal of used nuclear fuel," Tony Earley, chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group, told a Senate hearing on the Fix Yucca Bill in September. "If overall spending totals remain flat, even more significant delays could result, not because nuclear power consumers have not provided the funds necessary to support the program, but because of inappropriate federal budget accounting." In 1987, Congress ended the search for a geologic repository to store the waste, and limited site studies to only Yucca. In 2002, it was officially declared the final resting place for highly radioactive nuclear waste. Yucca is capped at holding 77,000 tons, which will either need to be amended or an additional repository built to store waste that remains radioactive for tens of thousands if not millions of years. Currently 54,000 tons are stockpiled at weapons sites and at operating and shuttered nuclear power plants around the country; about 2,000 tons of nuclear waste is produced annually, the byproduct of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and nuclear technology exploration. Yucca was to be the final solution. But the project has been plagued by accusations of unsound science and claims the quality assurance program isn't given enough independence. Outside the mountain, there is no final proposed route to get the waste there. A combination of mostly railway and some trucked shipments is the leading contender for the method of delivery. It's also another tract for Reid's Kill Yucca agenda. "There's no way in the world we're gong to have 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, the most poisonous substance known to man, hauled across our highways and railways in this country, past schools, homes, playgrounds and businesses," Reid said. He said he favors using money from the Nuclear Waste Fund -- money ratepayers contribute to solving the nuclear waste storage issue ($27 billion since 1982) -- for keeping the waste at the nuclear plants. The federal government was supposed to take possession of the waste by 1998, the original opening date for Yucca. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has authority to approve the site, but the department's attempt to complete an application has been set back by lawsuits and regulatory challenges as well as controversy over science at the site. Yucca Mountain was born from the decision mid-20th century that nuclear waste from the U.S. weapons program -- and then nuclear energy when it was developed -- should be buried deep underground. But when the 110th Congress takes the reins, it may have to choose a new fate for the waste unless it finds some life support to curb Reid's prerogative to kill Yucca Mountain. "It's dying on its own. It's just happening," Reid said. "You don't need just a sudden demise. It's breathing really hard. Just let it lay there a while and it'll be dead." © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 79 Cincinnati Post: U.S. plan invites nuclear attack by Alexander Artem Sakharov Twenty-five years ago, a Reagan administration official asked my opinion on whether America was facing a clear and present danger from Russia. I said no. Despite the heated rhetoric on both sides, the Russians never intended to initiate an attack on the West, their strategic objective being to split Europe from the United States. On the other hand, their fear of being attacked was countered, even in the face of President Reagan's hostility, by their faith in America's common sense. Why should the richest nation on earth invite horrific devastation upon itself without a logically compelling reason? Today, I am no longer that optimist. Washington's unwarranted presumption of global nuclear superiority - the mainstay of this administration's National Security Strategy from the beginning - has taken an alarming twist. And the Russians, still capable of destroying America with a nuclear strike, are seriously worried. Too little attention has been given to a plan the Bush administration is considering. It calls for certain strategic delivery systems, previously solely designated for nuclear war, to be put to use with conventional warheads. About $50 million has been allocated to three studies of placing conventional weapons on submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Who cares that there is no technology to tell which kind of warhead has been launched? Russia will have to trust Washington that it is not the target of a first-strike nuclear attack. This idea comes in the wake of an article earlier this year in Foreign Affairs, titled "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Supremacy," that contains these statements: "The current and future U.S. nuclear force seems designed to carry out a pre-emptive disarming strike against Russia or China." "It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike." "If U.S. submarines were to fire missiles from areas in the Pacific, Russian leaders probably would not know of the attack until the warheads detonated." If Russian leaders have read these statements and taken them as an expression of administration policy, they may have reached some very unpleasant conclusions. Washington's intention to legitimize the use of first-strike strategic delivery systems, expecting no retaliatory move by Russia, provoked Col. Viktor Litovkin to write for the Russian news agency Novosti (and reflecting Moscow's official view): "Any nuclear power will be sorely tempted to launch a retaliatory strike after detecting incoming strategic ballistic missiles. A retaliatory nuclear strike seems to be the only way to stop an all-out ballistic-missile attack involving nuclear and conventional warheads." Disingenuously, then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, meeting in August with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov, suggested that Russia could do the same thing. "Russia has some misgivings about such preliminary plans," Ivanov replied. "I am not ready to say that Russia agrees to join this initiative." This gobbledygook in no way implies indecision on Russia's part. Rather, it reflects the traditional Soviet-style presumption that any unambiguous rejection of U.S. terms by Russia may be misconstrued as a sign of fear and weakness. Rumsfeld, however, interpreted these words in line with Washington's wishful thinking, telling a news conference that the Russian defense minister would probably phone him from Moscow and call the U.S. proposal a good idea. No such luck. Should Washington unilaterally proceed with this insane plan, and eventually an intercontinental ballistic missile launch is made - whether intended against Iran or anybody else - a Russian retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States could follow, triggering the unthinkable. America is facing a clear and present danger, compared to which the worst nightmares of the "war on terror" will pale. It's time to start paying attention. Alexander Artem Sakharov is a former fellow of the Institute of USA &Canada Studies in Moscow. His e-mail is . This column appeared in The Baltimore Sun. Publication date: 12-04-2006 [Cincinnati.Com] ***************************************************************** 80 AP Wire: End of Fernald cleanup means closure for many 12/04/2006 | LISA CORNWELL Associated Press CINCINNATI - A bird's nest nestled in the tall grasses of a wetland symbolizes the end of a 20-year struggle to clean up a site contaminated by radioactive material from a former Cold War-era uranium processing plant. After years of often-contentious public meetings, lawsuits and relentless lobbying, the land is now absent 1.5 million tons of its most dangerous waste and has begun its transformation into an undeveloped park and wildlife haven covered with woods, prairie and wetlands. "I thought many times that we would never see it turned into something useable and safe for residents," said Lisa Crawford, president and a founding member of the citizens group that began fighting for cleanup of the former Fernald plant site 22 years ago. "It's been a long road, but we finally got there." Residents worried that radioactive uranium contamination found in the air, water and soil could lead to cancer and other diseases. Workers were concerned about risks from uranium and from radon gas and toxic chemicals stored on the site. The U.S. Department of Energy in 1979 found that radon gas had been leaking from storage silos for years. Fluor Fernald, the company in charge of the cleanup, announced Oct. 29 that its work was completed. The Energy Department, which owns the site, is conducting a final review to ensure the cleanup meets its standards. Cleanup of the 1,050-acre site cost federal taxpayers $4.4 billion. Radioactive waste from concrete silos that Energy Department officials say held the world's largest source of radon gas were removed, treated and shipped to Texas. More than 1 million tons of other radioactive waste were shipped to hazardous waste storage sites in Nevada and Utah, and 323 buildings were demolished. Findings of numerous health studies on Fernald have not been as definitive as workers and residents had hoped, but studies are continuing. Researchers say it can take decades for radiation-linked cancers to show up, and it is difficult to say whether cancers and other health problems occurring among workers and residents are linked to Fernald. The innocuous-sounding Feed Material Production Center that would later gain national notoriety as a radioactively contaminated site was built in a rural area about 20 miles northwest of Cincinnati in 1951. Its task - processing uranium metal used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons - was shrouded in secrecy. "We were under national security clearance and not allowed to tell our families, friends or even workers in other parts of the site about what we did there," said Gene Branham, former president of the Fernald Atomic Trade and Labor Council union representing Fernald workers. Time magazine wrote a cover story in 1988 about the site and residents' worries - headlined "The Nuclear Scandal" - and television talk show host Phil Donahue devoted a program to Fernald that year. "When people knew you worked at Fernald, they would ask you if you glowed in the dark," said Fluor Fernald spokesman Jeff Wagner, who began working at the site for Westinghouse Material Co. of Ohio in 1986 when citizen outrage and fear were at a high point. Concerned residents began asking questions about the plant in the 1970s. The public began demanding answers in 1984, when government documents revealed that almost 300 pounds of enriched uranium oxide dust had been released into the air from a faulty dust collection system. Neighboring wells were found to be contaminated from similar emissions from production and waste storage operations through the years. Those emissions dropped into the soil, contaminating groundwater. "I came home in 1984 to find a man climbing out of my well, but he wouldn't tell me what he was doing," said Crawford, who became angry and worried when she found they were testing for radioactive contamination. Her feelings were shared by about 100 families who formed Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health that year. Crawford became president, and she and her husband, Ken, were lead plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the government, charging emotional distress and damaged property values. The government settled in 1989 for $78 million, including medical testing for nearby residents that is scheduled to end in 2008 unless more funding is found. Fernald workers also sued and reached a $20 million settlement with the government in 1994 that included lifetime medical monitoring. The plant closed in 1989. Suspicion and animosity ran high for years. Public meetings in the late 1980s and early 1990s were legendary, said DOE spokesman Gary Stegner. "You'd be trying to answer questions from angry residents, and you'd feel like you had a target on your face," he said. Combativeness gradually gave way to cooperation, and some FRESH members served on an advisory board the Energy Department formed to develop a consensus on cleanup issues. In 1995, the board recommended setting target cleanup levels, restricting future use of the site and reducing the amount of contaminated soil to be removed. About 4.7 million tons of low-level waste, uranium-contaminated soil and building debris will remain at Fernald in a 110-acre fenced-off pile. The pile is encased in thick liners and caps made of strong synthetic material, clays, rock and clean soil and covered with prairie grass. "Some of us had a problem at first with keeping any of it on site," said Tom Willsey, a trustee for Ross Township, where part of Fernald is located. "We would have preferred to get it all out of here, but at some point reality kicks in and you realize you can't just ship all your problems to someone else's backyard." Activists fighting for cleanups elsewhere praise FRESH's results. "We've come a long way to see the Fernald site cleaned up in a manner that the citizens group feels good about," said Gerald Pollett, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, pushing for the estimated $60 billion cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state. Fernald area groundwater will be pumped and treated for 10 to 12 more years until the drinking water standard is met, and an education center highlighting Fernald history still has to be developed. But the citizens group, which held its last meeting Nov. 16, feels that its mission is accomplished. While grass has not had time to grow in some areas, wild turkeys and deer roam the rolling hills and wooded areas. Wild geese and ducks can be found in and along the ponds and wetlands at the site where self-guided trails are to be established. "We can laugh about a lot of it now, but we learned that you have to fight for what you believe in," Crawford said. "We didn't get total cleanup, but our community is healthier and safer. We made a difference." ON THE NET Fernald: http://www.fernald.gov ***************************************************************** 81 AP Wire: Timeline in history of former uranium processing site 12/04/2006 | Associated Press Events in the history of the Fernald plant site and cleanup: 1951 - Feed Materials Production Center constructed by U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, predecessor of U.S. Department of Energy. 1984 - Government discloses that three off-property water wells near the Fernald site were contaminated by uranium; area residents form Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health. 1985 - Fernald begins low-level waste shipments to Nevada. 1986 - Westinghouse Material Co. of Ohio assumes management and operation of Fernald replacing National Lead of Ohio after 33 years. 1989 - More wells found with elevated uranium levels; Fernald ends plant operations to concentrate on cleanup. 1992 - DOE awards environmental cleanup management contract to Fluor Corp. 1993 - DOE forms Fernald Citizens Task Force, later called Fernald Citizens Advisory Board, to develop public consensus on cleanup. Flour Fernald begins pumping and treating wastewater to remove uranium from contaminated groundwater and stormwater runoff. 1997 - Fernald begins construction of onsite disposal facility for waste. 1999 - Workers complete safe shutdown in former production area to clear way for demolition of buildings; rail shipments carrying waste to Utah begin; natural restoration begins with conversion of 12 acres of former pasture into woods, prairie and wetlands. 2000 - DOE awards 10-year closure contract for Fernald site to Fluor Fernald. 2003 - Fluor Fernald imploded water tower and gave last public tour of facility before dismantling. 2004 - Last of former production facilities dismantled. 2005 - Last shipment of waste-pit material shipped to Utah. 2006 - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certifies soil at former production area clean. Last shipments of waste from silos shipped to Texas. Fluor Fernald announces cleanup complete Oct. 29; DOE gives initial approval to completed project Nov. 17. --- Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, Fluor Fernald News ***************************************************************** 82 Beacon Journal: Cleanup of Fernald site finally finished 12/04/2006 | Twenty-year project to remove radioactive material turns land into undeveloped park By Lisa Cornwell Associated Press CINCINNATI - A bird's nest nestled in the tall grasses of a wetland symbolizes the end of a 20-year struggle to clean up a site contaminated by radioactive material from a former Cold War-era uranium processing plant. After years of often-contentious public meetings, lawsuits and relentless lobbying, the land is now absent 1.5 million tons of its most dangerous waste and has begun its transformation into an undeveloped park and wildlife haven covered with woods, prairie and wetlands. ``I thought many times that we would never see it turned into something useable and safe for residents,'' said Lisa Crawford, president and a founding member of the citizens group that began fighting for cleanup of the former Fernald plant site 22 years ago. ``It's been a long road, but we finally got there.'' Residents worried that radioactive uranium contamination found in the air, water and soil could lead to cancer and other diseases. Workers were concerned about risks from uranium and from radon gas and toxic chemicals stored on the site. The U.S. Department of Energy in 1979 found that radon gas had been leaking from storage silos for years. Fluor Fernald, the company in charge of the cleanup, announced Oct. 29 that its work was completed. The Energy Department, which owns the site, is conducting a final review to ensure the cleanup meets its standards. Cleanup of the 1,050-acre site cost federal taxpayers $4.4 billion. Radioactive waste from concrete silos that Energy Department officials say held the world's largest source of radon gas were removed, treated and shipped to Texas. More than 1 million tons of other radioactive waste were shipped to hazardous waste storage sites in Nevada and Utah, and 323 buildings were demolished. Findings of numerous health studies on Fernald have not been as definitive as workers and residents had hoped, but studies are continuing. Researchers say it can take decades for radiation-linked cancers to show up, and it is difficult to say whether cancers and other health problems occurring among workers and residents are linked to Fernald. The innocuous-sounding Feed Material Production Center that would later gain national notoriety as a radioactively contaminated site was built in a rural area about 20 miles northwest of Cincinnati in 1951. Its task -- processing uranium metal used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons -- was shrouded in secrecy. ``We were under national security clearance and not allowed to tell our families, friends or even workers in other parts of the site about what we did there,'' said Gene Branham, former president of the Fernald Atomic Trade and Labor Council union representing Fernald workers. Time magazine wrote a cover story in 1988 about the site and residents' worries -- headlined ``The Nuclear Scandal'' -- and television talk show host Phil Donahue devoted a program to Fernald that year. ``When people knew you worked at Fernald, they would ask you if you glowed in the dark,'' said Fluor Fernald spokesman Jeff Wagner, who began working at the site for Westinghouse Material Co. of Ohio in 1986 when citizen outrage and fear were at a high point. Concerned residents began asking questions about the plant in the 1970s. The public began demanding answers in 1984, when government documents revealed that almost 300 pounds of enriched uranium oxide dust had been released into the air from a faulty dust collection system. Neighboring wells were found to be contaminated from similar emissions from production and waste storage operations through the years. Those emissions dropped into the soil, contaminating groundwater. ``I came home in 1984 to find a man climbing out of my well, but he wouldn't tell me what he was doing,'' said Crawford, who became angry and worried when she found they were testing for radioactive contamination. Her feelings were shared by about 100 families who formed Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health that year. Crawford became president, and she and her husband, Ken, were lead plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the government, charging emotional distress and damaged property values. The government settled in 1989 for $78 million, including medical testing for nearby residents that is scheduled to end in 2008 unless more funding is found. Fernald workers also sued and reached a $20 million settlement with the government in 1994 that included lifetime medical monitoring. The plant closed in 1989. Suspicion and animosity ran high for years. Public meetings in the late 1980s and early 1990s were legendary, said DOE spokesman Gary Stegner. ``You'd be trying to answer questions from angry residents, and you'd feel like you had a target on your face,'' he said. Combativeness gradually gave way to cooperation, and some FRESH members served on an advisory board the Energy Department formed to develop a consensus on cleanup issues. In 1995, the board recommended setting target cleanup levels, restricting future use of the site and reducing the amount of contaminated soil to be removed. About 4.7 million tons of low-level waste, uranium-contaminated soil and building debris will remain at Fernald in a 110-acre fenced-off pile. The pile is encased in thick liners and caps made of strong synthetic material, clays, rock and clean soil and covered with prairie grass. ***************************************************************** 83 Cincinnati Post: History of the Fernald plant site 1951: Feed Materials Production Center constructed by U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. 1984: Government discloses that three water wells near Fernald were contaminated by uranium. 1985: Fernald begins low-level waste shipments to Nevada. 1986: Westinghouse Material Co. of Ohio assumes management, replacing National Lead of Ohio. 1989: More wells found with elevated uranium levels. 1992: DOE awards environmental cleanup contract to Fluor Corp. 1993: DOE forms Fernald Citizens Task Force to develop public consensus on cleanup. Fluor begins treating wastewater to remove uranium from contaminated groundwater. 1997: Fernald begins construction of onsite disposal facility for waste. 1999: Workers complete safe shutdown in former production area. 2000: DOE awards closure contract to Fluor Fernald. 2004: Last of former production facilities dismantled. 2005: Last shipment of waste-pit material shipped to Utah. 2006: U.S. EPA certifies soil at production area clean. Last shipments of waste shipped to Texas. Fluor announces cleanup complete Oct. 29; DOE gives initial approval. Publication date: 12-04-2006 1995-2006. , a newspaper ***************************************************************** 84 Inside Bay Area: At 75, Lab still smashes atoms with best of 'em Many years and Nobel Prize laureates later, Ernest Lawrence's brainchild continues to drive major advancements in science and technology By Betsy Mason, MEDIANEWS STAFF Article Last Updated:12/04/2006 02:49:19 AM PST BERKELEY — The U.S. national laboratories system comprises 17 labs in 12 states with a combined budget near $10 billion, and it all started with the small but ambitious lab that Ernest Orlando Lawrence built. This year, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the birth of the first national lab, which began in a small wooden building on the UC Berkeley campus where a visionary young man built the first circular particle accelerator. Lawrence's 5-inch-diameter cyclotron would pave the way for a series of ever larger accelerators, a Nobel Prize for Lawrence, and the construction a decade later of a 184-inch cyclotron in the hills above campus. It was a machine like no other, and it changed the face of physics forever. "In a way, we are really celebrating the birth of our National Laboratory system," said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman at an anniversary celebration in Berkeley last month. "Over the 75 years, this laboratory's contributions to discovery and scientific progress have been nothing short of extraordinary." Today, Berkeley Lab's goals are no less lofty than those of its namesake. Ten more Nobel laureates and dozens of major discoveries and groundbreaking innovations later, the lab is bursting at the seams with ambition. Building on the lab's traditions, scientists are poised to address some of the most pressing scientific and technological challenges facing the country and the world, including global warming, alternative energy, cancer and the malaria epidemic, to name a few. Steve Chu, the lab's sixth director and a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, has grand plans for Berkeley Lab's future and the Lawrencian wherewithal and gumption to bring those plans to fruition. In addition to the Molecular Foundry, the nation's premier nanoscience facility, which opened in March, Chu envisions state-of-the-art facilities growing up all over the lab's cramped 200-acre campus. On the hillside just below the Molecular Foundry, the seeds have been planted for an energy research program dubbed "Helios" for its focus on developing inexpensive solar energy technology. Once just a wish-list item, the Helios facility is on its way to becoming reality thanks largely to Chu's determination. Through fundraising efforts reminiscent of Lawrence's push to get his $1.4 million cyclotron built, Chu has collected expressions of support for nearly $100 million. "Groups of scientists, both at the lab and on campus, have really become energized to see what we can do to harness the energy of the sun and also to turn this energy into the most precious form of energy we use today: transportation fuel," Chu said. UC Berkeley and the lab are also competing for a $500-million, 10-year grant from BP to create a bioenergy institute. The winner will be announced in late December. The lab's centerpiece for more than a decade has been the Advanced Light Source, a football-sized X-ray machine known as a synchrotron that attracts scientists from around the world. The 35 X-ray beams, each a hundred million times brighter than those at a dentist's office, can be used for everything from studying internal workings of cells to unraveling the solar system's history by analyzing grains of interplanetary dust. Although the light source will evolve to be a useful facility for years to come, Chu is already busy thinking bigger or, more aptly, faster. A proposal is being drawn up for a 350-meter-long tunnel through the hillside to hold a free-electron laser that could deliver concentrated pulses of electrons at a rate of 100,000 per second. This superfast laser could capture the motions of individual atoms that take place in a few hundred attoseconds, or billionths of a billionth of a second, much like a fastball pitch is frozen by a camera with a fast shutter speed. Testing of a prototype laser is scheduled to start before the end of the year. In addition to big thinking about new facilities, Lawrence's spirit lives on at Berkeley lab in other ways. As soon as he had a working cyclotron that could boost the energy of atoms and fling them at a target to smash open their nuclei, Lawrence began recruiting some of the best physicists, chemists and engineers in the world, several of whom would win Nobel Prizes for their work with the cyclotrons. Lawrence's team included Glenn Seaborg and Edwin McMillan, who shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discovery of several elements, including plutonium and seaborgium. Luis Alvarez received a Nobel for discovering short-lived particles in the nucleus of atoms known as resonance states and later discovered that an asteroid impact caused the dinosaurs to go extinct. And Emilio Segr shared the Nobel Prize in physics for discovering the antiproton. Berkeley lab continues to attract world-class scientists and added an eleventh Nobel Prize-winner this year for George Smoot's discovery of irregularities in the radiation emitted by the big bang that eventually gave rise to the stars and galaxies of today. And Chu believes there may be a few more Nobels brewing at the lab, including one for Saul Perlmutter's discovery of dark energy and the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. "If I had to sum up the 75 years of Berkeley lab, it would be the people," said Robert Dynes, the president of the University of California, which manages the lab for the Department of Energy. Another of Lawrence's legacies is the emphasis on multidisciplinary research. He wasn't satisfied with just physics and chemistry, so early on, he invited physicians to the lab to study radioisotopes. These radioactive forms of elements — produced by bombarding the elements with neutrons in the cyclotron — can be used for diagnosis and treatment of disease. Today, around a quarter of the lab's $500 million budget goes to medical, biological and environmental research. Biologist Jay Keasling is an example of the top-notch life science researchers at Berkeley lab. Keasling heads the lab's synthetic biology department and was selected as Discover magazine's scientist of the year. His work on the genetic engineering of microbes to mass produce drugs is a promising weapon in the fight against malaria, which kills as many as 3 million people each year. Now Keasling has set his sights on engineering plants for ethanol and other biofuels. "We intend to make the Bay Area the synthetic biology capitol of the world," Keasling said at a scientific symposium to mark the anniversary earlier this month. Mina Bissell's discovery that the environment outside the cells in the breast play a critical role in determining whether those cells will grow into breast cancer has opened the doors to a whole new field of research she hopes will pave the way for a new class of cancer treatments. "Why does it make so much sense to do cell and cancer biology at a national lab? Complexity," said the Berkeley lab chemist. "To understand how at any given time your billions of cells know what to do and why will take multidisciplinary interaction between biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, bioengineers, theoretical biologists and all those who think outside the box." Berkeley lab continues to work on science and technology that can be applied to challenges facing the world. But the lab also fosters the kind of fundamental science that is becoming increasingly difficult to do outside the national laboratory system. Many of the lab's researchers say the freedom to pursue science for the sake of science is critical to the nation's place as a scientific leader, and to the future of science in general. Many of the lab's great discoveries were made by scientists given the time, space and funding to pursue their interests and to think big like Lawrence did. Smoot credits his Nobel Prize in part to this aspect of the lab. "It was a place where I was not only given the freedom and the resources to do the research, but shown the style of how to do the research," he said after winning his prize in October. "It was: Pick out the best science you can do and do it. That was so liberating. "That was the thing that really made it so that I could think about science that was out of the ordinary and into a new field," he said. Energy Secretary Bodman called the lab sacred ground for American science and engineering. "I truly revere what you have accomplished and expect more from you in the future," he said. If he were alive, Lawrence would heartily second that sentiment. Insidebayarea.com | Subscriber Services | Contact Us © 2000-2006 ANG Newspapers ***************************************************************** 85 Cincinnati Post: Site becomes wildlife haven Cincinnati.Com By Lisa Cornwell Associated Press AL BEHRMAN/Associated Press Jeff Wagner, a spokesman for Fluor Fernald Inc., looks over what was the former Fernald uranium processing plant. He is standing on tope of a mount that conatins 4.7 million tones of low-level waste and building debris. A bird's nest nestled in the tall grasses of a wetland symbolizes the end of a 20-year struggle to clean up a site contaminated by radioactive material from a former Cold War-era uranium processing plant. After years of often-contentious public meetings, lawsuits and relentless lobbying, the land is now absent 1.5 million tons of its most dangerous waste and has begun its transformation into an undeveloped park and wildlife haven covered with woods, prairie and wetlands. "I thought many times that we would never see it turned into something useable and safe for residents," said Lisa Crawford, president and a founding member of the citizens group that began fighting for cleanup of the former Fernald plant site in Crosby Township 22 years ago. "It's been a long road, but we finally got there." Residents worried that radioactive uranium contamination found in the air, water and soil could lead to cancer and other diseases. Workers were concerned about risks from uranium and from radon gas and toxic chemicals stored on the site. The U.S. Department of Energy in 1979 found that radon gas had been leaking from storage silos for years. Fluor Fernald, the company in charge of the cleanup, announced Oct. 29 that its work was completed. The Energy Department, which owns the site, is conducting a final review to ensure the cleanup meets its standards. Cleanup of the 1,050-acre site cost federal taxpayers $4.4 billion. Radioactive waste from concrete silos that Energy Department officials say held the world's largest source of radon gas were removed, treated and shipped to Texas. More than 1 million tons of other radioactive waste were shipped to hazardous waste storage sites in Nevada and Utah, and 323 buildings were demolished. Findings of numerous health studies on Fernald have not been as definitive as workers and residents had hoped, but studies are continuing. Researchers say it can take decades for radiation-linked cancers to show up, and it is difficult to say whether cancers and other health problems occurring among workers and residents are linked to Fernald. The innocuous-sounding Feed Material Production Center that would later gain national notoriety as a radioactively contaminated site was built in a rural area about 20 miles northwest of Cincinnati in 1951. Its task - processing uranium metal used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons - was shrouded in secrecy. "We were under national security clearance and not allowed to tell our families, friends or even workers in other parts of the site about what we did there," said Gene Branham, former president of the Fernald Atomic Trade and Labor Council union representing Fernald workers. Time magazine wrote a cover story in 1988 about the site and residents' worries - headlined "The Nuclear Scandal" - and television talk show host Phil Donahue devoted a program to Fernald that year. "When people knew you worked at Fernald, they would ask you if you glowed in the dark," said Fluor Fernald spokesman Jeff Wagner, who began working at the site for Westinghouse Material Co. of Ohio in 1986 when citizen outrage and fear were at a high point. Concerned residents began asking questions about the plant in the 1970s. The public began demanding answers in 1984, when government documents revealed that almost 300 pounds of enriched uranium oxide dust had been released into the air from a faulty dust collection system. Neighboring wells were found to be contaminated from similar emissions from production and waste storage operations through the years. Those emissions dropped into the soil, contaminating groundwater. "I came home in 1984 to find a man climbing out of my well, but he wouldn't tell me what he was doing," said Crawford, who became angry and worried when she found they were testing for radioactive contamination. Her feelings were shared by about 100 families who formed Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health that year. Crawford became president, and she and her husband, Ken, were lead plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the government, charging emotional distress and damaged property values. The government settled in 1989 for $78 million, including medical testing for nearby residents that is scheduled to end in 2008 unless more funding is found. Fernald workers also sued and reached a $20 million settlement with the government in 1994 that included lifetime medical monitoring. The plant closed in 1989. Suspicion and animosity ran high for years. Public meetings in the late 1980s and early 1990s were legendary, said DOE spokesman Gary Stegner. "You'd be trying to answer questions from angry residents, and you'd feel like you had a target on your face," he said. Combativeness gradually gave way to cooperation, and some FRESH members served on an advisory board the Energy Department formed to develop a consensus on cleanup issues. In 1995, the board recommended setting target cleanup levels, restricting future use of the site and reducing the amount of contaminated soil to be removed. About 4.7 million tons of low-level waste, uranium-contaminated soil and building debris will remain at Fernald in a 110-acre fenced-off pile. The pile is encased in thick liners and caps made of strong synthetic material, clays, rock and clean soil and covered with prairie grass. "Some of us had a problem at first with keeping any of it on site," said Tom Willsey, a trustee for Ross Township in neighboring Butler County, where part of Fernald is located. "We would have preferred to get it all out of here, but at some point reality kicks in and you realize you can't just ship all your problems to someone else's backyard." Activists fighting for cleanups elsewhere praise FRESH's results. "We've come a long way to see the Fernald site cleaned up in a manner that the citizens group feels good about," said Gerald Pollett, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, pushing for the estimated $60 billion cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state. Fernald area groundwater will be pumped and treated for 10 to 12 more years until the drinking water standard is met, and an education center highlighting Fernald history still has to be developed. But the citizens group, which held its last meeting Nov. 16, feels that its mission is accomplished. While grass has not had time to grow in some areas, wild turkeys and deer roam the rolling hills and wooded areas. Wild geese and ducks can be found in and along the ponds and wetlands at the site where self-guided trails are to be established. "We can laugh about a lot of it now, but we learned that you have to fight for what you believe in," Crawford said. "We didn't get total cleanup, but our community is healthier and safer. We made a difference." Publication date: 12-04-2006 [Cincinnati.Com] Copyright1995-2006. The Cincinnati Post, a Scripps Howardnewspaper. ***************************************************************** 86 Knox News: Y-12 manager speaks openly but cautiously Dials talks about past, his role at plant, and even 'Dr. Strangelove' By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com December 4, 2006 OAK RIDGE - It's hard to know what to think when George Dials, general manager at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, opens up an interview talking about "Dr. Strangelove." The 1964 movie classic, Stanley Kubrick's dark comedy about nuclear war, is apparently one of his favorites. Dials was responsive but cautious talking about Y-12 operations during his first extensive interview since coming to Oak Ridge in February. That's expected, in part, because of the high-security nature of the work. Also, his predecessor, Dennis Ruddy, was relieved of his duties in late 2005 reportedly because he breached classified information during a media session. That might further explain why it took months to arrange the meeting. The 61-year-old engineer and former soldier appeared to be most comfortable when talking about himself and his career roots. He grew up in Man, W.Va., a small coal town in the southeastern part of the state. His father died in a mining accident when Dials was just a kid. "I had three generations of men in my family killed in coal-mining accidents. My father, my mother's father and my father's grandfather," Dials said. His mother raised him and his sister. She didn't have much education (eighth grade) but did ironing, baby-sitting and other in-house jobs to make things work. "She's one of my heroes," he said. Dials was a good student and a star football player in high school, earning all-state honors as a linebacker his senior year. "I was 160 pounds wringing wet," he said. That's a bit scrawny by today's standards, but he was good enough to have a number of football scholarship offers - including one from the Coast Guard Academy - and smart enough to be offered academic rides at other institutions. Late in his senior year, however, he got word that he had been accepted at West Point, and that was that. "It was a life-changing event, obviously," he said. As the conversation shifts to his job at Y-12, Dials flinches at a question that suggests he's a non-weapons guy managing a weapons plant. "I was a weapons guy before," he said firmly. Before arriving in Oak Ridge, Dials held a number of executive positions with energy-related companies - coal, nuclear, oil - and gained broad experience in waste management. That included a couple of roles with the U.S. Department of Energy, at one time overseeing the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, DOE's underground nuclear repository in New Mexico. Some Oak Ridge observers were surprised when he was chosen to manage Y-12, a warhead factory that specializes in building and taking apart so-called secondaries - the second stage of thermonuclear weapons. They figured BWXT, the government's contractor, would bring in someone with a more obvious background in the production-and-dismantlement business. As Dials notes, however, he had more than a passing brush with nuclear weapons during a 10-year Army career. He commanded infantry and airborne troops in Europe, made jumps in Spain, and led troops in combat during the Vietnam War. But his secondary specialty in the Army was as a nuclear weapons specialist, and his last assignment was in Korea, where he served in the special weapons plans office of the Joint Staff of the United Nations Command. "That was at a time when we still had forward deployed systems," Dials said. He also spent time at Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nuclear weapon design labs, during the 1970s. He was a military research associate and worked with the assistant lab director for weapons planning. That program, he said, was engaged in weapons development "through definition of need and capability and then design all the way to testing." So Dials wants to make it clear that he knows about weapons. He just doesn't have much experience on the production end. He said he's still learning the intricacies of Y-12, stating at one point that a reporter might know more about some parts of the Oak Ridge plant than he does. "Coming to a production site, it's interesting, I get to see some of the systems I had experience with before in the nude," he said. "They're delivered to the military in the appropriate cases, of course, so you don't get to see all the parts." Y-12 is an important part of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. The plant houses the nation's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which is used in making bombs. A large-scale modernization of the Oak Ridge facilities, many of which date to the World War II Manhattan Project or the early Cold War, includes a $500 million storage center for uranium. Construction is about 40 percent complete. The uranium storehouse at Y-12 will be hardened, reportedly enough to withstand an airplane crash, and will include a number of other classified design features to protect the nuclear assets from terrorists. Critics of the Oak Ridge operations, notably the Project On Government Oversight, have said Y-12 is vulnerable to a terrorist assault. Even though he's a relative newcomer, Dials said he knows enough to be confident of the plant's security arrangements. "The material is secure," he said. "There is no problem with our ability to secure the material that's inside the protected area. I have family here, and all our folks have family here. I am very confident that people can rest easy that we have the right structure, the right protection, the right protective force in place to protect the material." Dials, who holds a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talked with assurance on a variety of Y-12 topics. That includes "wet chemistry," a series of uranium-processing operations critical to the plant's recycling of old warheads and uranium salvage. The recycling operations have been plagued with equipment failures and interruptions. When asked about a specific timetable for restart and sustained operations, he first offered a date that, upon further questioning, was obviously not feasible. He recovered by saying: "We're making progress. It is not easy with the funding restraints we have." He said wet chemistry should be fully operational sometime after the first of the year. Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. © 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel ***************************************************************** 87 NewsBlaze: Nuclear Fuel Cycle Monitor Global Nuclear Renaissance Summit U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Deputy Secretary Clay Sell will lead a group of senior DOE officials and national laboratory directors at the first annual Nuclear Fuel Cycle Monitor Global Nuclear Renaissance Summit, scheduled for December 4-7, 2006, in Washington, DC. Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 5, Deputy Secretary Sell will deliver keynote remarks to the Summit. The Deputy Secretary is expected to discuss President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Initiative as well as increasing the use of nuclear power in the United States. WHO: U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell WHAT: Keynote remarks to the First Annual Nuclear Fuel Cycle Monitor Global Nuclear Renaissance Summit Media availability to immediately follow Deputy Secretary Sell's remarks WHEN: Tuesday, December 5, 2006 8:00AM WHERE: Hyatt Regency Capitol Hotel 400 New Jersey Avenue, NW Washington, DC, 20001 For more information on President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, visit: http://www.gnep.energy.gov/. For the Summit's full agenda, visit: http://www.exchangemonitor.com/calendar.htm. Source: U.S. Department of Energy judythpiazza@gmail.com Copyright © 2006, NewsBlaze, Daily News _ _ ***************************************************************** 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. 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