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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 [NYTr] Iran's "Power of Deterrence"
2 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Nuclear Negotiator, Putin May Meet
3 RIA Novosti: Russia, Iran will push for resumption of talks - FM Lav
4 BBC NEWS: Israel warned off nuclear 'folly'
5 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Total number of defectors nears 10,000
6 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Plans to Counter Any Israeli Attack 
7 Reuters: Iran ready to consider Russian uranium plan 
8 MONTHLY REVIEW: Deborah Campbell, "Iran's Quiet Revolution"
9 Xinhua: IAEA chief calls for calm dialogue to solve Mideast conflict
10 Guardian Unlimited: Putin Meets Iran's Nuclear Negotiator 
11 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI N-case to be resolved upon NPT 
12 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Larijani meets Russian counterpart 
13 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI hasn't received offer for talks 
14 Guardian Unlimited: Ahmadinejad Blasts U.N. Security Council 
15 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Enemies embarrased by IRI's power 
16 AFP: Iran in UN protest over Israel 'military threats' 
17 AFP: Call for 'good will' as Iranian nuclear negotiator meets Putin 
18 AFP: Iran to reply 'destructively' to any Israeli attack -
19 AFP: Ahmadinejad slams 'disgraceful' UN bid to stop nuclear Iran -
20 AFP: Six powers to resume bid to agree Iran sanctions 
21 Guardian Unlimited: Israeli PM Brings Iran Agenda to U.S. 
22 AFP: Bush to meet Olmert in new US political climate 
23 UPI: Iran: Sanctions mean U.N. position shift
24 UPI: Iran warns against stiff U.N. sanctions
25 Guardian Unlimited: Report: U.S., N.Korea May Meet in N.Y. 
26 Korea Herald: U.S., N.K. may meet before 6-party talks   
27 Korea Herald: Seoul says 'no' to N.K. interdiction   
28 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: South decides it won't fully join security in
29 Korea Times: Silence Is Not Golden 
30 AFP: South Korea shies away from US-led cargo inspections - 
31 Guardian Unlimited: N.Korean Television Reports on U.S. Vote 
32 US:  Chemical & Engineering News: Democrats Will Alter Legislative P
33 Guardian Unlimited: ANALYSIS: Things Aren't Going Bush's Way 
34 Guardian Unlimited: Bush Stands by His Man for U.N. Envoy 
35 Mos News: Russia to Keep Its Heaviest ICBM in Service for Another De
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
36 US: London Free Press: New nuclear plant considered for Lake Erie sh
37 edmontonsun.com: Nukes in our future?
38 US: SF New Mexican: Arizona: Palo Verde faces special inspection  
39 The Hindu: State to get back nuclear power 
40 US: Hamilton Spectator: Nanticoke possible site of nuclear plant
41 Hamilton Spectator: Heat's on nuclear power
42 Independent: Credo: Helen Caldicott 
43 US: APP.COM: NRC: Protective liner OK for 2 more years | 
44 US: Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Responses to ''Nucleus for nuclear
45 US: Star News: Nuclear plant passes drill; real incident shuts react
46 US: Political Affairs Magazine: Hearings Begin On Bush’s Nuclear Pla
47 US: Columbus Telegram: Minor fire at Cooper Nuclear Station         
48 Edmonton Journal: Nuclear debate: Pros and cons in the long-running 
49 UPI: Interview: Atomstroyexport's Shmatko
50 SNA: Bulgaria: Bulgaria's Nuke Unit Repairs Canceled
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
51 US: Radioactive Long Island
52 US: NBHNT: Famous whistle-blower regrets having kept silent too long
53 Aljazeera: DU behind the surge in Cancer rates in Iraq - 
54 DAWN: N-safety pact with India likely -
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
55 Nevada Appeal: The best case against Yucca Mt. is in the Constitutio
56 Green Left: Environmentalists oppose mine discharge
57 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Ex-Envirocare boss sues EnergySolutions
58 AFP: Nuclear waste train arrives in Germany, demos await - 
59 Raw Story: Thousands of police guard German railways as nuclear fuel
60 Ely Times: Reid jubilant with Majority Leader prospect
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
61 KnoxNews: Nuke material to be converted
62 SavannahNow.com: Weapons facility debated at public hearing | 
63 KnoxNews: Reactor cleanup delayed again
64 Hanford News: State vit plant hearing draws 1 comment
65 Tri-City Herald: DOE eyes new plan for sludge treatment 
66 washingtonpost.com: Hanford's Cleanup Project Deserves Support - 
67 Dayton Daily News: Taxpayers, former workers pay the price for nucle
68 Cincinnat ENQUIRER: Cleanup Of Piketon Uranium Plant May Top $4.5 Bi
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 1 [NYTr] Iran's "Power of Deterrence"
 
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 14:10:26 -0600 (CST)

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Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Global Research - Nov 5, 2006
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20061105&articleId=3713

Iran's "Power of Deterrence"

The display of Iran's military capabilities is intended to deter US war plans

by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research

On November 2, Iran tested three new types of land-to-sea and sea-to-sea
missiles in the context of its "Great Prophet II" military exercises
carried out on land in the desert (See images below), in the Persian Gulf
waters, the Sea of Oman and 14 of Iran's provinces.

Western and Israeli military analysts were taken by surprise. According to
Debka, the Israeli intelligence publication (5 November), several features
of Iran's military capabilities were unknown to the Pentagon:

  "The spectacular swarm of sophisticated missiles fired in Irans surprise
  military exercise stuns military planners in the US, Israel and Europe"

Iran's tests of surface missiles on November 2 were marked by precise
planning in a carefully staged operation. According to a senior American
missile expert (quoted by Debka),  "the Iranians demonstrated up-to-date
missile-launching technology which the West had not known them to
possess."

  "They also displayed unfamiliar warheads. But their most startling feat
  was the successful first test-fire of the long-range Shehab-3 with its
  cluster of tens of small bomblets, ...

   The entire range bore the imprint of new purchases from China. This
  Shehab-3, whose 2,000-km range brings Israel, the Middle East and Europe
  within reach - may be more than a match for any anti-missile missile
  system in American, Israeli or European arsenals depending critically on
  the point of its fragmentation. Some of its features are still an enigma
  in the West. If the Shehab-3s cluster separates close to target, the
  Israel-US Arrow has a chance to intercept it, but the Americans and
  Israelis have no defense against the multiple warhead if it separates at
  a distance." (Debka, November 5, 2006)

Iranian state television showed dozens of missiles being launched both from
warships in the Persian Gulf as well as from land based locations in the
desert.

According to Uzi Rubin, former head of Israel's anti-ballistic missile
program, "the intensity of the military exercise was unprecedented... It
was meant to make an impression -- and it made an impression."
(http://www.cnsnews.com 3 November 2006)

  "It was a 'technical and operational achievement' said Rubin, pointing
  to the fact that the Iranians were able to launch so many missiles."
  (Ibid)

The display has reached its objective. The Head of Iran's Revolutionary
Guards, General Yahya Rahim Safavi, confirmed  that the missile test was
conducted "to show our deterrent and defensive power to trans-regional
enemies, and we hope they will understand the message."

  "It was a clear reference to the U.S., Britain and France, who were
  among six nations that participated in U.S.-led maneuvers in the Gulf
  earlier this week. Those exercises focused on surveillance, however.

  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a radio interview that she
  believed that the Iranians "are trying to demonstrate that they are
  tough." (Ibid)

The exercises, while  creating a political stir in the US and Israel, do
not seem to have thwarted the US-Israeli resolve to wage a preemptive war
on Iran. In the words of Israel' foreign minister:

  "It is time for the international community to act decisively and
  through the vehicle of the Security Council to send a clear message that
  if they (Iran) continue on their current path, they will incur the wrath
  of the community of nations," Regev said by telephone on Friday.

Post Cold War Deterrence

Since August, Iran has been involved in major war games.

These military exercises are part of a new post-cold war deterrence on the
part of the Tehran government..

The objective is to neutralize US threats regarding Tehran's alleged
nuclear weapons program.

The display of Iranian military capabilities is intended to deter US and
coalition war plans, which are currently in an advanced state of readiness.
The latter is marked by a massive build-up of US and coalition war vessels
in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. (See
Nazemroaya, Oct 2006, Chossudovsky, October 2006)

"Deterrence" and "containment" can also be used against the US. In a recent
statement by Iran's Foreign Ministry, the objective of the war games were
described as follows:

  "Our maneuvers are not meant to pose a threat to any country. They are,
  rather, aimed at reinvigorating Iran's power of deterrence"

Will these developments deter the Bush administration from embarking upon
the next stage of its Middle East military adventure?

Will US and Israeli military planners exercise restraint?

One would hope that "Post Cold War deterrence" directed against the US
might contribute to temporarily thwarting Washington's military agenda.

On the other hand, we should understand that both sides on an active war
footing.

The situation in the Persian Gulf is extremely tense. The massive
deployment of US and coalition naval power within a short distance from the
Iranian coastline constitutes an act of provocation. This deployment marked
by ongoing US war games could trigger an incident which could potentially
lead to war.

It is therefore essential in the weeks and months ahead, that citizens'
movements in the US and around the world act consistently to confront their
respective governments and reverse and dismantle this military agenda. (For
details, see Michel Chossudovsky, Post Cold War Shivers, October 2006).

 [Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best Americas "War
on Terrorism"  Second Edition, Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of
Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for
Research on Globalization. ]

? Copyright Michel Chossudovsky , GlobalResearch.ca, 2006
       
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 2 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Nuclear Negotiator, Putin May Meet

From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday November 11, 2006 12:16 PM

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV 

Associated Press Writer 

MOSCOW (AP) - Iran's top nuclear negotiator pursued talks with
Russian officials Saturday amid reports he may meet with
President Vladimir Putin, a move that would suggest a strong
Russian diplomatic push to get Iran to shift its position on its
nuclear program. 

Ali Larijani said Friday after meeting Russian officials that
Tehran would push ahead with its controversial nuclear program,
and suggested it could break off ties with the U.N. nuclear
watchdog if the world inflicts punishments proposed by European
nations. 

In a familiar mix of threats and offers, Ali Larijani said Iran
wanted negotiations to ease the mounting standoff over fears it
is seeking nuclear weapons, but that it would not abandon what
he insisted was a peaceful nuclear energy program. 

After Friday's talks between Larijani and Igor Ivanov, the
secretary of Russia's Security Council, they opened another
round of talks Saturday, the Interfax news agency reported. The
ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies reported that Putin
might also receive Larijani. 

Moscow is seeking to revive its proposal to move Iran's uranium
enrichment work to Russian soil to assuage international
concerns that Iran could use the process to develop weapons.
Larijani said Friday that the proposal remains on the table, but
there was no evidence of movement toward Iranian acceptance. 

``We want to use our rights under the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty, and in this context there will be no retreat, but we are
ready for negotiations,'' Larijani said Friday. He said Iran was
prepared to renew negotiations with the European Union's top
diplomat, Javier Solana, or to hold talks ``in any other
format,'' according to Russian news agencies. 

The European draft resolution that would impose U.N. sanctions
on Iran ``will not promote a political solution of the
problem,'' Larijani said. ``Those who support adopting the
resolution want to aggravate the problems of the region.'' 

Larijani's talks in Moscow on Friday stretched on for more than
five and a half hours. 

With Russia calling for major changes that would water down the
proposed sanctions, the visit appeared to highlight divisions
among the five permanent Security Council members over how to
deal with Iran's refusal to halt its enrichment program. 

In comments that dovetailed with Russia's warnings that too much
pressure could deepen Iran's defiance, Larijani warned that
Tehran would reconsider its ties with the International Atomic
Energy Agency if the council adopted the European proposal. 

``We will reconsider relations with the IAEA if the United
Nations passes the ... resolution ignoring Russia's
amendments,'' Russian news agencies quoted him as saying. Iran
has repeatedly threatened to respond to sanctions by blocking
IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities. 

While they recently agreed in principle on sanctions, both
Russia and China have continued to publicly push for dialogue
instead of U.N. punishment, despite the collapse last month of a
European Union attempt to entice Iran into talks. Both countries
have major commercial ties with Iran and can veto U.N. Security
Council resolutions as permanent members. 

The five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany
offered Iran a package of economic incentives and political
rewards in June if it agreed to freeze its uranium enrichment
effort. But Tehran has said it would continue enrichment, a
process that is central to both civilian power generation and
the production of nuclear weapons. 

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty allows for peaceful nuclear
power programs, but Iran's activities and its secrecy have led
to fears it is seeking nuclear weapons. Larijani insisted that
was not the case, saying that ``nuclear weapons have no place in
our defense doctrine,'' Russian news agencies reported. 

The European draft resolution would order all countries to ban
the supply of material and technology that could contribute to
Iran's nuclear and missile programs, measures that could damage
Russia's nuclear and arms-industry ties with Tehran.	 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 3 RIA Novosti: Russia, Iran will push for resumption of talks - FM Lavrov
 
11/ 11/ 2006                                  

MOSCOW, November 11 (RIA Novosti) - Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov said Saturday Russia and Iran will push for the
resumption of international talks on Tehran's controversial
nuclear program.

 The long-running nuclear dispute was in the focus of talks
between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Islamic
Republic's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani. Lavrov and Igor
Ivanov, Russia's Security Council chief, also attended the
talks. 

"We have reached agreement to continue our contacts, and we will
work to achieve our common goal of resuming talks with six
nations," Lavrov said 

The five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany -
Iran-6 negotiators - offered Tehran a package of incentives in
June in a bid to entice Tehran to halt uranium enrichment, the
process crucial for both power generation and weapons
production. But Iran refused, citing its rights under the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

 Lavrov said Russia will continue contacts with the six
negotiators in the nearest days and will hopefully find a
mutually acceptable basis for further talks.

 The Security Council is discussing sanctions against defiant
Iran drafted by Britain, France, and Germany. 

The EU-3 proposed a ban on sales of missile and nuclear
technologies to the country, freezing its military bank
accounts, and imposing visa restrictions on Iranian officials
linked to the nuclear industry. Russia, Iran's major trade
partner, has called the sanctions excessive.

© 2005 RIA Novosti   
*****************************************************************
 4 BBC NEWS: Israel warned off nuclear 'folly'

Last Updated: Sunday, 12 November 2006, 13:10 GMT [ src=]
 		   			 				 					Israel warned off nuclear 'folly' 				 			
  By Frances Harrison BBC News, Teheran   

[Natanz nuclear enrichment plant ]                              

Iran wants to have 3,000 centrifuge machines operational by March                                                             

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman has warned Tehran will not 
hesitate to retaliate with a crushing blow if Israel attacks its 
nuclear sites. 

This follows comments by Israel's deputy defence minister Ephraim 
Sneh. 

He had suggested Israel could launch military strikes against 
Iranian nuclear installations as a last resort. 

Mohammed Ali Hosseini said if Israel indulged in such stupidity, 
then the response of Iranian fighters would be emphatic, crushing 
and immediate. 

Mr Hosseini said it would not take one second. 

Earlier, Mr Sneh had said he was not advocating a military 
attack, but considered it a last resort and he added sometimes 
the last resort was the only resort. 

Also on the nuclear issue, Iran's Foreign Ministry reiterated the 
country's policy of trying to have 3,000 centrifuge machines 
operational by March next year in order to enrich uranium. 

However so far, all the indications are that Iran only has a 
couple of hundred centrifuges working. 

'Conciliatory' on US talks 

But on the issue of direct talks with the United States over 
Iraq, Iran's foreign ministry has struck a more conciliatory 
note. 

Mr Hosseini repeated that if there was a written official request 
from the US for talks on regional issues, then Tehran would 
consider it. 

Mr Hosseini also mentioned the task force headed by former US 
secretary of state James Baker, which is currently examining the 
option of talks with Iran and Syria to try and improve the 
security situation inside Iraq. 

*****************************************************************
 5 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Total number of defectors nears 10,000

November 13, 2006 KST 1

  November 13, 2006 ¤Ñ The number of North Korean defectors who
come to South Korea continues to rise, and the total will soon
climb above 10,000, Unification Ministry officials said
yesterday.

 A total of 9,140 North Koreans had come to the South as of the
end of September, the ministry said. In addition, another 730
are now seeking asylum at foreign missions in countries such as
Thailand, Mongolia and China, the officials said. The number
could surpass 10,000 late this year.

 The stream of defectors into the South has steadily increased
since the mid-1990s, when the communist state suffered years of
flood and drought. The annual number surpassed 1,000 in 2002 for
the first time since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

 This year will be the highest number recorded, according to the
Unification Ministry. Through September, 1,446 defectors had
arrived here from North Korea. In 2005, 1,383 defectors entered
South Korea.

 The North Korean people's attempt to escape their homeland will
likely continue for the time being, as the U.S.-led financial
sanctions over the reclusive state's nuclear test are sure to
exacerbate the dire food situation.   
	  
   
Copyright by Joins.com, Inc. Terms of Use |
*****************************************************************
 6 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Plans to Counter Any Israeli Attack 

From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Sunday November 12, 2006 11:16 AM

By NASSER KARIMI 

Associated Press Writer 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said
Sunday that his country's Revolutionary Guards would strongly
and immediately respond to any Israeli attack. 

``If the Zionist regime commits such stupidity, the response by
the Iranian military will be swift, strong and crushing,''
Mohammed Ali Hosseini said. ``Iran will take no longer than a
second to respond.'' 

Israeli officials have commented recently that their country's
military would consider bombing Iranian nuclear facilities to
thwart what it has described as an Iranian nuclear weapons
program. Iran says its nuclear plans aim to generate
electricity. 

Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 to destroy
former President Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program. While
Israel neither acknowledges nor denies possessing nuclear arms,
it is thought to have between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads,
according to a 2006 report by the Center for Nonproliferation
Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in
California. 

Hosseini downplayed the possibility of such an attack,
suggesting that Israeli bluster stemmed from the current
government's ``very fragile'' political situation. 

``The situation and capability of the Zionist regime are far too
small to threaten Iran,'' Hosseini said. 

He also said that Iran is taking more steps to increase uranium
production. 

In October, Iran stepped up uranium enrichment, producing a
small batch of low-enriched uranium - suitable as nuclear fuel
but not weapons grade - in February. 	 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 7 Reuters: Iran ready to consider Russian uranium plan 

 Sat Nov 11, 2006 1:48 PM GMT[26]  						 							 							 	

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran is ready to consider a proposal to
enrich uranium in Russia to lessen suspicions over its nuclear
programme but would not stop similar work inside Iran, Foreign
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Saturday.

The United Nations Security Council is trying to reach agreement
on sanctions against Iran after it failed to halt uranium
enrichment as demanded in a July council resolution.

Western nations accuse Iran of trying secretly to build an
atomic arsenal, but Iran says it has the right to enrich uranium
and only wants to generate electricity.

['' border='0' style='margin-bottom: 8px;' /] 
Russia had proposed building a joint nuclear enrichment facility
on its soil to enrich Iran's uranium to the level used in power
stations, which is lower than is needed to make bombs.
 
"Iran seeks to preserve its rights to nuclear technology on its
soil, but that does not contradict joint work with others in
other areas," Mottaki told a news conference.

Russia, one of Iran's main trading partners, wants parts of a
European draft sanctions text deleted, while the United States
wants stronger language inserted. Negotiations are likely to
continue for some time.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday that Iran's
enemies could not do a "damn thing" to stop Iran's nuclear
activities.

Iran ended snap inspections of its nuclear facilities in
February after its case was referred to the U.N. Security
Council and has threatened to curtail all inspections by the
U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, if sanctions are imposed.
 
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 8 MONTHLY REVIEW: Deborah Campbell, "Iran's Quiet Revolution"
 
Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative
426 W. Gilman St. Madison, WI                                                                                                           10/11/06
					 					 						 					 					 <img src="MRPNewBooks95.jpg"
photography by Alfred Yaghobzadeh 

The bus rumbled along a highway in southwest Iran, passing a
series of anti-aircraft batteries and rickety guard towers
before pulling in through a checkpoint to the Bushehr nuclear
plant compound.  Having anticipated significant difficulties
finding, much less nearing, the reactor, I stared in stunned
silence at its dome.  So much for state secrets.  It glistened
like a mosque. 

I sat in the women's section at the back, mentally drafting the
travel brochure: "Welcome to Bushehr!  Take our budget bus tour
of the facility that has everyone talking!"  One could imagine
the collective synaptic energy emanating from Washington,
London, Paris, and Bonn, striking the gleaming white dome like
flint sparks.  Yet to my fellow travellers -- locals being taken
to their homes surrounding the plant, weary labourers half
asleep in the men's section, women in the brightly coloured
layers traditional in the Persian Gulf -- it was just an average
day in a quiet Iranian fishing village where nothing much
happens.  They didn't even look out the window. 

We passed a sign that welcomed "Dear Guests" to the reactor's
information centre, but the bus tour was just as good: no
security shakedown and all for less than a dime, round trip. 
Plus it ran past the ocean, providing a stellar view of the
Persian Gulf and a lung full of sea air.  What more could one
ask of a nuclear power plant tour? 

So much has changed since the Bushehr reactor was launched in
the early 1970s with the enthusiastic endorsement of the United
States.  Whether it will ever produce weapons-grade fissile
material is open to question, but thirty years ago the Ford
administration (at the urging of Westinghouse and other US
companies, which stood to make billions as suppliers) agreed to
sell the Shah of Iran a full nuclear fuel cycle, thereby
providing all the ingredients necessary to make nuclear weapons.
 Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld held key national security
portfolios and Paul Wolfowitz was in charge of stemming nuclear
proliferation, then as now (till Wolfowitz's departure for the
World Bank and Rumsfeld's resignation).  According to Henry
Kissinger, who was privy to the agreement, that subject never
came up. 

The deal dissolved after the 1979 Islamic revolution, when the
uprising's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, deemed nuclear
weapons "un-Islamic" and halted the program.  For twenty-five
years, the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities and ambitions
was of no great concern.  Today, they are deemed a threat to the
West, while within Iran the pursuit of nuclear energy has become
a powerful symbol of national identity. 

On the other side of Bushehr, among the salt-encrusted fishing
vessels, I chatted with a woman in her thirties, a
pleasant-faced housewife in a flower-patterned chador.  "Come to
my home," she said, leading me through a labyrinth of mud brick
alleyways.  The walls of her home were painted turquoise, the
colour of the sea.  Inside was her husband, an invalid, thin and
drawn, unable to walk.  He talked of the wounds he had sustained
in the war with Iraq -- a war that spanned the 1980s and claimed
a million lives.  Taking my hand, he pressed it into the missing
flesh of his thigh.  He had endured countless surgeries, but he
and his wife were able to have a child -- a delicate
eight-year-old son, their greatest joy. 

We sat on carpets drinking hot tea and eating oranges as a
ceiling fan lazily nudged the sultry air.  To be in an Iranian
home is to enter a private garden where the problems of the
outside world recede.  So much of what the world knows about
Iran is distorted, enslaved by the past or, in the present, by
war-on-terrorism rhetoric.  I wondered how this family would
fare in the event of a military strike on their neighbourhood
reactor.  Would they so readily invite a foreigner to their
home? 
[Iran] 

Iran is a complex, even contradictory nation, and in the context
of rising tensions and a growing threat of war, the lens through
which the West and the Islamic republic view one another has
become dangerously blurred.  For the West, Iran is a nation of
wild-eyed zealots shouting the familiar refrain of marg bar
Amrika -- death to America.  It's an image Iranian authorities
have not hesitated to promote in their efforts to quell internal
dissent and present the outside world with the image of a
fearsome, loyal populace.  Yet Iran has changed remarkably in
the quarter century since the Islamic revolution, and such
reductionist images are deceiving. 

The war with Iraq was unsettling for many reasons, not least of
which were American support for Iraq and weapons sales from the
West that served to arm both sides.  After a period of uneasy
transition, the election of reformist president Mohammad Khatami
in 1997 ushered in an era of social liberalization that proved
to be transformative.  Expats were lured back, satellite
television and the Internet seized the popular imagination, and
in Iran's cities, at least, a repressive, closed society opened
its doors.  If current military threats have had little impact
on the population, the juggernaut of Western cultural hegemony
is an altogether different matter.  Having adopted (or adapted)
many of "our" ways, Iranians today know far more about the West
than the West knows about them. 

The mutual mistrust between the administrations of Iran and the
US is illustrated by their reciprocal epithets: the Axis of Evil
versus the Great Satan (or the "Global Arrogance," as Iran's
leaders now refer to America).  Among certain American
politicians, there are mounting fears that the "mad mullahs" are
on the verge of obtaining the bomb, potentially annihilating
Israel (though of course this could annihilate the Palestinians
in the process), and strengthening Iran's role as a regional
power.  Meanwhile, Shia leaders with strong ties to Iran have
risen to power in Iraq, a result that should have been
anticipated but wasn't.  The Iranian government nonetheless sees
itself surrounded by hostile forces: an American-occupied
Afghanistan; a nuclear-armed Pakistan; and Iraq, a fractious
nightmare where Americans forces are constructing permanent
military bases and the world's largest US embassy -- reportedly
the size of Vatican City.  Iran's leaders fear an aggressive
Israel and its undeclared nuclear arsenal as well as America's
desire to see not only change, but regime change. 

By acquiring nuclear technology, Tehran is asserting itself at
the centre of an emerging locus of Shia power that includes Iraq
and Lebanon and directly threatens US efforts to restructure the
Middle East.  Yet the sentiment surfacing from Tehran echoes
that expressed by Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar: "The
United States has been threatening Iran for twenty-seven years,
and this is not new for us.  Therefore, we are never afraid of
US threats." 

At the centre of the bravado is new president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.  The former mayor of Tehran emerged from the
generation who fought in the Iran-Iraq War.  Americans may have
forgotten their government's support for Saddam Hussein in that
eight-year conflict, but Ahmadinejad has not.  A former
Revolutionary Guards commando affiliated with the basij, the
paramilitary defenders of the Islamic revolution who helped
elect him, Ahmadinejad represents a hardline faction that
opposes any rapprochement with the West.  He and his followers
are at odds with others in leadership positions -- to say
nothing of Iran's upper classes -- who see political and
economic openness as the best way forward, but conflict with the
West (and the international attention he is receiving)
strengthens Ahmadinejad at their expense. 

Within days of last summer's presidential election, Iran forged
ahead on its nuclear program.  Emulating Ayatollah Khomeini, the
new president laid everything on the line.  Much had changed
since 2003, when an apparently imminent American victory in Iraq
persuaded Iran to offer a full peace deal to the US, a proposal
American officials immediately rejected.  It was, some now
admit, a colossal mistake. 

The US is currently mired in Iraq, and Iran, with the world's
third-largest oil reserves, has the capability to choke off the
Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world's oil
passes.  It has strengthened its economic ties to Russia -- a
nation wary of US intentions in the region -- and China, which
recently inked its largest oil and gas deal in history with
Iran.  Any attack on the Islamic republic would be viewed by
both nations as an attack on their national interests.  It could
also send oil prices into the stratosphere. 

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, has rejected
American demands that, in return for negotiations aimed at
resolving the crisis over Iran's nuclear activities, Iran
suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing -- conditions that
add up to forfeiting Iran's main bargaining chip before even
sitting down to the table.  His country, Larijani insists, is
acting within its rights in pursuing nuclear power but is
willing to talk if plans for sanctions and regime change are set
aside and security guarantees are proffered.  The United States
is determined to topple his government whether or not the crisis
is resolved, he has said.  "They want to set fire to the
region." 

Lacking verifiable intelligence on any nuclear weapons program,
and the experience of Iraq's non-existent WMDs still fresh in
their minds, US civilian and military leaders are deeply divided
over the next move.  Vice President Dick Cheney, with former
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has been leading the charge
to war, reports the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, while many
military leaders are cautioning against it. 

Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, appears at ease amid the high-stakes
diplomacy.  The cards, he believes, are ultimately in Iran's
hand. [Iran] 

[Iran] 

At bootleg DVD shops around the country, a film called The
Crimes of Saddam is a bestseller, as is Uday Hussein's home
wedding video, a kitsch souvenir of how the mighty have fallen. 
Iranians are glad their arch-enemy Saddam Hussein has been
ousted but they are well aware that it was in Iran, not Iraq,
that the US embarked on its first Middle Eastern regime change. 
In 1953, the CIA (with British involvement) overthrew Iran's
first democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh,
after his parliament voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry. 

To find the Islamic republic's "official" view of the United
States, I visited the former US embassy in Tehran, now formally
referred to as the Den of Spies.  In 1979, a group of students
loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the embassy and took its
staff hostage.  They claimed to have feared a reprisal of 1953,
when the US reinstalled the Shah and trained his notorious
secret police, whose repressive tactics led to the popular
revolution.  Inside the embassy is an exhibition called
"American Democracy Fair." Amid a phantasmagoria of satirical
sculptures and caricature art pillorying US and Israeli foreign
policy are rooms filled with antiquated James Bond-style
equipment, relics from a previous era of US espionage.  I passed
by decoder devices, a soundproof meeting room, and document
shredders.  Hundreds of pages of shredded documents revealing
American machinations have been meticulously reconstructed and
sell on CD at the bookstore next door. 

In the garden outside the embassy, the husk of a helicopter --
from the failed US mission to rescue the fifty-two American
hostages imprisoned here for 444 days -- serves as an art
installation, and the surrounding trees are adorned with signs
that read "Down With USA."  Indeed, all of the signs seemed to
be in English, which made sense when I realized that the only
visitors are Western diplomats or journalists.  Iranians clearly
aren't the target of this particular message.  But do they agree
with this view? 

My quest for an answer led me to another post-revolutionary
attraction: the Shah's summer palace at the foot of Tehran's
magnificent Alborz mountains.  Set on manicured grounds replete
with peacocks, the palace is crammed with overwrought Louis
XIV-type furnishings, a 1970s take on Versailles.  All that
remains of the statue of the Shah is a pair of tall bronze boots
-- a monarchy cut off at the knees.  By opening the palace to
the public, Iranian authorities intended to expose the Shah's
extravagant lifestyle, entertaining the powerful while the
people starved.  Instead, it has become a pilgrimage site for
young Iranians born after the revolution, who see not corruption
and abuse of power but a symbol of their nation's past glory. 

Understanding the role and significance of Iranian youth is
crucial to developing a complete picture of the forces now
shaping Iran.  After the revolution, birth control was sharply
restricted.  In the following decade, the population nearly
doubled.  Today, 70 percent of Iran's seventy million citizens
are under thirty, making it one of the world's youngest nations. 

Shortly before his death in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini recognized
the looming housing and employment shortages and reversed
course.  Iran has since become a model of family planning.  It
now operates the only government-approved condom factory in the
Middle East, and a month's supply of the pill is readily
available without prescription for the price of a cup of tea. 
University students are required to take a sex-ed course in
order to graduate, and couples must take contraception classes
to receive a marriage licence.  Most families now have no more
than one or two children, even in the villages. 

Ayatollah Khomeini had envisioned the baby boom as a
twenty-million-member army of "soldiers for Islam," but in Iran
things rarely turn out as planned.  Through sheer strength of
numbers, the revolution's children are pushing an agenda at odds
with their elders.  The new generation -- a modern version of
America's postwar baby boom -- is more interested in good times
than guns, in ecstasy over Islam.  At the royal palace, students
and young couples snap pictures in the gardens and speak in
hushed tones outside the gaudy palace chambers with their
mirrored walls.  They have no memory of the Shah's rule by fear,
no recollection of the savageries of the secret police, of the
disappeared, the maimed, and the permanently silenced.  Gazing
at the photographs of world leaders that adorn the palace, they
recall an era when Iran was a global player, a respected member
of the community of nations.  Reflecting on the 2,500-year
history of the Persian Empire -- a superpower that stretched
from Anatolia and Egypt across western Asia to northern India
and Central Asia -- they envision a future in which Iran is no
longer an international pariah.  One man summed up the
overriding sentiment: "We don't want a wall around our country." 

Despite the murals of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei who
watch, godlike, from the sides of high-rise buildings (alongside
Calvin Klein and Nokia ads), most Iranians are busy doing their
own thing.  They are buying bootlegged booze, from fine French
Cabernet Sauvignon at $20 (US) a bottle to the Tuborg beer and
Absolut vodka that supplement readily available homemade arak. 
They are watching the latest Hollywood movies on DVD, smuggled
in from Malaysia, or MTV, the BBC, and Fashion Television via
satellite.  They are holding dance parties with the blinds drawn
and text-messaging their boyfriends and girlfriends.  An
underground sexual revolution is raging, and legal and cultural
prohibitions on dating simply mean that young couples tend to
meet in private.  "When you meet in someone's home, it's all
about sex," a young man told me.  A young woman, alluding to the
oral sex that preserves their chastity, said coyly, "The girls
here are very skillful."  For the wealthy, at least, lost
virginities can be reclaimed by a trip to the surgeon. 

"Where else in the world would you have your drugs, your booze,
your rock 'n' roll delivered to your door?  This country is like
a giant boarding school," joked a former journalist who had left
the profession after too many nights spent in prison for
assisting foreign correspondents. 

For embattled journalists and young Iranians, the Internet has
become a source of unprecedented freedom.  With at least seventy
thousand active blogs, about half belonging to women, Farsi is
the third most common blogging language in the world.  Iran's
hardline judiciary, which has closed more than one hundred
newspapers since 2000, hasn't figured out how to cope with the
Internet.  Websites that are deemed "un-Islamic" (like the
popular international dating site Orkut.com) are shut down or
filtered, but alternative sites or workarounds arise just as
quickly and word spreads. 

Omid Memarian, a prominent journalist and blogger, is a
handsome, clean-shaven young man who's part of the new
generation of Iranians that seldom part with their laptops.  We
met at Jaam-eJam International Food Court on Valiasr Street, the
hippest hangout in Tehran.  A replica of the shiny neon food
courts found in any American shopping mall, it was the perfect
setting to observe the generation gap.  Sitting at a plastic
table surrounded by sirens in tight jeans and form-fitting
manteaus (the shirt-dresses urban women prefer to the chador)
busy smoking cigarettes and reapplying lip gloss, I found it
impossible to imagine that this giant boarding school might be
on the brink of war. 

In a culture where black is the colour of piety, and the hijab
is required by law, women tested the outer limits in lime green
and fuchsia.  Despite restrictions on mixing with the opposite
sex, they flirted provocatively with young men in goatees and
longish hair, one of whom had an American flag patch sewn to the
butt of his jeans.  The occasional guy or girl showed off the
fresh white bandage of a recent nose job, an obsession among the
middle and upper classes. 

"So much has changed that the generation born before the
revolution can't keep up," observed Memarian.  We spoke of the
social freedoms that followed the Khatami presidency -- from
sweeping changes in women's fashions to diminishing crackdowns
on male-female relationships that once were grounds for arrest. 
Lashings have all but disappeared and unmarried couples now hold
hands in public.  "Everything used to be underground," said
Memarian.  "Now you see it on the street."  He pointed toward
two heavily made-up young women whose teased blond highlights
made a mockery of their flimsy scarves.  "The previous
generation was idealistic, but the new generation is
materialistic and self-involved.  They don't remember revolution
and war.  They aren't interested in the ideals of the Islamic
government." 
[Iran] 

Memarian was among some twenty Internet journalists arrested in
the fall of 2004.  Though he had never publicly criticized the
clerical establishment or the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei
-- the standard reason for running afoul of the authorities --
he spent two months in prison enduring repeated interrogations
and beatings.  "I think the arrests were a political project,"
he surmised, "to inspire fear."  While his prison experience
still gives him nightmares, he laughed about the images of
Jennifer Lopez that his interrogators took from his laptop. 
Since moral indiscretions are commonly used as grounds for
imprisonment, he was questioned about the nature of his
relationship with J.Lo. 

Glancing at the hipsters crowding the food court, he noted a
government study that identified four critical issues among
Iranian youth: sex, unemployment, drugs, and waning religious
devotion.  Given the challenges they pose to Islamic rule, the
government has been reluctant to address these issues publicly,
but they are openly discussed on the Internet.  Technology has
provided Iranian youth with a voice that is increasingly
difficult to silence.  "The Internet shows how life in Iran is
divided into two parts," said Memarian, "the one the government
tries to present, and the real society which wants to change the
socio-political and economic situation and is always pushing the
boundaries." 

Such change was the focus of my conversation with Iran's most
famous "blogging cleric," Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former
vice-president under Khatami.  At his office in Tehran, he spoke
of the quiet revolution transforming Iran.  "The speed of
technology is accelerating social change," Abtahi told me, after
excusing himself to don his cleric's robe and turban.  The
changes, he explained, are so vast and unprecedented that those
in their teens are already a generation apart from their
siblings a few years older.  And the early adopters, he said,
are the vanguard of society: "They are leading their whole
families." 

This love affair with technology, however, is largely restricted
to the urban middle and upper classes.  Many Iranians I spoke to
in rural villages had not even heard of the Internet.  Indeed,
there is a growing divide in Iranian society, not only between
young and old but between urban and rural, modern and
traditional, rich and poor.  Even Tehran is split along class
lines: Internet use and access to the outside world are clearly
the purview of the wealthier, more cosmopolitan northern half of
the city.  It was this divide that determined the presidential
election. 
[Iran] 

The news that underdog candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won
last June's election by a landslide shocked both foreign
observers and Iranian analysts, who had predicted an easy
victory for his main competitor, billionaire cleric and former
president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.  The evening after the
election, I went to Tajrish Square, where the crowd was affluent
and surprisingly festive.  Plastic palm trees loomed up against
the night sky, glowing electric yellow and orange.  Elaborate
fruit stands displayed large glass jars in which peeled walnuts
floated in brine, like miniature brains.  A group of fashionably
dressed young people were checking out a selection of Hollywood
movies at one of the stands.  I asked a young woman with a
pierced lip if she'd voted for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  She laughed
in my face.  "Who?" she said, walking away with her arm around
her boyfriend. 

Like the girl with the pierced lip, most of the middle and upper
classes were unfamiliar with Ahmadinejad, a scruffily bearded
blacksmith's son who had run on a platform of economic justice. 
His campaign film showed him in his modest home, illustrating
that he -- like the masses of poor and working class -- sat on
the floor to eat in the traditional manner rather than adopting
the dining table habits of Westernized elites.  When an
interviewer asked him if he had a summer home, he laughed, a
pointed jab at establishment corruption. 

In the midst of a campaign characterized by flash and cash,
Ahmadinejad identified himself as a humble "street sweeper," a
man not so different from those who voted for him.  He
represented conservative Shia values: in his tenure as mayor
he'd introduced separate elevators for men and women in his
offices; and in the park outside Tehran's central theatre where
gay men were known to congregate, he had threatened to build a
mosque. 

Rafsanjani, in contrast, had run on a platform of
ever-increasing social liberalization that played well to the
wealthy minority.  His campaign operatics included sexy girls in
tight manteaus who rode on rollerblades with pro-Rafsanjani
bumper stickers wrapped around their waists.  I attended an
open-air Persian rock concert at his Tehran headquarters, where
the female emcee kissed her husband on stage to ecstatic
applause.  Everyone -- that is, everyone in north Tehran,
everyone with money -- was sure Rafsanjani had the presidency in
the bag.  Unfortunately for him, a reputation for corruption and
a general apathy among his natural constituents undermined his
electoral chances.  Many of the middle and upper class did not
vote on principle, as if to do so would only support a governing
system they despised.  Disillusioned with Khatami, whose liberal
initiatives were all too frequently quashed by unelected
clerics, they believed the president's office was too weak to
usher in genuine change. 

A few even hoped Ahmadinejad would win: a hardline victory, they
told me, would expose the harshness of Iranian authorities and
so enrage the masses that they would overturn the government. 
They were the ones most likely to watch satellite broadcasts
from Los Angeles made by exiled supporters of the former Shah
and his ambitious son, Reza Pahlavi, who would like nothing more
than a return to power and has urged the Bush administration to
attack Iran.  Though eager for a piece of the $75 million the US
State Department has requested to fund anti-regime broadcasting,
Pahlavi has virtually no support base in a nation weary of
bloodshed and war.  "People don't want another revolution," said
Khosrow Hassanzadeh, a prominent artist who was a teenager in
1979, echoing the widespread sentiment.  "Revolution is
horrible.  It breaks everything." 

While the other candidates emphasized high-minded notions like
democracy and human rights or expounded on social
liberalization, Ahmadinejad galvanized millions with promises of
fighting corruption and redistributing Iran's oil wealth.  To
the poor and unemployed (officially 14 percent of the
population, but likely twice that), his platform resonated. "No
one thinks of human rights when they need bread," said one savvy
twenty-two-year-old female blogger, analyzing the failures of
the reform movement (which couldn't even garner enough votes to
move their candidates into the second round of elections). 

Ahmadinejad was the only candidate who didn't allude to closer
relations with the West.  Furthermore, though pious, he is not a
cleric, a fact that played to his advantage.  Corruption was the
word I most often heard Iranians associate with the clerics, who
are seen to have enriched themselves while failing to deliver on
the revolution's promise of social justice for the poor and
oppressed -- a venerated class in Shia Islam.  I will never
forget watching a cleric clutch his flowing robes as he ran
across a busy street in a working-class borough, the cars
accelerating as they attempted to run him down. 

To understand Ahmadinejad's supporters, one must leave the
bubble of north Tehran, with its laptops and nose jobs and pizza
parlours.  In south Tehran, I befriended a young woman whose
father was a toy wholesaler, a member of the powerful
conservative class of bazaari merchants who had been the muscle
behind the Islamic revolution.  Massoumeh greeted me at the door
in an orange sundress.  At twenty-four, she is a graduate
student in engineering -- not unusual given that 63 percent of
Iranian university students are now women.  She told me she
liked Ahmadinejad, admired the fact that he lived in a humble
manner, drove an old car (a clunky Iranian-made Paykan), and
spoke the language of her concerns: fighting corruption,
creating jobs, and loaning young people the money to marry -- a
grave social problem among the poor -- with his proposed
billion-dollar Love Fund.  "He is a good Muslim man," she said
approvingly. 

A social conservative who always wears a chador outside her home
-- and together with her ten-year-old sister ran to don it when
their brother-in-law arrived to join us -- she distrusted the
social freedoms promoted by other candidates.  To her, such
changes had gone far enough already.  When I mentioned the young
women from Rafsanjani's campaign reportedly dancing in the
streets, her dark eyes narrowed with disdain.  "Those candidates
didn't understand that we have freedom.  Other problems are more
important." 

While most north Tehranis have all but stamped out the dying
coals of the revolution, Massoumeh's family represents the
traditional religious class, which remains devoted to its aims. 
They are committed to the principles of Shia Islam and seek both
fundamental justice and non-materialist family values.  It is
this deep vein that Ahmadinejad has tapped.  "Imam Khomeini,"
Massoumeh said, referring to the revolution's founder, "is like
a father to us." 

Her real father, an imposing man with the four-days-growth beard
of the religious, wanted to know my opinion on Iran's pursuit of
nuclear energy.  Since the election, state television had been
broadcasting regular programs on the marvels of the atom.  (They
reminded me of American propaganda films from the 1950s.)  "If
the rest of the world can have nuclear power, why not Iran?" the
father asked.  He could not understand how it was that Israel,
India, even an unstable military regime like Pakistan could have
nuclear weapons, yet Iran should be criticized for pursuing
nuclear energy.  Though much is made of Iran's enormous oil and
gas reserves, calling into question their need for nuclear
energy, a woeful lack of refining capacity means the country
currently spends $2 billion (US) a year on gasoline imports. 

To this family -- as to most Iranians I spoke to, religious,
secular, rich, and poor -- Iran has been singled out.  Their
view is underscored by the fact that, unlike Iran, those other
nations have refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, which would subject them to inspections by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -- and which allows
member nations to develop civilian nuclear power. 

While Iranians are divided on almost every other level, here is
one issue on which they can agree: it is a double standard. 
"Iran," the father said solemnly, one large hand on each knee,
"is as good as any other country." 
[Iran] 

If American officials are under the impression that Iran's
pro-democracy opposition will make common cause with any sort of
military intervention, they might talk to Dr. Sohrab Razzaghi, a
professor of political science and director of the Iranian Civil
Society Organizations Training and Research Center.  His
organization works to strengthen Iran's nascent civil society
and publishes research on the state of Iranian democracy. 
"Iranian civil society," he told me, "is paper thin." 

At his office, piled with books and reports, he described Iran
as being in a "transformative period" -- neither fully
democratic nor fully undemocratic, neither fully modern nor
fully traditional, neither fully religious nor fully secular. 
In such moments of "fear and hope" outcomes are uncertain, he
said.  Already, American threats have led NGOs like his, with
ties to the international community, to be labelled "agents of
imperialism."  Like the broad majority of opposition voices in
Iran, Razzaghi is opposed to outside force, insisting that
removing a strong central power without adequate democratic
institutions in place will have dire consequences.  "Iran is a
multi-ethnic society, so there are two tendencies when the
central power is weakened: one is a disintegration into tribal
groups and the other is violence."  American threats serve the
current political system and weaken the opposition, Razzaghi
believes. 

As water boiled for tea, he continued.  "I'm not so optimistic
about the future of things we hear regarding American threats
and plans for a 'Greater Middle East.'  You can look at history
and the interference of the US in Iran fifty years ago, which
caused the Islamic revolution twenty-five years later.  We don't
know how American actions will affect the future, but I don't
think they will bring democracy to Iranians in the long term." 

Nor does Shirin Ebadi, a human rights lawyer and the most
powerful woman in Iran.  In 2003, she was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize, becoming Iran's first-ever Nobel laureate and the
only Muslim woman to receive the honour.  At her office in
Tehran, she wielded a letter opener like a sabre as she
described the human rights issues for which she has endured
arrest and imprisonment.  While she vocally opposes many of her
government's actions, she is even more vocal in her opposition
to regime change and military intervention.  Change, she
believes, must be internally generated, as has been the case in
parts of the former Soviet Union. 

"I never believe in foreign pressure," she told me, her hair
protruding from beneath a white scarf.  "I believe in Iranian
public opinion.  Look at Iraq and look at Kazakhstan.  In Iraq
it was foreign pressure and in Kazakhstan it was people
pressure, from the bottom up.  How much have they hurt Iraq. 
Yet with no casualties, the people in Kazakhstan won." 
[Iran] 

Without oil, Iran would have neither the money nor the
wherewithal to develop nuclear energy, much less the bomb. 
Here, oil is seen as the reason the US overthrew the Mossadegh
government half a century ago.  And as the world approaches peak
oil -- the point at which half of the world's reserves have been
depleted, making each successive barrel harder and more
expensive to extract -- oil and the atom have become the yin and
yang of global energy politics. 

In the oil-rich city of Ahwaz, near the border with Iraq, the
night sky blazes with towering gas flares and daytime
temperatures surpass 50°C.  In the air-conditioned lobby of the
Fars Hotel, scores of oil workers from Asia, Europe, and South
America gather after work to eat ice cream and drink icy glasses
of Delster, a popular non-alcoholic beer.  I spoke with an
Iranian oil engineer who has been working in the region since
before the revolution.  His views displayed a quintessential
Iranian pragmatism. 

He missed the Americans, he told me, and spoke fondly of his
colleagues from Halliburton, the Texas-based company he said had
been working there until 2004 when US authorities discovered it
was violating trade sanctions.  "They'll be back," he assured
me.  Shaking a cigarette from a pack of Winstons, he said, "In
Iran, we want to do business but we don't want to be under
anybody's flag.  Even me.  I don't want to be under anybody's
flag.  But we can be partners.  We can do business.  And," he
said, leaning close to my face, "we will do business." 
[Iran] 

On my return to North America, I flew American Airlines through
Chicago.  Settling in to watch the in-flight entertainment, I
was taken aback by the steady stream of religious programming so
reminiscent of Iranian state television.  First came a half-hour
special about a doctor who combines "medicine and ministry" by
convincing geriatrics they can make love well into their sunset
years.  Next was a saccharine movie about a pastor's daughter
who asked God to help her make friends in a new town (her
prayers were answered), followed by an episode of Touched by an
Angel. 

It occurred to me that as a soft theocracy takes hold in
America, the differences between the US and Iran have become
less striking.  Since the election of Ahmadinejad, power has
shifted to a group of hardline Iranian neo-conservatives, so
named for their US counterparts, who advocate a similar cocktail
of religion, nationalism, and militarism.  Like Bush,
Ahmadinejad portrays himself as a regular guy, someone you'd
have over for kebab and soft drinks (both men are teetotalers). 
Like Bush, he knows the value of the photo op, posing for the
cameras as he kicked around a soccer ball with Iran's World Cup
team.  And like Bush, he speaks the language of down-home faith
and family values dear to religious conservatives . . . and the
language of bellicosity to "the enemy."  As Iranian human rights
activist Emad Baghi told the Washington Post, "I feel
Ahmadinejad and President Bush are like two blades of a
scissor." 

Unlike Bush, however, Ahmadinejad has pursued a populist
economic agenda, using state oil revenues to address the most
pressing needs of the poor and working class, devoting billions
to schools, raising the minimum wage, and lowering lending
rates.  His anti-corruption policies have further strengthened
his popularity, and fears that he would restrict social
liberties have failed to materialize.  Even many of the most
skeptical, the middle and upper classes, have been won over. 

Nonetheless, in an ominous replay of the case against Iraq, the
US administration is sounding the alarm that Iran is seeking
nuclear weapons.  Bush is pushing for swift action from the UN
Security Council; failing this, he has indicated he may act
unilaterally.  The most recent US National Security Strategy
document reaffirms the policy of pre-emptive first strikes
against rogue nations, stating, "We may face no greater
challenge from a single country than from Iran." 

While Iran's leadership is far from agreeable, it is not insane.
 By calling for an end to the "Zionist regime," Ahmadinejad is
presenting himself as a disciple of Ayatollah Khomeini, whose
speeches he has taken to quoting.  Internationally, his
diatribes are an attempt to vie for leadership within the
Sunni-dominated Muslim world.  Domestically, he aspires to show
himself as more revolutionary (i.e., more patriotic) than
opponents like archrival Rafsanjani, who continues to be
influential.  With marginal (though not inconsequential)
military resources, Iran's leadership well knows that Israel
would handily defeat them in any engagement, likely in a matter
of hours.  Yet by asserting himself on the regional and
international stage -- while simultaneously deploying populist
economic policies -- Ahmadinejad is emerging as a national hero. 

The IAEA has yet to find any evidence of an Iranian nuclear
weapons program, and even if Iran's nuclear ambitions include
acquiring the bomb, US intelligence suggests that such an
achievement is likely ten years away.  Fears of an imminent
crisis therefore appear exaggerated.  But when the US agrees to
assist India in its civil nuclear program despite that country's
nuclear weapons, when it avoids confronting Pakistan or Israel
on their nuclear arsenals, and when the Pentagon is devising
next-generation nukes of its own, it is not difficult for
Ahmadinejad to depict the US as both the "Global Arrogance" and
a nuclear provocateur.  As favourably disposed to the US as many
Iranians are -- partly due to their infatuation with American
cultural products and an authentic desire for the expanded
freedoms the US has publicly advocated -- they have rallied
around Iran's pursuit of nuclear power as a symbol of national
pride. 

In the event that the US (or Israel) takes aggressive action,
Iran will not be a passive player.  It has hinted that it may
engage allies in other, highly volatile areas, such as Lebanon,
Palestine, and Iraq, and has indicated it will restrict oil
exports, potentially shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.  Shia
leaders in Iraq, who have thus far resisted calling for the
withdrawal of US troops, are likely to turn on the Americans,
making a bad situation incalculably worse.  And what of
casualties?  A 2006 report published by the Oxford Research
Group estimates that initial deaths in Iran from an American or
Israeli strike would measure in the thousands, given that Iran's
nuclear facilities are dispersed in urban areas.  "The new
reactor nearing completion at Bushehr would be targeted,
although this could be problematic once the reactor is fully
fuelled and goes critical some time in 2006," the report notes. 
"Once that has happened, any destruction of the containment
structure could lead to serious problems of radioactive
dispersal affecting not just the Iranian Gulf coast, but west
Gulf seaboards in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the
United Arab Emirates." 

While advocates of the military option argue that the population
will spontaneously rise up against their government if only
given a "push," the opposite response is far more probable. 
Iranians are staunchly nationalistic.  Any outside aggression
will likely cause them to unite behind a leadership that is
otherwise gradually being forced to confront mounting "people
pressure" for reform and engagement with the world.  For Shirin
Ebadi and other pro-democracy dissidents, military action
against Iran threatens to roll back the hard-won gains of recent
years: change, they argue, must come from within, and the West
should be engaging in constructive diplomacy, not threats of
war. 
[Iran] 

Iran is a land of contradictions, and it's hard to imagine any
country in the world where a Westerner would enjoy a more
gracious welcome.  To be in a shared taxi in any part of Iran is
to have your sleeve plucked by someone who says, as an opening
gambit, "I would die for you" (a standard greeting in the
poetics of Farsi etiquette).  And then: "Come to my home."  In
my six-month journey from the mountains of Kurdistan in the
northwest to the bazaars of Kerman in the east to the oil
regions on the border with Iraq, it is impossible to catalogue
how many meals and accommodations were offered by strangers of a
half-hour's acquaintance. 

And as often as I attempted to interview them, they turned the
tables: What do they know of us in the West?  Do they think we
are all terrorists? 

What could I tell them in return? 

*****************************************************************
 9 Xinhua: IAEA chief calls for calm dialogue to solve Mideast conflict   
    
  www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-12 04:19:39   

    CAIRO, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Director General of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed el-Baradei
here on Saturday called for calm dialogue among all the parties
in the Mideast to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, Egyptian news
agency MENA reported. 

    In his message to the five-day Pugwash conference held in
Cairo, Baradei pinpointed guidelines for settling the entire
Mideast region's problems, with the Arab-Israeli conflict as the
core and crux. 

    The misconception of religion, extremism and surfacing of
the wrong term of conflict of civilizations helped spread of
instability and insecurity in the region, which could not be
solved by force, the chief added. 

    "There should be an agreement over the basic framework for
the Arab-Israeli settlement in the region," said Baradei,
underscoring the importance of the security issue in reaching a
solution to the region's problems. 

    In his message, Baradei also accused Israel of insisting not
to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and an
agreement on abstaining from using weapons of mass destruction. 

    He noted that the Mideast region should be kept free from
weapons of mass destruction, saying that no country in the
region is allowed to be excluded from joining the NPT. 

    The 56th Pugwash Conference, which is entitled "A Region in
Transition: Peace and Reform in the Middle East" kicked off in
Cairo Saturday with the presence of scientists and leading
experts in nuclear nonproliferation field from 45 countries. 

    The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs gained
the name as the first meeting was held in 1957 in the village of
Pugwash, Canada.   

  Editor: Luan Shanglin   
*****************************************************************
 10 Guardian Unlimited: Putin Meets Iran's Nuclear Negotiator 

From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday November 11, 2006 4:16 PM

AP Photo MOSB104 

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV 

Associated Press Writer 

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Iran's
top nuclear negotiator Saturday, indicating a strong Russian
diplomatic push to get Iran to shift its position on its nuclear
program. 

After the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov voiced
hope for a quick resumption of international talks on Iran's
nuclear program, news reports said. 

``We will push for our common goal - the resumption of talks
with six nations,'' Lavrov said after the meeting with the
Iranian nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, according to the
ITAR-Tass and Interfax news agencies. 

Lavrov said Russia and Iran would work to restart talks between
Tehran and the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus
Germany. 

``We think it's possible, if there is a goodwill, to find
mutually acceptable basis for the resumption of talks on the
basis of the proposals of the six and Iran's response to them,''
Lavrov said. 

Larijani, said Friday that Tehran would push ahead with its
nuclear program, and suggested it could break off ties with the
U.N. nuclear watchdog if the world inflicts punishments proposed
by European nations. 

In a familiar mix of threats and offers, Larijani said Iran
wanted negotiations to ease the mounting standoff over fears it
is seeking nuclear weapons, but that it would not abandon what
he insisted was a peaceful nuclear energy program. 

Moscow is seeking to revive its proposal to move Iran's uranium
enrichment work to Russian soil to assuage international
concerns that Iran could use the process to develop weapons.
Larijani said Friday that the proposal remains on the table, but
there was no evidence of movement toward Iranian acceptance. 

``We want to use our rights under the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty, and in this context there will be no retreat, but we are
ready for negotiations,'' Larijani said Friday. He said Iran was
prepared to renew negotiations with the European Union's top
diplomat, Javier Solana, or to hold talks ``in any other
format,'' according to Russian news agencies. 

The European draft resolution that would impose U.N. sanctions
on Iran ``will not promote a political solution of the
problem,'' Larijani said. ``Those who support adopting the
resolution want to aggravate the problems of the region.'' 

With Russia calling for major changes that would water down the
proposed sanctions, the visit appeared to highlight divisions
among the five permanent Security Council members over how to
deal with Iran's refusal to halt its enrichment program. 

In comments that dovetailed with Russia's warnings that too much
pressure could deepen Iran's defiance, Larijani warned that
Tehran would reconsider its ties with the International Atomic
Energy Agency if the council adopted the European proposal. 

``We will reconsider relations with the IAEA if the United
Nations passes the ... resolution ignoring Russia's
amendments,'' Russian news agencies quoted him as saying. Iran
has repeatedly threatened to respond to sanctions by blocking
IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities. 

While they recently agreed in principle on sanctions, both
Russia and China have continued to publicly push for dialogue
instead of U.N. punishment, despite the collapse last month of a
European Union attempt to entice Iran into talks. Both countries
have major commercial ties with Iran and can veto U.N. Security
Council resolutions as permanent members. 

The five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany
offered Iran a package of economic incentives and political
rewards in June if it agreed to freeze its uranium enrichment
effort. But Tehran has said it would continue enrichment, a
process that is central to both civilian power generation and
the production of nuclear weapons. 

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty allows for peaceful nuclear
power programs, but Iran's activities and its secrecy have led
to fears it is seeking nuclear weapons. Larijani insisted that
was not the case, saying that ``nuclear weapons have no place in
our defense doctrine,'' Russian news agencies reported. 

The European draft resolution would order all countries to ban
the supply of material and technology that could contribute to
Iran's nuclear and missile programs, measures that could damage
Russia's nuclear and arms-industry ties with Tehran.	 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 11 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI N-case to be resolved upon NPT 

  2006/11/12   
  
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that Iran's
N-case should be settled just upon international laws including
NPT and the rights of IAEA member countries.
 
Speaking to the reporters on Saturday evening after a meeting
between Iran's secretary of Supreme National Security Council
(SNSC) and Russian President in Moscow, Lovrov said, "Our
principled position is to solve the problem through using
professional and non-political evaluations of IAEA experts and
by maintaining NPT."
 
He added during the meeting of President Putin and Ali Larijani,
in which Russian Secretary of National Security Council and the
Foreign Minister were also present, Iran's nuclear issue was
discussed carefully upon the proposed draft to the UN Security
Council.
 
Lavrov continued, "It was agreed that the contacts between the
two countries continue and the Russian side tries to restart the
negotiation of 5+1 Group in near future."
 
The Russian Foreign Minister said the negotiation should be upon
5+1 Group proposal package, as a basis of beginning the talks
and by considering Iran's response to the package.
 
He expressed hope that by mutual goodwilling about 5+1 Group
proposal package and Iran's response, an acceptable solution for
the issue could be found.
 
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     
*****************************************************************
 12 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Larijani meets Russian counterpart 

  2006/11/11   

  08:35:09 Þ.Ù 
IRI's Secretary of National Security Council Ali Larijani in
Russia on Friday stressed significance of Tehran-Moscow
cooperation for settlement of regional problems.
 
In a meeting with his Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov, Larijani
said Russia holds a balancing position in international and
regional issues and IR. of Iran too plays an important role in
guaranteeing regional stability and security.
 
Ivanov in return stressed continued dialogue between Tehran and
Moscow, hoping that the two sides would be able to win a
significant share in safeguarding regional peace and stability.
 
He also asked for promotion of bilateral ties.
 
The two sides then held negotiations behind closed doors.
 
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     
*****************************************************************
 13 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI hasn't received offer for talks 

  2006/11/12   
  
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Sayyed Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said on
Sunday Iran has not received any formal offer for negotiations
on regional issues. 

Speaking at his weekly press conference, Hosseini made the
remarks in response to a reporter who asked about his comment on
a proposal made by the British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the
American President George W. Bush for direct talks with Iran and
Syria. 

"Different American officials are calling for negotiations with
Iran and Syria with respect to the significant role Iran and
Syria have in the Middle East. However, Iran will consider any
offer for talks to be made by the American administration," he
said. 

He pointed to a report by the American former secretary of state
James Baker recommending the Bush administration to hold talks
with Tehran, saying, "Currently, several analysts also put
forward the same offer."
 
Asked about topics of possible talks between IRI and America,
the Spokesman added, "They had so far given preference to
discuss how to restore law and order in Iraq. So, Iraq is on top
of the agenda."
 
In response to a question whether the two cascades of
centrifuges are currently active and 3,000 other centrifuges
will join the fuel cycle by the year-end, Hosseini said, "For
the time being, two cascades of 164 centrifuges are working at
the Research and Development (R) stage.
 
"Some 3,000 centrifuges for the fuel cycle is a program which
will be put into operation in line with the safeguards agreement
of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and under supervision of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
 
M/D   

  Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran 
Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. 
E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir     
*****************************************************************
 14 Guardian Unlimited: Ahmadinejad Blasts U.N. Security Council 

From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Sunday November 12, 2006 9:16 AM

AP Photo VAH102 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday
criticized the United Nations Security Council over its efforts
to impose sanctions on Iran because of its nuclear program. 

``It is most embarrassing that the U.N Security Council, which
should be the defender of nations' security and rights,
threatens countries pursuing nuclear fuel under the law to
provide fuel for peaceful purposes,'' Ahmadinejad said. 

Addressing the seventh conference of the general assembly of the
Asian Parliaments Association for Peace, Ahmadinejad criticized
the U.N. for applying a double standard, noting that
``countries, armed with nuclear weapons, deny the rights of
other countries to produce nuclear fuel and exploit it for
peaceful purposes.'' 

Ahmadinejad made the comments following the meeting Saturday in
Moscow between Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, and
Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Russia is urging the resumption of international talks on Iran's
nuclear program. Although Moscow, along with China, have agreed
in principle on sanctions, both have publicly pushed for
dialogue instead of punitive measures. 

Both countries have major commercial ties with Iran, and can
veto council resolutions as permanent members.	 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 15 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Enemies embarrased by IRI's power 

  2006/11/12   
  
Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)
Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi said on Sunday that the 10-day
military exercises of IRGC named after Great Prophet (PBUH)
displayed national resolve and military preparedness to defend
the country.

 He told reporters that the IRGC test fired modern military
hardware being manufactured in Iran and are applied by the
ground force, air force, navy and Basij (volunteer forces) under
IRGC command.

 Safavi described Great Prophet (PBUH) maneuver as 'Unique' in
terms of diversity of capabilities and coordination of the four
forces of the IRGC and getting involved in irregular war with
the enemies.

 He said that the ground forces, Basij, air force and navy set a
precedent in military preparedness so that they got ready to
take part in the maneuver within three days.

 He said that the IRGC held the maneuvers in 14 provinces in an
area of 730,000 square km with 1,400 km depth. Safavi said that
both the friends and enemies have got messages from the maneuver
which presented Iranian defense strategy and deterrent power of
the IRGC.

 He said that 1,800 teams of the Basij infantry forces
penetrated into territory of hypothetical enemy and returned to
their own bases with applying guerrilla methods.

 He said that Iranian anti-tank missiles are strong enough to
destroy any kind of modern battle tanks and the bullets
available for ground forces of the IRGC are pierce enough to
penetrate into the anti-bullet vests.

 He said that the exercise for planting mines in the sea by the
gunboats was successfully carried out. Safavi said that laser
guided missiles from land to sea with 170 km range and
surface-to-surface with 130 km range and artillery shells in
high-multitude barrage and 75 km range were tested successfully.

 He also pointed to the airborne operations carried out by the
Basij in 14 provinces as the honorable features of the exercises.

 M.H.Z   

  Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran 
Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. 
E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir     
*****************************************************************
 16 AFP: Iran in UN protest over Israel 'military threats' 

 Sat Nov 11, 2:52 AM ET 		 	 

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iranhas complained to the United Nations" 
/> United Nationsover a "series of threats" after an Israeli 
official refused to rule out a military strike against the 
Islamic republic, the IRNA agency reports. 

 Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations,
submitted the complaint to Secretary General Kofi Annan" /> Kofi
Annanand the Security Council on Friday following the comments
by Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh. 

"The letter, underlining threats from Sneh and other Israeli
officials, regards these statements as illegal, ridiculous and a
sign of the Zionist regime's criminal policies and terrorist
intentions," the state agency said. 

Sneh had told the Jerusalem Post on Friday he considered
military action against Iran as a "last resort. But even the
last resort is sometimes the only resort." 

His comments were seen as the clearest statement yet by an
Israeli official that military strikes against Iran over its
refusal to halt sensitive nuclear activities were not excluded. 

"Unfortunately the Security Council's inaction over the Israeli
regime's terrorist acts have emboldened this regime to continue
its crimes and not heed the most obvious international
principles and the UN convention," the Iranian letter said. 

"The Security Council should act in the face of such statements
and the Israeli regime's terrorist acts. As a first step it
should at least promptly condemn the Israeli regime's threats
against Tehran," it continued. 

Israel" /> Israel, along with the United States, accuses Iran of
seeking nuclear weapons and regards the Islamic republic as its
chief enemy after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the
Jewish state to be wiped off the map. 

Iran vehemently denies the charges over its nuclear programme,
which it insists is solely aimed at generating energy. 

Israel is widely believed to be the only country in the Middle
East to have a nuclear arsenal, estimated at 200 warheads,
although it has never formally confirmed or denied it holds such
weapons. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 17 AFP: Call for 'good will' as Iranian nuclear negotiator meets Putin -
     
 by Stephen Boykewich Sat Nov 11, 4:00 PM ET 		 	 

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for 
"good will" on all sides as President Vladimir Putin" /> Vladimir 
Putinmet Iran" /> Iran's top nuclear negotiator for talks on 
Tehran's controversial nuclear program. 

Speaking after the talks between Putin and Ali Larijani, the
Russian minister said Iran would continue to study proposals
from the six world powers seeking to dissuade it from pursuing
sensitive nuclear research. 

"Iran has responded to these proposals and we think that in
showing its good will, there is a possibility, beginning with
the proposals of the Six and taking Iran's response into
account, to find an acceptable basis for talks to restart." 

"In the days ahead, we will continue our contacts with the Six,
which have proposed to Iran ideas which serve as the basis for
the beginning of negotiations," Interfax quoted the Russian
minister as saying. 

Lavrov was referring to proposals by the five permanent members
of the UN Security Council and Germany -- the Six -- which offer
Iran economic enticements in exchange for a suspension of its
nuclear program. 

The talks at Putin's country retreat outside Moscow follow
Larijani's warning on Friday, the opening day of his Moscow
visit, that a draft UN sanctions resolution by European
negotiators could make Iran reconsider its cooperation with UN
nuclear monitors. 

Larijani was also expected to relay an invitation to Putin to
meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran before the
end of the year, Russian media reported. 

Both Iran and Russia "proceed from the position that a decision
on Iran's nuclear program is possible only through the process
of negotiations," Larijani had told reporters after nearly six
hours of talks on Friday with Russian Security Council head Igor
Ivanov. 

"Adopting the resolution on Iran's nuclear program will not help
a political solution to this question," Larijani said. 

Major European powers have presented a draft UN resolution
mandating tough sanctions on Iran's nuclear and missile
programs, including travel bans and financial restrictions on
Iranian researchers working on the programs. 

Russia, one of the permanent UN Security Council members along
with Britain, China, France and the United States, has said the
draft sanctions are too tough on Iran and proposed major
amendments to soften them. 

Before the talks Saturday, Interfax said Putin and Larijani
would discuss "areas of cooperation between Iran and Russia and
regional and international problems" during their meeting. 

Larijani warned Friday: "We will review our relations with the
IAEA ( International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International
Atomic Energy Agency) if the UN adopts the European resolution
without the amendments proposed by Russia," according to Russian
news agencies. 

Even if Russian amendments are included, they "will not make
Iran change its mind" about developing nuclear power, Larijani
said. 

The United States and the European Union" /> European
Unionsuspect Iran of using its budding civilian nuclear energy
program to mask atomic weapons work and have spearheaded
international pressure for tough measures against Iran. 

Tehran denies having military plans, insisting its nuclear
activities are legal and strictly for energy purposes. The
country's nuclear program remains under supervision of the UN
inspectors from the IAEA. 

Lavrov on Saturday reiterated Moscow's position that the Iranian
nuclear issue should be "based on professional judgements,
depoliticized and without preconceived ideas of experts" of the
IAEA. 

Larijani's Moscow talks were also expected to dwell on the
civilian nuclear power plant Russia is building for Iran at
Bushehr, which Washington fears could be used as a cover for
weapons-related enrichment of nuclear fuel. 

Russia has repeatedly delayed the opening of the plant,
currently scheduled for fall 2007, drawing expressions of
frustration from Tehran. 

Sergei Smatko, head of Russian nuclear constructor
Atomstroyexport, said this week that the company would review
progress toward the scheduled date later this month. 

Larijani has also reiterated Iran's openness to a Russian
compromise proposal under which uranium needed for any future
Iranian nuclear programme would be enriched at Russian
facilities, thereby preventing Iran from mastering the sensitive
technology on its own soil. 

"This proposal was never rejected and it remains on the
negotiating table," he said on Friday. 	 		 			

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 18 AFP: Iran to reply 'destructively' to any Israeli attack -

 by Aresu Eqbali Sun Nov 12, 9:18 AM ET 		 	 

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iranhas vowed it would deliver a 
"destructive" response to any Israeli military attack on its 
atomic sites and said it would continue trying to boost its 
capacity for sensitive nuclear work. 

Foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Iran was
still seeking to install 3,000 centrifuges by March 2007 at an
atomic plant to enrich uranium, a process the West fears could
be diverted to make nuclear weapons. 

His comments came after a top Israeli official refused to rule
out a strike on the Islamic republic to halt the progress of its
atomic programme, with the United Nations" /> United
Nationsstill unable to agree on sanctions against Tehran. 

"Israel does not have the means and the capability to dare
threaten Iran... if it commits such a stupidity the Islamic
republic and its defenders will give a destructive response
within a second," Hosseini said Sunday. 

Israel" /> Israel-- widely considered to be the Middle East's
sole nuclear power -- is within the range of Iran's ballistic
missiles and sees Tehran as its chief enemy, after President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off
the map". 

"I am not advocating an Israeli preemptive military action
against Iran... I consider it a last resort. But even the last
resort is sometimes the only resort," Israeli Deputy Defense
Minister Ephraim Sneh said in comments published Friday. 

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in an interview published
Sunday branded Ahmadinejad a "dangerous man", saying "Iran must
start to fear" and understand it will "pay dearly" if it does
not compromise. 

Despite the looming threat of sanctions, Hosseini indicated that
Iran intended to press on apace with its nuclear drive. 

"Iranian officials and experts are seeking" to install 3,000
centrifuges -- reaffirming a target which would allow Iran to
enrich uranium on an industrial scale. 

He added that the work would take place under the supervision of
the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy
Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA). 

Enriched uranium lies at the center of the dispute over Iran's
nuclear program, as it can be used both to make nuclear fuel and
the core of a nuclear bomb. 

Tehran vehemently rejects US allegations that its nuclear
program is aimed at making nuclear weapons, saying the drive is
solely aimed at providing energy for civilians. 

At present Iran has two cascades of 164 centrifuges on a
research level enriching uranium to levels up to five percent --
rich enough for nuclear fuel but way off the 90 percent levels
required for a nuclear bomb. 

Major powers at the UN Security Council are mulling a resolution
that would impose sanctions on Iran after it refused to suspend
enrichment in return for an international offer of incentives. 

The Security Council's five permanent members -- Britain, China,
France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany will resume
talks Monday on how to censure a defiant Iran. 

Iran's chief nuclear negotatior Ali Larijani, on his return from
talks in Moscow, said adopting a resolution against Iran would
show a change of direction and that world powers had no desire
for negotiations with Iran. 

"If the Westerners show another behavior regarding Iran's
nuclear issue, it should be made clear who is renouncing on
their commitments," the IRNA agency quoted him as saying. 

"The passing of a resolution of the nature that is being
discussed means a disruption of talks and it is the Westerners
who have disrupted the talks. This means saying 'no' to the
talks." 

Ahmadinejad on Sunday called the United Nations Security Council
"incompetent, and pressured by domineering powers". 

"It is disgraceful that the UN Security Council, which must
defend countries' rights and interests, threatens and makes a
dossier against the states that are legally seeking nuclear
fuel," he said on state television. 

World powers will be discussing a European-proposed draft
resolution mandating nuclear industry and ballistic
missile-related sanctions against Iran. 

But Russia and China, which have major energy and trade ties
with Tehran, view the European draft as too tough and unlikely
to bring about Iranian cooperation. 	 		 			

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 19 AFP: Ahmadinejad slams 'disgraceful' UN bid to stop nuclear Iran -
    
 Sun Nov 12, 3:09 AM ET 		 	 

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iran's hardline President Mahmoud 
Ahmadinejad has branded as "disgraceful" UN Security Council 
calls on the Islamic republic to freeze its controversial nuclear 
work. 

"It is disgraceful that the UN Security Council, which must
defend countries' rights and interests, threatens and makes a
dossier against the states that are legally seeking nuclear
fuel," Ahmadinejad said on state television. 

World powers at the UN Security Council are working on a
resolution that would impose sanctions on Iran after it refused
to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment work in return for an
international offer of incentives. 

Enriched uranium is used to make nuclear fuel but in highly
purified forms can also make the core of an atom bomb. 

Tehran insists it only wants to generate electricity --
vehemently denying allegations by the United States and some
European powers that it seeks to develop atomic weapons under
the guise of a civilian program. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 20 AFP: Six powers to resume bid to agree Iran sanctions 

 by Gerard Aziakou Sun Nov 12, 4:25 AM ET 		 	 

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - Six major powers are set to resume 
attempts to agree on how to censure Iran" /> for refusing to 
suspend sensitive nuclear fuel work as Russia hinted Tehran might 
be willing to return to negotiations. 

Ambassadors from Germany and the UN Security Council's five
permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the
United States -- were to hold another round of informal talks on
a European draft resolution mandating nuclear and ballistic
missile-related sanctions against the Islamic republic Monday. 

The tough sanctions, which include travel bans and financial
restrictions on Iranian scientists working on the nuclear and
missile programs, have been the subject of several exploratory
meetings among the six envoys. But the hard bargaining to agree
a text has yet to begin, diplomats said. 

The draft would also allow Russia to continue building a
one-billion-dollar nuclear power plant in the Iranian city of
Bushehr -- an exemption seen as crucial to efforts to secure
Moscow's approval. 

But Russia and China, which both have significant energy and
trade ties with Tehran, view the European draft as too tough and
unlikely to bring about Iranian cooperation. 

The Russians have offered amendments that would drastically
reduce the scope of the sanctions proposed by France, Britain
and Germany, the three countries that led inconclusive efforts
to coax Iran into scaling back its nuclear ambitions. 

But the United States is pushing for even tougher sanctions that
are even more unacceptable to Moscow and Beijing. 

Monday's meeting follows top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali
Larijani's two days of talks with Russian leaders in Moscow on
the Iranian nuclear issue. 

After Larijani's talks with President Vladimir Putin" />
Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Iran would
continue to study a package of economic and security incentives
offered by the six powers if Tehran agrees to halt uranium
enrichment. 

"Iran has responded to these proposals and we think that in
showing its good will, there is a possibility, beginning with
the proposals of the Six and taking Iran's response into
account, to find an acceptable basis for talks to restart,"
Lavrov said. 

"In the days ahead, we will continue our contacts with the Six,
which have proposed to Iran ideas which serve as the basis for
the beginning of negotiations," Interfax quoted the Russian
minister as saying. 

After two round of talks last week, France's UN Ambassador
Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said the six powers were trying to
understand each other's positions before moving to narrow their
differences. 

His Russian counterpart Vitaly Churkin said that the sponsors of
the draft "have been listening to our explanation and we have
been listening to their rationale." 

"It would be an exaggeration to say we are close to each other,"
he added. "But we do have a mandate (from our ministers) to
agree on a resolution. Our premise is the unity of the Security
Council. In light of the Russian amendments, we have a good
basis for that." 

The Russians want the sponsors of the draft to remove the travel
ban and assets freeze and drop any reference to Bushehr. 

The Russian and Chinese envoys also indicated that they differ
with their four western counterparts about what type of
sanctions were agreed at the ministerial level meeting of the
six powers last summer if Tehran refused to comply with the
demand for a uranium enrichment freeze. 

Iran has defiantly spurned an August 31 Security Council
deadline to halt its uranium enrichment program -- a process
that can lead to the production of fissile material for nuclear
weapons. 

Tehran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and aimed at
generating electricity. 	 		 			

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 21 Guardian Unlimited: Israeli PM Brings Iran Agenda to U.S. 

From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Sunday November 12, 2006 1:16 PM

AP Photo MDMC101 

By AMY TEIBEL 

Associated Press Writer 

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert began a
five-day trip to the United States on Sunday, armed with an
agenda focusing on the Iranian nuclear threat and Israel's
relations with the Palestinians. 

On the flight over, Olmert repeated his view that Iran will not
scale back its nuclear ambitions unless it fears the
consequences of its intransigence, a spokeswoman said. 

``They (the Iranians) have to be afraid of the consequences if
there isn't a compromise,'' spokeswoman Miri Eisin cited Olmert
as telling journalists on the flight to Washington. 

Olmert appeared, however, to play down a senior Israeli
official's suggestion that Israel is preparing for a military
strike against Iran's nuclear program. Asked to comment on
Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh's remarks, Olmert replied
that on such matters, ``we have to be very careful about what we
say,'' Eisin said. 

Israel accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons, a charge that
Tehran denies. 

Sneh's comments were part of a pattern of heightened Israeli
rhetoric on the Iranian nuclear issue. On Sunday the Iranian
Foreign Ministry said Iran's military would hit back with a
``swift, strong and crushing'' response to any Israeli military
action against it. 

In 1981, Israeli combat planes destroyed an unfinished Iraqi
nuclear reactor. Analysts say an attack on Iran would be much
more difficult because Iran has scattered its nuclear facilities
and built some underground. 

Olmert has said Iran's nuclear ambitions would be the main item
on his agenda when he meets with U.S. officials in Washington.
Olmert is scheduled to meet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
on Sunday and President Bush on Monday. 

Israel is worried by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
repeated calls to destroy Israel and - like the United States -
does not believe Tehran's claims that its nuclear program is
intended solely to produce energy. 

While the U.S. has led international efforts to curb the Iranian
unclear program, Israelis are concerned that American policy
might soften following the Democratic victory in elections last
week. 

The fear is that with American public opinion turning against
the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bush would be less likely to take
decisive military or diplomatic action against Iran. 

Some analysts also think the Bush administration might be
willing to end its policy of isolating Iran because of Tehran's
influence over armed groups in Iraq. 

Olmert arrived in Washington with a gutted diplomatic agenda. He
took office promising to pull Israel out of much of the West
Bank, but shelved that plan after Israel's summer war against
Lebanese guerrillas left Israelis with little enthusiasm for
territorial concessions. A recent poll put his approval rating
around 20 percent. 

Olmert has revived the notion of negotiating with the moderate
Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, but the two men have not
been able to agree on an agenda or even set a date to meet. 

In the meantime, Abbas' rivals in the Palestinians' ruling Hamas
party continue to call for Israel's destruction - an ideology
that has led the West and Israel to cut off desperately needed
funding to the Palestinian government. 

There are expectations that while in Washington, Olmert will
make small-scale moves on the Palestinian front, including the
possibility of offering humanitarian aid to the Palestinian
people. 

Olmert told reporters he did not expect major developments
during the trip. ``This isn't a dramatic visit,'' Eisin quoted
him as saying. 

From Washington, Olmert is to travel to Los Angeles to address a
major Jewish group and meet with California officials.	 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 22 AFP: Bush to meet Olmert in new US political climate 

 by Laurent Lozano Sat Nov 11, 3:19 PM ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush President George 
W. Bushwelcomes Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the White 
House on Monday, with Democrats poised to control Congress and 
perhaps push for dialogue with Israel Israel's enemies, Iran 
Iranand Syria Syria. 

 Olmert arrives in the United States days after legislative 
elections that altered the US political landscape. 

After the Democrats' victory on Tuesday, which will give them 
control of both houses of Congress in January, backers of a more 
open foreign policy should be able to make themselves better 
heard. 

The likely future chairmen of congressional committees charged 
with international affairs, Joseph Biden and Tom Lantos, for 
example, have for years denounced what they saw as the rigidity 
of Bush's Republican administration with regard to Iran, Syria 
and North Korea North Korea. 

The November 13 summit, which comes six months after Olmert's 
first meeting with Bush at the White House, has been described in 
Israel as "a down-to-business meeting" on Iran. 

With Tehran continuing to reject international calls to halt its 
nuclear enrichment efforts, Israel has in recent months moved the 
Iranian threat to the top of its agenda. 

But Israel could have reason for concern about the resignation of 
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a ferocious opponent of 
dialogue. His expected successor, Robert Gates, has signed onto a 
report calling for dialogue with Iran. 

Backed by the United States, Israel has said sanctions are 
necessary following Tehran's failure to suspend uranium 
enrichment, a process which Israel, the United States and several 
European powers say hides a secret nuclear weapons programme -- 
despite Iranian insistance that it is for peaceful purposes. 

Israel -- widely considered the Middle East's sole, if 
undeclared, nuclear weapons power -- considers Iran its chief 
enemy, pointing to calls from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for 
the Jewish state to be wiped off the map. 

In Los Angeles on Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni 
said Tehran was merely buying time by negotiating with the 
international community, and warned of a regional arms race if 
Tehran obtained an atomic weapon. 

"The UN resolution said very clearly in July, stop the enrichment 
or face sanctions," Livni said. "And here we are in November, and 
still we are talking about the next resolution for 'soft 
sanctions'. 

"So I think it's about time to implement sanctions." 

Under increasing pressure to change US policy in Iraq Iraq, Bush 
is awaiting conclusions of a study group that may recommend 
opening talks with Iran and Syria as a way of prodding them to 
help restore stability in neighboring Iraq. 

Bush will speak to members of the study group on the same day he 
is to meet Olmert. The group is expected to deliver its final 
report by year-end. 

Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley Stephen Hadley, 
however, has said that talks with Iran and Syria are "first and 
foremost an issue for Iraqis". 

Bush and Olmert will likely talk about Lebanon, as well as Iran, 
according to a high-ranking administration official who spoke on 
condition of anonymity. 

It will be the first White House meeting for Bush and Olmert
since Israel's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, in which the
United States lent its unfailing political support to its ally. 

Meanwhile, Washington continued to back Israel after the Jewish
state's shellings on Wednesday, which killed 19 people in the
Gaza Strip Gaza Strip. 

The United States also vetoed an Arab-sponsored draft resolution
in the UN Security Council on Saturday that would have condemned
both Israel's attack in Gaza and Palestinian rocket firing into
the Jewish state. 

US Ambassador John Bolton called the text "unbalanced," "biased
against Israel and politically motivated," adding that it did
not provide an "even-handed characterization" of the incident. 

Officially, Olmert's visit "is a working meeting to discuss the
strong bilateral relationship, key regional issues and next
steps to resume progress on the roadmap" to Middle East peace,
said US national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe. 

But the formation of a Palestinian government by the radical
organization Hamas in March has made the possibility of a
negotiated settlement even more remote. 

And matters were complicated further by the June 25 kidnapping
of an Israeli soldier on the edge of the Gaza Strip by armed
Palestinians, including Hamas militants. 	 		 			

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 23 UPI: Iran: Sanctions mean U.N. position shift
     
United Press International - NewsTrack - 

11/12/2006 5:20:00 PM -0500

MOSCOW, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- U.N. Security Council sanctions against
Iran would be seen in Tehran as a shift in position, Iran's lead
nuclear negotiator said after his Moscow visit. 

Ali Larijani said a punitive resolution indicated the United
Nations Security Council did not want to resolve the situation
regarding Iran's nuclear program through dialog, the Islamic
Republic News Agency said. 

Larijani said Iran was ready to negotiate, and a resolution
would cause talks to break off, IRNA said. "(But) we still
underline the fact that the case should be resolved through
negotiations." 

If sanctions are approved, the best response would be people's
pursuing in "their legitimate rights" to access peaceful nuclear
technology, Larijani said. 

Russia has proposed amendments that focus on stopping uranium
enrichment and reprocessing activities and preventing
development of nuclear weapon-capable missiles. A draft
resolution introduced by Germany, Britain and France would,
among other things, ban goods and technology that could
contribute to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs and
cut off financial support to the programs.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 24 UPI: Iran warns against stiff U.N. sanctions
     
United Press International - NewsTrack - 

11/11/2006 7:21:00 AM -0500

MOSCOW, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Iran says it will re-evaluate its
cooperation with international regulators if the United Nations
pursues punitive sanctions against its nuclear program. 

Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, was in Moscow to
win support for either weakening the sanctions or postponing
action on them, the Times of London reported Saturday. 

Negotiators were aiming to bring the proposed sanctions to the
U.N. Security Council as early as the end of November. 

Russia has proposed amendments focusing on stopping uranium
enrichment and reprocessing activities and preventing
development of nuclear weapon-capable missiles, the Times said.
The proposal retains Russia's $1 billion civilian nuclear power
plant being built in Bushehr. 

Larijani said Iran would review its relationship with the
International Atomic Energy Agency "if the U.N. adopts the
Euro-troika resolution" without considering the Russian
amendments. The Times said. 

A draft resolution introduced by Germany, Britain and France
would ban goods and technology that could contribute to Iran's
nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and cut off financial
support to the programs.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 25 Guardian Unlimited: Report: U.S., N.Korea May Meet in N.Y. 

From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday November 11, 2006 11:01 AM

TOKYO (AP) - The U.S. and North Korea may hold talks in New York
as early as next week aimed at working toward the resumption of
six-country discussions on Pyongyang's nuclear program, a
newspaper reported Saturday. 

Citing unnamed sources familiar with U.S.-North Korea affairs,
Japan's Mainichi newspaper reported that officials from the two
countries will discuss, among other issues, financial sanctions
imposed on North Korea. 

Last year, Washington claimed that Banco Delta Asia SARL - a
bank in the Chinese territory of Macau - was being used by North
Korea for money-laundering. The U.S. banned transactions between
the bank and American financial institutions. 

Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department said North Korea
will get a chance to seek access to its frozen overseas bank
accounts when six-nation negotiations are resumed. 

North Korea agreed to return to the talks - involving the two
Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia - following its test
of a nuclear weapon on Oct. 9, a move that triggered
international outrage and economic sanctions. No date has yet
been set for their resumption. 

North Korea, which claims its nuclear ambitions are aimed at
deterring U.S. attacks, has boycotted the nuclear talks since
November 2005 since the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on the
country. 

U.S. and North Korean officials had a direct meeting in Beijing
on Oct. 31, which the North said at the time led to their
decision to return to the six-party talks. 

Meanwhile, top South Korean security and ruling party officials
on Saturday decided against fully participating in a U.S.-led
program to stop and search ships in international waters to
prevent the movement of weapons of mass destruction, a news
report stated. 

The U.S. has said it wants South Korea to expand its
participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative following
the North's nuclear test and a U.N. Security Council sanctions
resolution banning weapons trade with the North. 

North Korea is a primary target of the initiative. South Korea
has only been an observer to the program out of concern its
direct participation in stopping and searching North Korean
ships could lead to armed clashes with its volatile neighbor. 

Saturday's decision will become official after a formal
government review process and a report to President Roh
Moo-hyun, Yonhap news agency reported, citing unidentified
participants in the session involving Prime Minister Han
Myung-sook, key security officials and ruling party leaders. 

Government officials were not immediately available for comment. 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 26 Korea Herald: U.S., N.K. may meet before 6-party talks   
        
 The United States and North Korea may hold working-level talks
in New York as early as next week aimed at resuming six-country
negotiations on Pyongyang's nuclear program, a newspaper said
Saturday.

 Citing unnamed sources familiar with U.S.-North Korea affairs,
Japan's Mainichi newspaper said that officials from the two
countries will discuss such issues as the financial sanctions
imposed on North Korean interests by the United States.

 "We are not aware of any plans for such a meeting," said a
White House spokesman, Tony Fratto. A U.S. State Department
spokesman, Kurtis Cooper, said he could not comment on the
report.

 Last year, Washington claimed that Banco Delta Asia - a bank in
the Chinese territory of Macau - was being used by North Korea
for money laundering. The United States banned transactions
between the bank and American financial institutions.

 Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department said North Korea
will get a chance to seek access to its frozen overseas bank
accounts when six-nation negotiations are resumed.

 The Financial Times reported that U.S. Treasury representatives
are laying plans for bilateral talks with North Korea over
counterfeiting and money laundering charges.

 On the counterfeit issues, the United States is likely to face
calls to conclude its 14-month investigation into North Korean
accounts at Banco Delta, the report said.

 The U.S., South Korean and Japanese chief delegates to
six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament plan to
meet in Vietnam this week to discuss a joint strategy.

 The trilateral meeting will take place Wednesday before the
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hanoi.

 It will involve U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher
Hill, South Korea's Chung Yung-woo and Japan's Kenichiro Sasae.

 The outcome of the three-way meeting will be reported to the
APEC summit on Nov. 18-19, Seoul officials said.

 South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is to have talks with U.S.
President George W. Bush on the sidelines of the APEC summit.
South Korea is also pushing for separate summit talks with other
members of the six-party talks - China, Japan and Russia.

 North Korea agreed to return to the six-way talks - involving
the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia -
following its test of a nuclear weapon on Oct. 9. The test
triggered international outrage and economic sanctions. No date
has yet been set for the talks resumption.

 U.S. and North Korean officials had a direct meeting in Beijing
on Oct. 31 which the North credited at that time with sparking
the diplomatic breakthrough that could restart the six-party
talks.

2006.11.13
*****************************************************************
 27 Korea Herald: Seoul says 'no' to N.K. interdiction   
        
South Korea has decided against full participation in the
U.S.-led program to stop and search suspicious North Korean
vessels in order to avoid the possibility of naval clashes, the
governing Uri Party said yesterday. 

Seoul is also not expected to take further action regarding
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718 outlining
sanctions against North Korea for its Oct. 9 detonation of a
nuclear device. 

Seoul is an observing member of the Proliferation Security
Initiative but has come under increased pressure from Washington
to take a more proactive role following Pyongyang's test of an
atomic weapon. 

Washington designed PSI in 2003 to help interdict weapons of
mass destruction in international waters, and North Korea is
widely perceived as the regime's key target. 

"We have reached a conclusion that we support the spirit of PSI,
but we should confine ourselves to our current observer role in
the drills," Kim Won-wung of Uri Party told AFP. Kim chairs the
National Assembly's committee on unification, foreign affairs
and trade. 

The decision came following a closed-door meeting between top
security officials and governing party lawmakers including Prime
Minister Han Myeong-sook and Song Min-soon, the chief
presidential security adviser and foreign minister-designate. 

The government will review the findings of the meeting and
report to President Roh Moo-hyun. 

The country has been divided over the level of its participation
in the PSI, which is not specified in the UNSC resolution. 

The main opposition Grand National Party contends that Seoul
should play a bigger role to more effectively follow the
international sanctions and also to help strengthen ties with
Washington.

 Uri Party believes that stepping up its role in the PSI could
trigger armed clashes with the North. 

"Now that Pyongyang has decided to return to six-party talks, we
don't have to take a step that would not be helpful in creating
an atmosphere for dialogue," said Kim Won-wung. 

North Korea last month agreed to return to the six-party talks
for ending its nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang has previously
warned Seoul not to take part in the PSI. 

Some experts recommend taking an active part in waters further
away from the peninsula, but assume a less conspicuous role in
operations around the peninsula. 

South Korea also is unlikely to take further action under the
UNSC resolution 1718, according to officials, as it considers
itself to be "appropriately dealing with North Korea." 

Seoul said it is already controlling the shipment of goods that
come under the UNSC sanctions, specifically materials that could
be related to the production of weapons of mass destruction. 

In the aftermath of the nuclear test the government denied it
had a "dovish" stance toward North Korea, but the Roh Moo-hyun
administration has expressed that it wishes to maintain the
overall tone of its North Korean policies. 

The government recently decided to continue operating tours to
North Korea's Mount Geumgang, and essentially allow business as
usual at the Gaeseong Industrial Complex.

 As with other U.N. members, Seoul must report on its
implementation of the UNSC resolution by Nov. 13. 

(jemmie@heraldm.com) 

By Kim Ji-hyun

2006.11.13
*****************************************************************
 28 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: South decides it won't fully join security initiative

November 13, 2006 KST 12:08 (GMT+9)

  November 13, 2006 ¤Ñ Despite international pressure following
North Korea's nuclear test, Seoul is staying on its course of
not agitating its neighbor.

 Seoul will remain an observer in a Washington-led program
designed to halt the trade of weapons of mass destruction called
the Proliferation Security Initiative, a consultative meeting
between the Uri Party and government decided over the weekend,
according to sources familiar with the circumstances.

 And in addition, South Korea will submit a report to the UN
Security Council early this week that will likely not include
any new measures taken against the North, said the sources, who
declined to be named. Instead, the report will outline the
country's existing measures, which could trigger criticism that
Seoul is doing little to put any real pressure on its neighbor.
South Korea and China are Pyongyang's two major trading partners.

 So far, Seoul has suspended fertilizer and rice aid to the
North, but a government official said yesterday that depending
on the process in upcoming nuclear talks, that could be
restored. Seoul has also banned North Koreans linked to
Pyongyang's nuclear program from entering the country.

 South Korea said it is waiting for further guidance from the UN
Security Council, which is still formalizing specific details of
the UN resolution.

 Japan, China, the United States, Australia and Switzerland,
among other countries, have either devised or are discussing
their own sanctions against the North in addition to those
called for by the UN resolution. 

Washington has asked Seoul to apply more pressure, and for the
past month, Seoul has pondered what to do. 

The Foreign Ministry wanted to broaden Seoul's participation in
the Proliferation Security Initiative program, but the governing
Uri Party strongly opposed such a move. South Korea argues that
fully joining the initiative, which could mean boarding North
Korean vessels, might cause an armed confrontation between the
countries. 

The UN resolution calls for the inspection of suspected cargo
going in and out of the North. South Korea has argued that an
inter-Korean maritime agreement already in place contains
similar measures. However, since the 2004 agreement, no North
Korean vessels have been inspected.

 U.S. senior officials including Alexander Vershbow,
Washington's top diplomat to Seoul, have said the inter-Korean
Mount Kumgang tour project should be halted, arguing the cash
flow going into the North from such operations cannot be
accounted for. Nevertheless, Seoul's report has excluded
inter-Korean projects as it sees them as the core pillars of its
engagement policy toward the North. 	 

by Brian Lee africanu@joongang.co.kr>   
	  
Copyright by Joins.com, Inc. Terms of Use 
*****************************************************************
 29 Korea Times: Silence Is Not Golden 

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Opinion   

 Seoul Cannot Neglect Human Rights Abuses in North   
      
The United Nations General Assembly plans to vote on a
resolution on human rights abuses in North Korea this weekend.
This is the fifth time the U.N. condemns the dismal human rights
situations in the Stalinist country. Seoul abstained three times
and was absent once in the past four votes. Officials failed
last week in deciding what to do this time amid heated debates
between the pros and cons, and will meet again this week. The
government should vote yes.

 Drawing our attention in this regard is a 123- page report
detailing North Korean atrocities, jointly commissioned by a
Nobel Peace Prize winner, an anti-Soviet dissident and a former
European leader. The three called for the Security Council to
take action on the isolationist regime over its ¡°egregious¡±
human rights record. Even without their appeals, we all know of
the serious human rights violations there, ranging from massive
famine, prison camps, forced labor and so on. All of these
should be stopped by any means.

 Fortunately, there are signs of changes at home, too. The
National Human Rights Commission of Korea, which had long turned
a blind eye to the plight of North Koreans, recently published a
book on the horrible humanitarian conditions in the North. Its
new chief also pledged to announce the panel¡¯s position on this
issue by the end of this year, hinting at breaking away from
Seoul¡¯s ¡°no-see, no-hear¡± policy. It will be a welcomed
turnaround, which should have come much earlier.

 Pyongyang has attributed not just its nuclear gamble but the
maltreatment of its own people to Washington¡¯s crushing of the
regime. One may or may not believe that. Just as the rest of the
world needs to dissuade the isolationist country from its
nuclear ambitions without insulting it too much, however, they
should call for an improvement in the human rights situations on
condition of not attempting a regime change. The gradual, dovish
approach is not for the Pyongyang leadership but for the rest of
Koreans ? in both North and South.

 North Korea is currently sticking to a closed, hard-line system
to maintain its regime. The international community should
change this into an open, soft-line system, but not without
toppling the current leadership by force as the U.S. hawks want.
It could be dangerous and ineffective. It would be best if North
Korea became a second China or Vietnam, but the outside world
should allow Pyongyang to determine whether and how. Still
America is the only country that can make any real change in the
North toward that direction.

 Seoul, instead of remaining mum about North Korean human
rights, should actively call for policy changes in both
Pyongyang and Washington, just as it should do with nuclear
issues. Silence can never be golden on matters upon which South
Koreans¡¯ security and North Koreans¡¯ basic rights rely.

                 *                         *                    
     *   

 The Korea Times welcomes our readers' contributions to Letters
to the Editor and Thoughts of The Times. The article should be
preferably submitted by e-mail to opinion@koreatimes.co.kr and
not exceed 900 words. - ED. 

11-12-2006 17:58         
*****************************************************************
 30 AFP: South Korea shies away from US-led cargo inspections - 

 Sat Nov 11, 10:39 PM 		 	 

SEOUL (AFP) - South Korea has decided to shy away from a US-led
international initiative to stop and inspect suspicious cargo,
to avoid possible clashes with North Korea, a top politician
said. 

The decision was reached Saturday at a joint meeting of top 
officials of the government and the ruling Uri Party, said Kim 
Won-Wung, a Uri Party lawmaker who chairs parliament's 
unification, foreign affairs and trade committee. 

South Korea, a close US ally, was under growing pressure to 
expand its roles in Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) 
drills, following the communist country's October 9 nuclear test. 

North Korea on November 1 confirmed it would return to six-party 
talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons programmes, on 
condition the issue of lifting US financial sanctions imposed 
against it was settled during the negotiations. 

"We have reached a conclusion that we support the spirit of PSI, 
but we should confine ourselves to our current roles in the 
drills," Kim Won-Wung told AFP. 

"Now that Pyongyang has decided to return to six-party talks, we
don't have to take a step that wouldn't be helpful for creating
an atmosphere for dialogue," he said. 

The North denounced South Korea for sending a government
delegation of three observers to PSI drills off Bahrain late
last month, arguing the drills "constitute part of the
sanctions, blockade and military pressure". 

The South has sent observers to the sea drills instead of
sending ships or troops to join the maneuvers. 

Officials in Seoul said South Korea's active participation in
the PSI exercises could lead to armed clashes with North Korea,
with which the South has been technically at war since a bloody
1950-1953 conflict. 

The two Koreas had several sailors killed and ships sunk in
clashes in disputed waters in 1999 and 2002. 

The UN Security Council has adopted a resolution to broaden
sanctions, including cargo inspections, against North Korea for
its nuclear test. 

North Korea has since told South Korea not to enforce the
sanctions, which Pyongyang said were tantamount to a declaration
of war. 

Previous drills involved high-speed maritime chases and
commandos rappelling onto vessels from helicopters or clambering
aboard from fast boats, with inspectors in chemical suits
searching suspect cargo. 

AFP:
*****************************************************************
 31 Guardian Unlimited: N.Korean Television Reports on U.S. Vote 

From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday November 11, 2006 6:31 AM

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korean television Friday carried
a report on the U.S. midterm election, saying the Republican
Party suffered a ``crushing defeat'' and claiming that President
Bush fired his defense secretary in its wake. 

The unusually quick response, carried on the North's Korean
Central Television Station, reflects the high interest that
Pyongyang is believed to have in the Tuesday election. 

The tightly controlled media of totalitarian North Korea rarely
report on foreign news. When they do, such reports come days or
weeks after news breaks. 

``The Democratic Party ... has come to seize control of
Parliament,'' an anchorwoman of the North's television said,
according to footage shown on South Korea's new cable channel
YTN. ``This midterm election ended in a crushing defeat by the
Republican Party.'' 

The North's official Korean Central News Agency carried a
similar report on Saturday. 

The election outcome could affect Washington's foreign policy,
including its approach toward North Korea. Democrats have called
for bilateral dialogue with Pyongyang to end the country's
nuclear programs. 

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday that
Washington was on the right approach to deal with North Korea. 

The North's television also reported on the departure of Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, saying his ``reputation has not
been good'' in connection with the war in Iraq. 

North Korea and the U.S. have been locked in a standoff over
Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions since late 2002. The row climaxed
with the North conducting its first-ever nuclear test last
month. 

After a yearlong boycott, Pyongyang has agreed last week to
return to talks with China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the
U.S. to discuss the standoff. No resumption date has been set
yet. 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 32  Chemical & Engineering News: Democrats Will Alter Legislative Priorities
 
November 13, 2006

+ Volume 84, Number 46 				 
 				
New committee chairs will shift debates in energy, environment
 				
David Hanson, Jeffrey Johnson, Susan Morrissey

The new Democratic majorities in the U.S. Senate and House of
Representatives will bring many changes to Congress, but passing
legislation on controversial issues will continue to be
difficult. Although House speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
says her party is going to try to work effectively with the
Republicans, the House will still be contentious. And the
Senate, with a one-vote advantage for the Democrats, could be
deadlocked much of the time. 

The initial impact will be a complete turnover in the
chairmanships of all the House and Senate committees, bringing
new legislative priorities. For example, the House Committee on
Government Reform will be chaired by Rep. Henry A. Waxman
(D-Calif.), who is expected to increase the government's
oversight of FDA and attempt to lower drug prices in federal
health programs. 

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) will lead the Energy & Commerce
Committee. Dingell promises to begin oversight investigations,
citing a need to examine the funding for the Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste repository in Nevada, the development of federal
energy efficiency standards, as well as the secret meetings of
Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush Administration and
industry officials that laid the foundation for the
Administration's energy plan. 

The new chairman of the House Science Committee will likely be
Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.). He is a key supporter of the
President's American Competitiveness Initiative for increasing
funding for physical science research and is expected look into
issues such as outsourcing of technical jobs and alternative
fuels. 

In the Senate, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) will lead the
Environment & Public Works Committee, and Sen. Joseph I.
Lieberman (I-Conn.) will head the Homeland Security & Government
Reform Committee. 

Boxer's leadership is a significant change for the committee,
and in a statement, she promised to address "pressing concerns,"
such as global warming. Present committee Chairman Sen. James M.
Inhofe (R-Okla.) is an outspoken skeptic of the existence of
global warming. 

Leadership of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee
will shift from Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R) to Sen. Jeff Bingaman
(D). Both are New Mexico senators and share many views, such as
support for DOE's national labs and nuclear power. 

The expected change of chairmanship of the Senate Commerce,
Science & Transportation Committee to Sen. Daniel Inouye
(D-Hawaii) is not anticipated to bring a significant change in
direction for the committee. 

The day after the election, business groups, including the
American Chemistry Council and the National Association of
Manufacturers, were urging the lame-duck Congress to quickly
pass legislation to increase offshore oil and gas drilling.
Currently, different offshore drilling bills have cleared the
House and Senate and must be reconciled and passed again by both
bodies. 

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Democratic Party leader of the
Senate, also identified outer continental shelf (OCS) drilling
legislation as one of several measures he wishes to see passed
before the new Congress is sworn in. Pelosi staff members say
she would support expanded OCS drilling if it was limited to the
Gulf of Mexico. Pelosi has also indicated she supports expanding
federal embryonic stem cell research by increasing the number of
cell lines that can be studied with federal funding. 							
								 				 Chemical & Engineering News 				 
+ ISSN 0009-2347 				 
+ Copyright © 2006 American Chemical Society 				 		 	 	 	 	 	 	
*****************************************************************
 33 Guardian Unlimited: ANALYSIS: Things Aren't Going Bush's Way 

From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday November 11, 2006 7:31 AM

AP Photo DCPM115 

By TERENCE HUNT 

AP White House Correspondent 

WASHINGTON (AP) - For a relentlessly optimistic President Bush,
this is a season of disappointment, surprise and setbacks. 

At home and around the world, things aren't going his way. With
Bush's legacy-building time running out, Americans sent a pretty
clear message in Tuesday's election that they were angry at him
and wanted change. Though Bush's name wasn't on the ballot,
voters took revenge on the Republican Congress and put the
Democrats in charge of both the Senate and House. 

In an awkward bit of timing, Bush will be globe-trotting when
Congress returns to town next week to open its lame-duck
session, taking up business the White House deems vital. 

Departing Tuesday, Bush will be away for eight days at a summit
of Asia-Pacific rim leaders in Vietnam and stops in Singapore
and Indonesia. Back just before Thanksgiving, he will jet off
again a few days later for a NATO summit in Latvia and a stop in
Estonia. 

World leaders will be watching to see if Bush, politically
weakened at home, acts differently on the world stage. 

Across the globe, the president is on the defensive about
problems ranging from the mess in the Middle East to the nuclear
standoffs with Iran and North Korea. Even in his own backyard,
there is a growing camp of leftists in Latin America, from
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez to Nicaragua's newly elected
Daniel Ortega. 

And then there is Iraq. 

Four years into an unpopular war that has defined his
presidency, Bush thought that by this point he would be bringing
some U.S. troops home. Instead, he had to sack his gruff
secretary of defense, open himself to a new Iraq strategy and
worry about pressure to pull out before he thinks the war is
won. 

Leaving the polls, a majority of voters said they disapproved of
the war and the U.S. should withdraw some or all of its troops
from Iraq. Bush meets Monday with members of a blue-ribbon
commission looking for a new way forward in Iraq. 

The election was a sobering splash of cold water on the
president and political strategist Karl Rove, both of whom had
insisted Republicans would win. 

On election night, Bush had a dinner of beef loin and squash
with Rove, Republican National Committee chief Ken Mehlman,
chief of staff Josh Bolten, and friends Brad Freeman, a
California venture capitalist, and Don Evans, former commerce
secretary. Other officials joined later. The mood was
businesslike as people read their Blackberrys and took cell
phone calls, one participant said. 

Bush is not a man given to second-guessing, self-analyzing or
doubts. By the next morning, associates said, he was bouncing
back. 

``He's not one to get mired in kind of the shoulda, woulda,
couldas,'' said Bush counselor Dan Bartlett. ``I saw him coming
to grips with it that night and by the time he came walking into
the Oval Office Wednesday morning he was looking forward. We had
to hold him back from calling Nancy Pelosi (the incoming House
speaker) because it was still 6:55 in the morning.'' 

``Why all the glum faces?'' Bush said, opening a postelection
news conference where he said he shared blamed for the
Republican losses. 

Later that day, Bolten pulled together several hundred White
House staffers in the Old Executive Office Building for an
unannounced visit by the president. Bush revved up the troops,
told them they were there not to mark time but to get things
done, Bartlett said. 

``Obviously he's disappointed,'' Bartlett said, ``but his mind's
already racing forward, saying, `All right, we've got to come at
the same problems but from a different angle.'' 

The big question is whether Bush, after six years of largely
ignoring Democrats, really will be willing to work with the
political opposition. Or whether his last two years will be
clouded by partisan gridlock. Bush invited the new Democratic
leaders to the White House and both sides pledged to cooperate. 

``I think he's doing the right things now, right tone,'' said
Republican strategist Ron Kaufman, who worked in the White House
under Bush's father. ``We'll see how long it lasts on both
sides.'' 

Kaufman and others recall how Bush, as governor of Texas, took a
bipartisan approach to work with a legislature controlled by
Democrats. Of course, many of them were conservatives and saw
eye to eye with Bush. 

``I think he liked the way he governed in Texas,'' Kaufman said.
``I think he really enjoyed it. And somehow he's gotten away
from that. ... I think he'd be relieved to go back to that.'' 

Leon Panetta, a former Democratic congressman who was chief of
staff in the Clinton White House, said Bush would have to change
the way he does business if he wants to succeed. 

``He's going to have to understand he can't do this by the old
playbook,'' Panetta said. ``The Rove playbook is not going to
work. If he's going to govern, it means he probably has got to
go back and remember what it was like to govern in Texas with a
Democratic legislature and the deals that he had to make.'' 

--- 

EDITOR'S NOTE - Terence Hunt has covered the White House for The
Associated Press since the Reagan presidency. 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 34 Guardian Unlimited: Bush Stands by His Man for U.N. Envoy 

From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Sunday November 12, 2006 4:46 PM

AP Photo NYOH107 

By JOHN HEILPRIN 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush will not relent in his defense
of John Bolton, his nominee for U.N. ambassador, despite
unwavering opposition from Democrats who view Bolton as too
combative for international diplomacy, aides said Sunday. 

Two of Bush's top advisers said the White House is not backing
down from a fight to win Senate approval for Bolton to continue
in the job. Bush gave Bolton the job temporarily in August 2005,
while Congress was in recess. That appointment will expire when
Congress adjourns, no later than January. 

White House counselor Dan Bartlett said Bolton has done a
remarkable job. ``He's proven the critics wrong on all the
charges they've leveled against him,'' Bartlett said. ``So let's
have a conversation about it. We'll see.'' 

The White House resubmitted Bolton's nomination on Thursday,
though it has languished in the Senate for more than a year.
Finding a replacement for Bolton would come at a sensitive time
for the Bush administration. It is counting heavily on U.N.
diplomacy to help confront North Korea and Iran over their
nuclear programs and to end fighting in Sudan's Darfur region. 

With Democrats capturing control of the next Congress, Bolton's
chances of winning confirmation appear slim at best. In fact,
last week the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, said he saw
``no point in considering Mr. Bolton's nomination again.'' 

``We're putting him up for confirmation,'' White House chief of
staff Josh Bolten said Sunday. ``I think if he actually was able
to get a vote in the full Senate, he would succeed.'' 

Yet Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., who lost on Election Day, said
he would not end his opposition to Bolton. That probably would
deny Republicans the votes needed to move the nomination from
the committee to the full Senate. Republicans now lack the 60
votes needed to force a vote. 

Democrats say Bush should alter course now and nominate someone
less hard-charging, with greater finesse in handling sensitive
diplomatic matters. 

``There's a lot of competent people. Send someone new up, Mr.
President,'' Biden said Sunday. 

``He doesn't even have the votes in the committee. He doesn't
even have the votes of a Republican-controlled committee
today,'' Biden said. ``We're going to have a hearing on him.
There is going to be a vote on him. He's going to lose.'' 

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who is in line to head the Armed
Services Committee, agreed. ``We would rely very heavily upon
the Foreign Relations Committee, and they have not decided that
he is the appropriate person for that job,'' Levin said. 

In the president's view, however, Bolton ``has turned out to be
a very effective representative at the U.N. and, in fact, has
turned out to be something his critics expected him not to be,''
Bolten said. ``He's turned out to be a good consensus builder,
and it's been reflected on resolutions on North Korea, in
Lebanon, in other ways.'' 

Bush's chief of staff played down speculation the administration
might go around the Senate and allow Bolton to somehow continue
to represent the U.S. at the United Nations by finding an
alternative means of paying his salary or appointing him to
serve as an acting or deputy U.N. representative. 

``I don't know about that,'' Bolten said. ``Our effort is going
to be to try to get him confirmed in the ordinary course.'' 

Bolten, Biden and Levin appeared on ABC's ``This Week.''
Bartlett was on ``Fox News Sunday.'' 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 35 Mos News: Russia to Keep Its Heaviest ICBM in Service for Another Decade -
          
 MOSNEWS.COM

Created: 12.11.2006 11:13 MSK (GMT +3)

 	
The Russian missile forces chief said that the military had
decided to keep its heaviest intercontinental ballistic missiles
in service for another decade, The Associated Press news agency
reported.

Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov said that a decision to extend
the service lifetime of the RS-20V missiles, also known as SS-18
Satan in the West, would allow the Strategic Missile Forces “to
keep the world’s most powerful missiles for another 10 years,”
the agency reported.

Solovtsov said that the RS-20V missiles’ original 15-year
service lifetime would be extended to 25 years.

The RS-20V, which carries 10 individually targeted nuclear
warheads, has been the heaviest missile in the military’s
inventory since its deployment began in the late 1980s.

Solovtsov said that the lifetime of other Soviet-built missiles
was also being extended.

Russia’s strategic forces have conducted regular test launches
of Soviet-built ballistic missiles to check their performance
and extend their time on duty. The post-Soviet funding shortage
has left the military without funds to quickly replace them with
new missiles, although recent years have seen a boost in defense
spending. 	 	 	 

  Write us: <b>info@mosnews.com</b>
Copyright © 2004 MOSNEWS.COM
*****************************************************************
 36 London Free Press: New nuclear plant considered for Lake Erie shoreline
 		 	 
Sat, November 11, 2006

By FREE PRESS STAFF
  
TORONTO -- The possibility of a new nuclear power plant on the 
shores of Lake Erie is being considered. 

A report from the Ontario Power Authority says such a facility 
could be built on the site of the existing Nanticoke coal-fired 
generating station, which is scheduled to be closed. Other 
options being looked at include building the new nuclear plant 
next to the existing Bruce or Darlington operations. The 
authority says it will take as long as 12 years to plan and build 
a new nuclear plant. 

CANOE home | We welcome your feedback.
Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc.All rights reserved.                 
                                
Proprietor and Publisher - The London Free Press, 
 P.O. Box 2280, 369 York Street, London Ontario Canada N6A 4G1 	



*****************************************************************
 37 edmontonsun.com: Nukes in our future?

Paul Stanway - 

November 12, 2006                                                               
www.edmontonsun.com mailbag@edmsun.com

So the latest hot issue among the candidates to replace Ralph
Klein and lead a province booming because of its natural gas and
oil exports is - wait for it - nuclear power! 

I predicted a couple of weeks ago that none of the Progressive
Conservative leadership candidates would touch this radioactive
topic until the race was over. But hey, what do I know! Last
week, Jim Dinning lit up a candidates' forum in Vermilion when
he suggested a nuke reactor might be just the thing to power
oilsands development - and I'm told he wasn't even wearing
asbestos undershorts! 

Wasting gas 

"We're wasting natural gas, and nuclear power's got to go on the
list of energy sources to be considered to support the
development of the oilsands," declared Atomic Jim. He was
referring to the huge quantities of natural gas needed to
produce steam to separate bitumen from the sand. 

Most of the other candidates quietly agreed that nuclear is an
energy source we should probably look at. Except for Ted Morton,
who promised "no nuclear plants in Alberta." 

Then a couple of days later the premier - who in the past has
publicly scorned nuclear power - admitted it's an idea that
might be worth looking at. Apparently, he's even been approached
to promote nuclear power when he retires, although he quickly
admitted, "I don't know anything about it." 

Why all the sudden interest in atomic energy? 

The truth is, interest in nuclear as a power source for the
oilsands has been growing for some time, since it dawned on the
developers that if they're talking about tripling oilsands
production in 10 years, and maybe quintupling it by 2030,
they'll need all the natural gas in the Mackenzie Valley gas
pipeline - and then some - just to get the stuff out of the
ground. 

Burning such massive amounts of gas to produce oil is what led
former U.S. vice-president Al Gore to describe Alberta's
oilsands development as "nuts." 

Gore has his own extreme agenda, of course, but he's not
entirely out to lunch in questioning the massive gas consumption
required by the oilsands. 

Green energy 

In a world that's concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, the
atom is being dusted off as the new green energy source. It's
happening in Britain, the U.S. and here in Canada. 

Even former Edmontonian Gerard Kennedy, the greenest, most
left-wing of the candidates running for the leadership of the
federal Liberals, now says it would make sense for Alberta and
Ontario to co-operate on a nuke power feasibility study. 

In fact, there's a company in Calgary (founded by a couple of
oilpatch guys) that's already doing just that. 

Energy Alberta is reportedly already trying to cut a deal with
an oilsands developer to build a reactor (rumour has it the
French energy giant Total may be interested). 

They've already had talks with the Alberta Economic Development
Authority, and according to the company, have consulted with
none other than - drumroll - Jim Dinning! 

Make no mistake, this train has already left the station. 

									
pstanway@edmsun.com.

CANOE home | We welcome your feedback.
Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc.All rights reserved.

*****************************************************************
 38 SF New Mexican: Arizona: Palo Verde faces special inspection  

The Associated Press            
November 11, 2006                                                       

PHOENIX -- The nation's largest nuclear power plant, under 
increased scrutiny by federal regulators after numerous outages 
and equipment problems over the past two years, may be facing 
repairs involving millions of dollars.

 Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said Thursday that they
will begin a special inspection of the Palo Verde Nuclear
Generating Station's core safety injection valves next week.

 NRC officials have scheduled a Nov. 20 meeting with the
executives of the triple-reactor plant west of Phoenix to
discuss ongoing repair issues.

 Palo Verde already is under heightened scrutiny from federal
regulators, primarily because of a 2004 safety violation for a
"dry pipe" that had the potential to disrupt the flow of water
to the core's emergency cooling system.

 Findings from recent investigations into Palo Verde's emergency
diesel generators and an improper chemical mix in pipes in the
emergency cooling system could have further implications.

Palo Verde now is listed by federal regulators as a "degraded 
cornerstone." Only two of the nation's 103 nuclear reactors have 
poorer ratings.

 According to commission documents, the agency already has 
preliminarily issued a "greater than green" finding about the 
problems, meaning the safety violations could be classified as 
either moderate or significant.

 Federal investigators have found 24 minor violations at Palo 
Verde in relation to worker performance this year.

 However, a spokesman for Arizona Public Service Co., which 
operates Palo Verde, said he believes the needed repairs have 
been made and that the fixes will pass muster with the 
commission.

 Victor Dricks, an NRC spokesman in Texas, said Palo Verde "is 
operating safely, but there are a number of areas we have 
concerns about in human performance and the identification and 
resolution of problems."                                                                
 		   			 		   	 
  Comments are not allowed on this story at this time. Please 
check the open for comments page for details. I want to read 
comments posted on this story          
Trafficdeveloper  
Use | ©2006, Santa Fe New Mexican
*****************************************************************
 39 The Hindu: State to get back nuclear power 

Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : 

 Sunday, Nov 12, 2006
     
  Requests share anticipating shortage   

+ 12 bidders, including 6 international ones, for Krishnapatnam
project 
+ Centre plans seven mega projects in all 

HYDERABAD: R.V. Shahi, Secretary, Ministry of Power, has
promised that the Central Government would concede the State's
request to restore the share of nuclear power that it had
surrendered sometime ago. 

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a national workshop on
`Change management in power distribution' organised by the
Engineering Staff College of India (ESCI) here on Saturday, Mr.
Shahi said the Centre's decision to restore nuclear power
linkage to the tune of 115 MW followed a State Government's
representation to help overcome the power shortage anticipated
for the rabi season. 

Referring to the progress of the 4,000 MW ultra-mega project at
Krishnapatnam, he said the Centre had invited requests for
qualification of bidders and received 12 of them, including six
international players. They were asked to submit the final price
bid by March next. 

Selection in December 

The Krishnapatnam project was one of the three ultra-mega
projects of 4,000 MW each in the pipeline, the others being
Sasan in Madhya Pradesh and Mundra port in Gujarat. The tariff
bids would be submitted by this month-end and the best bid
selected in December. 

Mr. Shahi said the Centre had planned seven ultra-mega projects
in all. Barring those in the pipeline, the other projects would
be awarded between March-September 2007. 

Thereafter, they would take six months for financial closure and
five years for implementation. 

Imported coal 

The projects would partly depend on imported coal. 
He also said companies would be set up to tackle initial
troubles of these projects like environment clearance, Power
Purchase Agreements and escrow agreements. 

Projects with an installed capacity of 43,000 MW were under
construction in the country with an investment of Rs. 1,96,000
crore. They would be ready in six months. 

A capacity of 12,000 MW would be commissioned this year and
7,000-8,000 MW added every year for the next three years. 

M. Ramamurthy, Director, Electricity Regulation and Development
Authority, spoke. 

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu.
*****************************************************************
 40 Hamilton Spectator: Nanticoke possible site of nuclear plant

(Nov 11, 2006) 

The Ontario Power Authority has recommended the province build a
nuclear generating station in Nanticoke.

The station would replace the coal-fired plant that the Liberals
have announced they will close, though that shutdown has been
delayed.

A report released Thursday by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA)
recommended construction on the shores of Lake Erie. OPA is
considering the Nanticoke site, plus two others that already
have nuclear generating stations.

Those are the Bruce operation on Lake Huron and the Darlington
plant on Lake Ontario just east of Oshawa.

But a spokesman for the Ontario energy minister yesterday
suggested that the Lake Erie option is unlikely.

Energy Minister Dwight Duncan has said he prefers that any new
nuclear reactors be built at existing sites and in communities
that want them. The OPA says it would take nine to 12 years to
plan and build a nuclear plant.  
   
from www.thespec.com
*****************************************************************
 41 Hamilton Spectator: Heat's on nuclear power

Europe's summer sparks a wave of cuts -- and questions

 By Susan Sachs
The Christian Science Monitor

(Nov 11, 2006) 

Summer exposed the chinks in Europe's nuclear power networks.

The extended heat wave in July aggravated drought conditions
across much of Europe, lowering water levels in the lakes and
rivers that many nuclear plants depend on to cool their reactors.

As a result, utility companies in France, Spain and Germany were
forced to take some plants offline and reduce operations at
others.

Across Western Europe, nuclear plants also had to secure
exemptions from regulations in order to discharge overheated
water into the environment.

Even with an exemption to environmental rules this summer, the
French electric company, Electricite de France (EDF), normally
an energy exporter, had to buy electricity on the European spot
market to meet electricity demand.

The troubles of the nuclear industry did not end there. Sweden
shut four of its 10 nuclear reactors after a short- circuit cut
power at one plant on July 26, raising fears of a dangerous
design flaw. One week later, Czech utility officials shut down
one of the country's six nuclear reactors because of what they
described as a serious mechanical problem that led to the leak
of radioactive water.

The disruptions highlight some of the vulnerabilities of nuclear
power, just at a time when its future was looking brighter in
traditionally nuclear-shy parts of Europe. British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, for example, had launched a drive to
promote nuclear as the key to making his country self-sufficient
in energy.

But antinuclear activists have seized on nuclear plants' summer
troubles as evidence of the energy's limitations.

Austrian protesters, including politicians, have demanded that
the Czech reactor -- which is just over the border -- be closed.

In Germany, influential antinuclear groups reacted to Sweden's
closures by calling for the closure of the 17 German reactors,
many of the same design.

"Global warming undermines the arguments we've always heard
about nuclear power, that it doesn't damage the environment,"
says Stephane Lhomme, spokesperson for a French group, Sortir du
Nucleaire, or Abandon Nuclear. "Nuclear is not saving us from
climate change. It's in trouble because of climate change."

His argument may have more resonance in France than elsewhere
because, with 58 reactors, France depends on nuclear energy for
80 per cent of its electricity and is criticized by some for
failing to diversify its energy resources.

Concerns about global warming are central to the debate in
European countries over energy. And this summer's heat wave and
droughts, like those in 2003, have added a new and possibly
confusing element to that debate.

Nuclear power is promoted as a clean alternative to oil- and
coal-powered generators that produce greenhouse gases like
carbon monoxide, blamed by many scientists for warming the
earth's surface and melting polar ice caps.

Public opinion seems to be increasingly open to that argument
for nuclear power.

A 2005 European Union poll found 62 per cent of those surveyed
accepted the advantage of lowering greenhouse gas emissions,
compared to 41 per cent two years ago. And 60 per cent
acknowledged the benefits of nuclear power as a climate-friendly
way to reduce dependence on oil.

There are vast differences from country to country, though, over
whether to invest in new nuclear power technology or even
replace aging reactors. Finland is building a giant new nuclear
reactor, the first in Europe in 15 years.

In France,the government plans to build a new pressurized-water
nuclear reactor by 2010.

And in England, where opposition to nuclear plants has been
intense, climate change worries may trump antinuclear feeling.

"The jury is still out," says Simon Tilford, an analyst with the
Centre for European Reform in London, where the summer heat
brought scattered blackouts.

"But I think the government has had some success at turning
public opinion around because they argued the environmental
case."

A recently published assessment by the European Environment
Agency warned that Europe could expect more of the extreme
weather shifts that it has experienced over the last five years
without reductions in greenhouse gases.

Europe's four hottest years on record, the agency said, were
1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004. It did not account for this year's
weather.

Overall, about one-third of all water used in Europe is used for
cooling electrical generators, including those powered by both
nuclear and fossil fuels. Environmental officials in several
European countries, including France and Germany, have warned
that water levels in some reservoirs are at historic lows and
have not returned to pre-2003 heat wave levels.

The more immediate question in most countries is how much to
spend on repairing aging electricity-generating plants, most of
them located near shrinking water reserves.  
   
*****************************************************************
 42 Independent: Credo: Helen Caldicott 

The Australian paediatrician was named by the Smithsonian
Institute as one of the most influential women in the world. She
is a fervent anti-nuclear campaigner 

Interview by Julia Stuart 

Published: 12 November 2006 

I believe that women have the fate of the Earth in the palm of
their hands. Some 53 per cent of us are women and we really are
pretty wimpish. We don't step up to the plate - and it's time we
took over. I think men have had their turn and we're in a
profound mess. 

I believe that money is the root of all evil. When people start
believing that materialism will produce ultimate, lasting
happiness, it is a sure sign that they will be intensely
unhappy. One third of Americans are on anti-depressants.
Instead, what they should be doing is lifting their souls, not
their faces. 

I believe in the sanctity of nature. I believe we can save the
planet. We are smart enough to do that, but we must act with a
sense of dire emergency. 

I believe that the media are controlling and determining the
face of the Earth. As Thomas Jefferson said, an informed
democracy will behave in a responsible fashion. 

I believe in the beauty of classical music. I must have it; it
feeds my soul. 

I believe in the goodness in every person's soul even though
it's sometimes hard to see. I treat a lot of patients where
either their children are dying or they are dying. Even though
sometimes it's heavily obscured, in extremes this goodness will
emerge. 

I don't believe in a god. I have helped many people to die and
believe that it's ashes to ashes and dust to dust. 

I believe that heaven and hell are present every day. 

I believe that life is an absolute gift to be treasured
accordingly. We are very privileged to even have been conceived. 

I believe that we are here to serve. We are not here to make
ourselves happy, to be self-indulgent or to be hedonistic. The
happiest state that I achieve is when I work in my clinic
helping my children with cystic fibrosis to face death and help
to treat them and look after their siblings. I'm utterly
exhausted at the end of the day, but deeply, deeply fulfilled. 

I believe in the beauty of my garden. I've got two and a half
acres and I'm never more in touch with the power of the universe
than when I'm in my garden on a warm, sunny day tending to my
flowers and my trees, with the pelicans circling overhead. 

I believe that there are far too many people on the planet. In
the year 1900 there were one billion of us in the world. Now
there are 6.5 billion and the predictions are that within a few
decades there will be 14 billion. 

I believe that the greatest terror in the world is not a few
terrorists hitting the World Trade Center. It's the fact that
half the world's people still live in dire poverty and 30,000 to
40,000 children die every day from malnutrition and starvation,
while the rich nations continue to get richer and richer. 

I believe that the most important job in the world is parenting.
Women need to be financially supported for it. Their job is far
more important than that of chief executive officers at the head
of huge corporations. 

I believe the secret of happiness is a) serving our fellow human
beings and loving and caring for everyone. I don't mean crappy
Californian love; I mean really deep caring for each other; b)
to understand our own psychology in a profound way, so we can be
a more constructive human being; and c) to care for this
incredible planet of ours. 

'Nuclear Power is Not the Answer' by Helen Caldicott is
published by The New Press at £13.99 

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited 
*****************************************************************
 43 APP.COM: NRC: Protective liner OK for 2 more years | 

Asbury Park Press Online
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
Plant seeking license renewal

 Posted by the on 11/11/06 

BY STAFF WRITER                                             

LACEY — New measurements of a radiation barrier at the Oyster
Creek nuclear power plant show that the structure can last for
at least another two years, but federal regulators did not say
whether it would be safe for an additional two decades.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued that preliminary
assessment Thursday following thickness measurements taken last
month of the 100-foot-tall drywell liner, a vessel that would
contain radioactive steam during a serious accident.

Regulators considering whether to renew the plant's operating
license for an additional 20 years and activists opposed to the
idea have paid close attention to the liner because a water leak
from an upper portion of the plant during the mid-1980s had
caused exterior sections to rust and become thinner.

The drywell measure-ments — and the adequacy of a monitoring
program plant operator AmerGen Energy Co. has proposed to find
degradation there — will be major factors in whether regulators
grant the renewal or issue one with conditions.

AmerGen officials agree with the preliminary findings, which
"provide an additional assurance that the drywell is fully
capable of meeting its designed safety function," plant
spokeswoman Rachelle Benson said.

The company, however, will need the next few weeks to finalize
the data. In-house and private experts will give the numbers a
second look, she said.

Richard Webster, a staff attorney with the Rutgers Environmental
Law Clinic, which is providing renewal opponents with legal
assistance, said he doubts that the number of measurements were
plentiful enough to provide an assurance of safety.

"Even if there is not evidence of deterioration, it doesn't mean
that everything is fine," he said.

Webster also pointed out that the three-page preliminary
assessment issued by the NRC did not include the raw data and
that it was impossible to know for sure whether the NRC's
findings were accurate without seeing the numbers.

Workers from AmerGen measured the drywell using ultrasound, the
same technology used to provide images of babies in the womb.

They measured 109 locations and did not find any that were
thinner than what they were in 1994, when the last set of
reliable measurements were taken, he said.

The average thickness in the sand bed region, which experienced
the worst corrosion, was about eight one-hundredths of an inch,
NRC spokesman Neil A. Sheehan said. The NRC requires a minimum
average thickness there of at least five one-hundredths of an
inch, he said.

Reactor experts from the NRC and the state Department of
Environmental Protection observed tests and inspections of the
liner, Sheehan said. The activities were also recorded on
videotape, he said.

AmerGen workers also found no flaking, peeling or other signs
that a protective epoxy that covers the outside of the sand bed
region had broken down.

Former plant operator GPU Nuclear applied the epoxy in 1992 in
an apparently successful attempt to prevent more rust from
showing up.

AmerGen performed the measurements and inspections during the
plant's biennial outage, which are taken to replace about
one-third of the reactor's uranium fuel.

Considering the infrequency with which nuclear power plants are
shut down, operators planned those jobs and about 9,000 others
related to maintenance around the event.

AmerGen has yet to restart the plant after the outage began Oct.
16. 

Nicholas Clunn: (732) 643-4072

  Copyright © 2006 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 44 Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Responses to ''Nucleus for nuclear,'' Business, Nov. 4

Saturday Talk | ajc.com
 		 
Published on: 11/11/06                                                                                                                                                                                  
	 	
Nuclear power 

South should stand up to bullying tactics 

It is disturbing that the Southeast is being targeted for most
of the new nuclear reactors. Why doesn't the rest of the country
want these nuclear power plants? Maybe they know that nuclear is
dangerous, costly to construct, vulnerable to terrorists and not
a real answer to global warming. 

More reactors in the Southeast will also mean more radioactive
fuel and waste being transported on our public highways. Is this
what we want? Is this what is best for our beautiful region? 

We need to look closely and critically at plans for these new
reactors and not allow them to be rammed down our collective
throats. 

KRISTA BREWER, Atlanta 

Nuclear waste dumping ground in offing 

I wonder how many people reading the "Nucleus for nuclear"
headline realize that if Atlanta and the Southeast become the
center of a nuclear revival, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
suggests, the region will also become the center for the
nation's nuclear waste. 

For years the government has promised to take possession of
nuclear and store it in a safe repository like Yucca Mountain.
Now it appears that won't happen for years - if ever - so the
government is writing legislation that would allow nuclear waste
to be stored on site or close to the site of production. 

We produce it, we keep the waste, and because the nasty stuff
will be around for hundreds of thousands of years and will
accumulate in ever-increasing amounts, the South will once again
become the dumping ground for what the rest of the country
doesn't want. 

JOAN O. KING, Sautee 

PR professionals try to pull off con game 

When you hear well-paid public relations professionals promoting
nuclear power, think Enron. Persuasive and slick can lead to
disaster while those who do the slick promoting end up enriched
and outta town, far from the aftermath. 

If nuclear power were safe, as claimed by industry cheerleaders,
wouldn't insurance companies be swooping in for the business?
Yet they refuse to participate and put riders on homeowners'
insurance indemnifying themselves from nuclear attack and
accidents. So how does the industry get insurance? No problem.
They just have Congress pass a law making the taxpayers (that's
us) responsible. 

How does that jibe with the religion of free enterprise, the
magic of the market? From the point of view of the Enron
attitude, we are targets of the PR professionals, not thinking
citizens with legitimate concerns. 

TOM FERGUSON, Atlanta 

© 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution | | | | | | 				 		 	 	
*****************************************************************
 45 Star News: Nuclear plant passes drill; real incident shuts reactor 

StarNewsOnline.com | Star-News | Wilmington, NC

By Ken Little Staff Writer

 ken.little@starnewsonline.com

A drill simulating the response to a major malfunction at the
Brunswick Nuclear Plant went off without a hitch this week, a
spokesman for plant operator Progress Energy said.

In the real world, the two units at the power-generating
facility near Southport have experienced several unplanned
shutdowns in recent months, none caused by what the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission considers serious problems. The most
recent was Nov. 1, and the Unit 2 reactor was still shut down
Saturday.

The drill is held every two years. Tuesday's exercise involved a
scenario at Unit 2 that cascaded through four emergency levels
as defined by the NRC - Unusual Event, Alert, Site Area
Emergency and General Emergency, with the last designation the
most serious.

Operators in the plant control room used a simulator to react to
events as they developed. The drill graded participants on how
they responded to a scenario involving an offsite loss of power,
a loss of coolant, a radiation leak into the atmosphere and
finally a loss of water in the reactor cooling system.

Participants and monitors included emergency management
officials from New Hanover and Brunswick counties, local law
enforcement, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, the NRC and the Department of Homeland Security.

"Preliminarily, there were no major problems encountered,"
Atlanta-based NRC spokesman Ken Clark said Friday. The next
drill will be held in 2008.

"What we heard was we were successful and we met our
objectives," Progress Energy spokesman Mike McCracken said.

Ironically, the Unit 2 reactor was powered down Nov. 1 after a
loss of offsite electricity caused the connection to a backup
diesel generator to fail.

The generator is one of four designed to feed power to the plant
in an emergency. As a matter of procedure, an Unusual Event was
declared and the NRC notified.

Unit 2 remained shut down Saturday.

"At the time, we weren't really sure what happened. We lost
offsite power. We're still doing some tests and other
maintenance activities while the unit is shut down," McCracken
said. "It shouldn't be too long before we are back on line."

The reactors at the Brunswick Nuclear plant provide about 25
percent of the electricity used by Progress Energy's 1.3 million
residential and commercial customers in the Carolinas.

In August, Unit 1 was shut down for two weeks after a small leak
was discovered in a water-hydrogen mixture used to cool the
electricity-producing main generator in the plant.

"There are no major safety problems at either unit. The loss of
offsite power is always a concern, but in this case, it did not
develop into a major safety concern," Clark said.

Jim Warren is executive director of the North Carolina Waste
Awareness & Reduction Network, a Durham-based group opposed to
nuclear power.

"It crossed an important threshold to get to that emergency
level," Warren said of the Unit 2 shutdown. "The real risk with
this stuff is if something else goes wrong." Warren is critical
of the overall performance of the Brunswick Nuclear Plant.
"Basically, they're cutting corners and they're not doing
inspections as frequently," he said.

McCracken disagrees.

"That's certainly not the case for Unit 2," he said. "There are
times when you have some mechanical or electrical problems.
We've tried to be as efficient as possible, of course, but we
have very robust inspection and maintenance programs."

In June, the NRC gave Progress Energy approval to extend the
operational life of both its reactors at the Brunswick Nuclear
Plant. The utility submitted a license renewal application to
the NRC requesting 20 additional years of operation for each
unit.

Brunswick Unit 2 was licensed for commercial operation from 1974
to 2014, and Unit 1 from 1976 to 2016. Renewed operating
licenses allow Unit 2 to operate until 2034 and Unit 1 until
2036.

Ken Little: 343-2389

ken.little@starnewsonline.com 

*****************************************************************
 46 Political Affairs Magazine: Hearings Begin On Bush’s Nuclear Plans
 
By Matthew Cardinale 	   	   	 	   

Published: 11/12/2006 10:14 	   

(APN) NORTH AUGUSTA, SOUTH CAROLINA – “The product is a nuclear
bomb. They kill people like you and me,” Allison Peeler, a
college-age volunteer with Carolina Peace, said, crying during
an impassioned speech here at a public hearing on Bush’s plans
for a new plutonium pits plant. 

“A [plutonium] pit is the central core of a nuclear weapon
typically containing plutonium-239 that undergoes fission when
compressed by high explosives,” according to a footnote in the
Notice of Intent published in the Federal Register, obtained by
Atlanta Progressive News. The Notice is published on pages
61731-61736 in Volume 71, Number 202 of the Register.
 
The first “public scoping” hearings were held here in North
Augusta by the US Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear
Security Administration (NNSA). About 75 people were in
attendance.
 
Hearings will be held subsequently in Oak Ridge, Tennessee;
Amarillo, Texas; Las Vegas, Nevada; Tonopah, Nevada; Socorro,
New Mexico; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Los Alamos, New Mexico;
Santa Fe, New Mexico; Livermore, California; Tracy, California;
and at the DOE Office in Washington, DC.
 
Besides DC, all these cities will be potentially impacted by at
least one of four aspects of the Bush Administration’s “Complex
2030,” plan.
 
Atlanta Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND) sent up a
contingent to the hearings, with about 15 activists present at
the evening hearing. Bobbie Paul, Executive Director, is calling
the plan the “Bomb-Plex,” and is also using the slogan, “Bombs:
Away!”
 
The hearings are being held pursuant to the National
Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), which requires
environmental impact statements every time a program is being
considered which could have an environmental impact.
 
“You may think this decision to build [a new nuclear weapons
plant] is a local issue, but before you sell your souls, I want
to warn you, it’s a global issue. The tide is turning. It will
increase negative attention,” Steve Leeper, Representative for
the United States to the Mayors for Peace Campaign, said in his
public comments.
 
“The use and even threat of nuclear weapons is illegal under
international law,” Leeper said. “The vast majority of people
around the world want nuclear weapons eliminated, including 66%
of Americans. It’s technically feasible to eliminate all nuclear
weapons. It’s a political problem,” and not a technical one.
 
NNSA SEES THE BEGINNING OF AN 18 MONTH REVIEW PROCESS
 
But the NNSA stresses a decision has not yet been made.
 
“The important part of this process is public participation,
especially on alternatives,” Ted Wyka, Complex 2030 Supplemental
Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) Document Manager, told
Atlanta Progressive News in an interview.
 
“This is the first stage. We’re going to consider all inputs.
There’s a 90 day comment period which closes January 17, 2007.
This isn’t something we have written yet,” Wyka said.
 
The goals of the Complex 2030 include, “first, to identify a
site to build and locate a consolidated plutonium center, a
place where we’re going to do manufacturing, production, as well
as research and development and surveillance,” Wyka said.
 
“Typically, this has been done across the country at different
locations,” Wyka said.
 
The second goal is “to consolidate special nuclear materials
(SNM’s) to fewer locations,” Wyka said.
 
The third goal is to “reduce or consolidate duplicate facilities
or programs to improve operations, including high explosives,
tritium, environmental testing facilities, and hydrotesting. For
example, we may have 8 sites that do environmental testing. We
might not need all of them,” Wyka said.
 
The fourth goal is “transferring flight testing operations from
Tonopah to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico or the Nevada
test site,” Wyka said.
 
In other words, out of the four parts of the proposed action,
three of them involve transfer or consolidation, while the
first–probably the most controversial–involves potentially
building new nuclear weapons.
 
Here’s the thing, though. The NNSA is simply reviewing public
input on the proposed plan, which is to build more nuclear
infrastructure. Decisions about actually producing the bombs
would be made by the President of the United States and the US
Congress.
 
“This isn’t about the types and levels of weapons. That is a
Presidential decision which is funded by Congress. This is to
develop the infrastructure, and to transform the
infrastructure,” Wyka said.
 
“Our job is to make sure we have the right complex to meet those
national security requirements,” Wyka said.
 
But could even the construction of new weapons facilities send a
negative message to other counties, thus fueling the nuclear
arms race?
 
“It’s not about using it; it acts as a deterrent,” Wyka said.
“It depends on how it’s read. If it’s looked upon as increasing
numbers, then yes,” it could send a negative message.
 
The NNSA’s Power Point presentation said the plan was needed due
to “react to adverse geopolitical changes.”
 
However, when asked what specifically those geopolitical changes
are, Wyka couldn’t name any and said probably that line
shouldn’t have been included in the presentation.
 
Wyka said he couldn’t think of any public health impacts from a
consolidated plutonium center, but said this is what the public
input process is for.
 
Wyka said the NNSA did not assess public health impacts up front
so as not to seem to bias the public input process.
 
“We need to look at workforce exposures,” he said.
 
“This is an advantage when we’re trying to use a new facility,
rather than an old facility, so we can use state of the art,”
technology, to possibly prevent exposures, Wyka said.
 
THREE PROPOSED OPTIONS
 
The NNSA is looking at 3 options for going forward: Complex
2030; continue the status quo; or third, reducing nuclear
weapons production to a nominal level.
 
A nominal level is seen as 50 certified pits per year, Wyka told
APN during the public question and answer session.
 
The public is also welcome to offer additional alternatives. In
fact, the majority of public speakers either endorsed the
Complex 2030 program, or instead asked for a fourth option, of
the phasing out of all nuclear weapons.
 
During a question and answer session, one audience member asked
where Bush’s national security requirements are to be found.
 
Bush writes a memorandum which is provided to US Congress each
year, but the information is otherwise classified. Information
on the NNSA website should provide some indications of what
those priorities are, though, George Allen, Director of the NNSA
Office of Transformation, said.
 
It is unclear how much impact the public could have on the
process by commenting on the environmental impact statements on
this stage, though. The NNSA finds of the three options
outlined, only Complex 2030 meets Bush’s “security priorities.”
 
In other words, it is not clear, if the public mounts strong
opposition to Complex 2030, would the DOE have any efficacy–or
will–to challenge the President’s program?
 
COMPLEX 2030 SUPPORTERS CITE JOBS, ECONOMY
 
About half of the speakers appeared to be in support of Complex
2030, and were at the same time bidding for it to be located at
Georgia’s Savannah River Site (SRS), where a nuclear power
reactor is already located and a second reactor is also being
pursued separately.
 
Of course, due to disparities in political participation among
the poor and disadvantaged, speakers at public hearings tend to
be unrepresentative of public opinion, with the least advantaged
the most underrepresented.
 
Nancy Bobbitt, a Field Representative for US Sen. Isakson, read
letters of support from US Senators Chambliss, (R-GA), Graham
(R-SC), and Isakson (R-GA).
 
Chuck Smith, an Aiken County Council Representative, said “I see
the world as a very dangerous place. There’s forces out there
that want to destroy your families. The deterrent is a necessary
force to keep stability.”
 
Smith did not acknowledge the fact, however, that the US already
has enough nuclear bombs to blow up the entire planet ten times.
 
The United Way of Aiken County is in support of the plutonium
facility as well.
 
The existing SRS “is a safe place. I’ve never worried about it.
This community depends a lot of the Savannah River Site,” Dee
Stratford, President of the United Way of Aiken County, told
Atlanta Progressive News in an interview.
 
“It’s a staple in the economy,” Dave McRae, Director of Resource
Development at the United Way of Aiken County, added.
 
To illustrate the good neighbor-ness of the SRS, Stratford said
the United Way of Aiken County received $1.9 million this year
from SRS, and a total of $44 million since 1950.
 
Letters in support were also read by individuals on behalf of
the The Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce; Chancellor of the
University of South Carolina, Aiken; the University of Georgia
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory; the Sheriff of Aiken County;
the Public Safety Directors of Aiken and Augusta; the Lower
Savannah Council of Governments; the Southeast Environmental
Management Association; Citizens for Nuclear Technology
Awareness, a pro-nuclear lobby; and the President of Augusta
Technical College.
 
OPPONENTS CITE DANGER, ENVIRONMENT, AND COST
 
“We will never have true peace without the abolition of all
nuclear weapons,” Krista Brewer of Atlanta WAND said in her
public comments.
 
“First, they’re very expensive. We’re using scarce federal
dollars. Second, nuclear technology is far too dangerous [due
to] leaks, accidents, [risks during] transportation, the
possibility of a terrorist attack, or weapons getting in
terrorists’ hands,” Brewer said.
 
“The people at Three Mile Island probably thought their plant
was safe,” Brewer said.
 
“We urge the Environmental Impact Statement to take into
consideration the sum total of radioactivity in the area,”
Brewer said.
 
Brewer and Paul also made a demonstration of dropping beebees in
a metal bowl; Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream recently
made a similar presentation in Atlanta.
 
One beebee represents 15 Hiroshima-sized bombs.
 
Paul drops it in the bowl, and it goes: Ping!
 
Then, Paul drops 6 in the bowl and it goes: “Ping!
P-p-ping-ping-ping!”
 
Finally, Paul drops 10,000 beebees in the bowl and it sounds
like the friggin end of the world. “That’s the total US nuclear
arsenal, 150,000 sized Hiroshima nuclear bombs.”
 
“My concern are those unborn, who have no voice” Charles Utley,
a minister, said in his comments.
 
“How many bombs to you need to kill yourself once?” Utley asked.
 
“Why should you continue to build? We had contamination in my
community last week. Why try to build something you already
can’t control?” Utley asked.
 
“When we gather love in our hearts we can put away some of the
bombs. But as long as you try to out-do somebody else, somebody
else might try to out-do you.”
 
“I do not fully support the SRS nuclear mission. The directives
came down from the President and Congress. We’ve seen recently
that their judgment is questionable,” David Mantos, a resident
of Aiken, said in his comments.
 
“The decision to build nuclear weapons is jeopardizing our
national security. Even a war hawk has to admit we have plenty
of nuclear weapons. It’s unnecessary that we’re producing more,”
he said.
 
Public comments may be sent by email to Mr. Wyka until January
17, 2007. They should be sent to complex2030@nnsa.doe.gov.
 
From Atlanta Progressive News

--About the author: Matthew Cardinale is the News Editor and
National Correspondent for Atlanta Progressive News. He may be
reached at matthew@atlantaprogressivenews.com

[ /] newcatcher@cpusa.org
*****************************************************************
 47 Columbus Telegram: Minor fire at Cooper Nuclear Station                                    

Columbus, Nebraska    

Nov 12 2006

BROWNVILLE - Cooper Nuclear Station, an electric power
plant in southeast Nebraska, declared a Notification of Unusual
Event at 5:30 a.m. Saturday after a small fire started at the
plant.
 					
 A Notification of Unusual Event was declared because of the
fire in an electric terminal box located on the fourth floor of
the plant's reactor building. The fire was extinguished within
11 minutes by plant fire brigade personnel who de-energized the
terminal box and applied dry chemicals to the fire. A
Notification of Unusual Event is declared anytime a fire lasts
longer than 10 minutes, according to a NPPD news release.

A Notification of Unusual Event is defined as unusual events,
minor in nature, which have occurred or are in progress, which
indicate a potential degradation in the level of safety of the
station. It is the lowest and least serious of four emergency
classifications established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
for nuclear power plants. If placed on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1
being the least serious level of an emergency and 4 being the
most serious level of an emergency, a Notification of Unusual
Event would equal a 1.

Plant employees have determined the damage is contained to the
electric terminal box. There were no injuries, and no impact on
plant operations. Plant personnel followed standard emergency
procedures in declaring the notification, and notifying
appropriate local, county, state and federal agencies of the
incident.

Cooper Nuclear Station is located three miles southeast of
Brownville, near the Missouri River. It is owned and operated by
the Nebraska Public Power District, with headquarters in
Columbus.

The plant is currently shut down for its planned refueling and
maintenance outage. 

  Copyright © 2006 Columbus Telegram   
*****************************************************************
 48 Edmonton Journal: Nuclear debate: Pros and cons in the long-running controversy
over using atomic power to fuel new oilsands plants

edmontonjournal.com
         
Gordon Jaremko, The Edmonton Journal

Published: Saturday, November 11, 2006

EDMONTON - Would-be premier Jim Dinning jumped into a long, hot 
controversy this week when he endorsed considering nuclear power 
for oilsands plants at a Conservative leadership candidates 
forum.

The heat dates back to a 1958 scheme named Project Cauldron. It 
proposed detonating atomic bombs beneath bitumen deposits to boil 
them into flowing oil.

With support from a Social Credit cabinet eager for an oilsands
breakthrough, a test site was picked 100 kilometres south of
Fort McMurray. National defence, atomic energy and health
authorities stopped the plan, fearing a geological and
environmental holocaust.

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the federal Crown corporation that
develops and markets reactors for peaceful uses, revived the
idea of harnessing nuclear power for oilsands development in
less explosive form.

In a 2003 paper commissioned by AECL, the Canadian Energy
Research Institute said a nuclear steam and power plant could
improve oilsands economics. Prominent oilfield entrepreneurs
Hank Swartout and Wayne Henuset set up Energy Alberta Corp. to
promote AECL technology and eventually build a project.

Nuclear agencies claim support from international groups, such
as Greenpeace, that are swinging around to a view of atomic
power as a lesser of two evils compared to burning more fossil
fuels.

But the Sierra Club of Canada has described AECL's oilsands
reactor hopes as "based on nothing but a hope and a prayer."
Former Alberta energy minister Murray Smith, now the province's
envoy in Washington, has also dismissed the idea as fantasy
studded with safety and environmental risks.

Oilsands developers remain cool to AECL, saying only that they
are willing to listen to all ideas.

The industry's Alberta Chamber of Resources, in a 2004
state-of-the-oilsands report, described a new atomic power plant
as an idea for a remote future of changed technology.

Bitumen projects "are normally spread out over an area not
suitable for steam distribution from a single source," the
chamber said. The brief CERI study did not cover all the bases
and "nuclear energy still has issues around societal
acceptance," the report added.

gjaremko@thejournal.canwest.com

PRO

- Energy conservation: Industrial use of natural gas would be
cut.

The least efficient bitumen production method, in-situ
underground extraction with steam injection wells, burns about
one thousand cubic feet of gas per barrel of oil that flows. The
system burns about one-sixth as much energy as the product
contains.

Oilsands gas consumption is forecast to reach 1.8 billion cubic
feet per day, or as much as the proposed Mackenzie Valley
pipeline would deliver.

- Cost savings: Replacing gas-fired boilers would generate
benefits exceeding the higher price tag for a nuclear furnace.

Savings would kick in at gas prices above about $4 per thousand
cubic feet, a level about one-third below current markets for
the fossil fuel, the CERI study concluded.

- Royalties rise: Provincial revenues increase to the extent
that oilsands production costs go down.		 

Alberta's oilsands royalty rate of 25 per cent is collected on 
net bitumen sales revenues after deducting operating expenses.

- Cleaner air: Use of atomic energy for steam and power 
generation would eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions from burning 
fossil fuels in oilsands production systems.

- Job creation: The oilsands nuclear power scheme calls for 
construction of a plant at a remote site in eastern Alberta or 
western Saskatchewan, areas largely bypassed by current industry 
activity.

CON

- Waste headache: A disposal site would be needed for spent 
reactor fuel rods that stay radioactive for millennia.

AECL has yet to obtain an environmentally and publicly accepted 
location anywhere in Canada for a permanent reactor waste vault.

The atomic power firm is currently in the midst of a seven-year 
project required just to transfer 22 tonnes of spent fuel left by 
1950s and '60s research programs to improved temporary storage at 
its Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario.

- Proliferating facilities: A new steam pipeline grid would have 
to be built across the oilsands region.

Current projects use multiple gas-fired power and heat plants and 
short steam-injection pipelines confined to their own bitumen 
leases. The AECL proposal calls for one or more large, central 
plants and a distribution grid spanning widespread oilsands 
projects.

- Power dilemma: Electricity is already an abundant oilsands 
byproduct made by gas-fired "cogeneration" steam and power 
plants.

Electricity surpluses are developing. TransCanada Corp. is 
proposing a $1.8-billion US power export line, NorthernLights 
Transmission, from Fort McMurray to Oregon and potentially as far 
as the San Francisco region of northern California.

- Terrorist target: CERI warned that a remote reactor could 
become at least perceived as vulnerable to sabotage or theft of 
nuclear materials.

© 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of . All rights
*****************************************************************
 49 UPI: Interview: Atomstroyexport's Shmatko
     
United Press International - Energy - 

11/10/2006 10:09:00 PM -0500

 By BEN LANDO UPI Energy Correspondent

MOSCOW, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- Russia, always a leader in nuclear
energy development, plans to continue its trek into foreign --
and often controversial -- nuclear development, with an eye on
countries unable to build and bring a plant online itself. 

Atomstroyexport, Moscow's nuclear export arm, is building one
reactor in Iran, two reactors each in China and India, and
recently announced winning a tender for a dual-reactor plant in
Bulgaria. 

"It's not a secret that over the last two or three years, things
have changed dramatically in regards to the future of atomic
energy," Sergey Shmatko, president of Atomstroyexport, told
United Press International in an exclusive interview from the
company's Moscow headquarters. 

"Suddenly there was a lot of countries that have popped up that
weren't considered prospective in atomic energy. For example,
Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, Chile, Argentina -- today each of the
countries that are more or less stable are starting to think
about getting involved in the atomic technology race," he said,
adding in the years since the Chernobyl accident stalled nuclear
development, safety has been increased while the main
alternative to nuclear energy, fossil fuels, are much more
expensive. 

"Even the environmentalists talk about it," he said. 

"We're talking about solutions in deficiencies in energy. The
industrial alternative of atomic energy, there is none," saying
renewable energy sources can't produce the power output nuclear
plants can. 

Sixteen percent of the world's power comes from 440 commercial
reactors in 31 countries, according to the World Nuclear
Association. Thirty more are being built now and another 55 are
being considered. Even the United States, home of 103 running
reactors, which hasn't licensed a new one since 1978, may see
nuclear energy grow from the 20 percent share it holds now. 

Dale Klein, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
said Oct. 6 he expects more than 30 applications for new
reactors in the next couple of years. 

Atomstroyexport, which reconstructs and builds new nuclear
plants around the world, won't be a major investor, said
Shmatko. 

"Our current projects are much better than those that are even
being offered in the United States right now. I can't say that
going into the United States market would be excellent
economically, or we'd make a lot of money from that. I can't say
that." 

Shmatko said Atomstroyexport may be involved on a secondary
level, such as a subcontractor, but its focus will be in
countries with high energy needs, such as the developing world,
as well as countries like India and China which have some, but
not all, of the nuclear technology needed to come online. 

The Obninsk reactor produced the world's first nuclear
electricity in 1954 and Russia has maintained status as a
nuclear energy -- as well as weapons -- power ever since. It
plans to heavily invest in its domestic sector, spending $54
billion to upgrade and expand from the current 15.6 percent of
power the industry serves the state to 25 percent by 2030. 

Ninety percent of Russia's nuclear industry profits are made
from exports, according to the Russian news and information
agency, RIA Novosti. 

The tender in Bulgaria is "a new stage for our company," Shmatko
said, relatively free from direct control of Moscow and able to
strike deals as the business model dictates. He called it a
"Bulgarian project in Bulgaria. A European project," not
Russian, promising to work with European Union officials when
Bulgaria is admitted next year. 

But politics are heavy in their deals, despite the attempts to
steer clear, Shmatko says. The Bushehr reactor in Iran is in the
cross-hairs as Tehran tries to persuade the U.N. Security
Council its nuclear program -- which includes uranium enrichment
-- is for civilian energy only. Under the current contract with
Atomstroyexport, all spent fuel, which could be processed for
weapons, would return to Russia. 

"We understand this project is first of all political and not
commercial," Shmatko said. He insists the company will abide by
Russian Federation and international standards to guard against
proliferation. 

North Korea is also not on the horizon of Atomstroyexport.
"We're working a lot in Southeast Asia," Shmatko said, including
the China project and talks with Vietnam and South Korea. "We
have no contacts whatsoever with North Korea." 

Within the next two years there may be no more Atomstroyexport,
at least not as its known now. 

"There is a government plan in regards to this, creating a
single company that will work with all companies that are
working with atomic energy for civilian use," Shmatko said.
"Beginning with uranium fuel, building atomic stations,
engineering, exploiting, integration, all of that. That will be
one company." 

President Vladimir Putin is urging the State Duma to pass
legislation allowing for Atomprom to be formed. It will be
controlled by the state, with Russia's nuclear-field companies
tucked into a corporate-like structure and allowed to work with
private companies. 

"And we are planning on being part of that one company, which
will be realizing all of the industrial atomic power for Russia
and abroad," Shmatko said. 

-- 

(UPI Energy Correspondent Ben Lando was in Russia as a guest of
the Russian news and information agency, RIA Novosti.) 

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 50 SNA: Bulgaria: Bulgaria's Nuke Unit Repairs Canceled
 	 	 	 	 	 	
Sovia News Agency

Business: 11 November 2006, Saturday.

Bulgaria's Nuclear Power Plant in Kozloduy has canceled the
scheduled repairs of its fifth unit.
 
The technical problem that required the shutdown of the unit has
been cleared in the meantime, the plant announced.
 
The maintenance activities were supposed to eliminate the
increase of the primary circuit coolant controlled leakages.
Plant experts will also inspect the pressurizer safety valves
and eliminate controlled leakages there too. Today the unit is
working full throttle, however, and all the problems are said to
be eliminated.
 
Scheduled annual repairs are still under way in the plant's Unit
6. The works on the unit are supposed to end by November 24.

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&Disclaimer - Privacy Policy
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 51 Radioactive Long Island
 
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:45:02 -0500

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X-DSPAM-Result: mail; result="Innocent"; class="Whitelisted"; probability=0.0000; confidence=1.00; signature=N/A
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   >Cancer rates on Long Island have soared
without explanation. For many of these cancers,
including >breast cancer, the only proven cause,
aside from genetic predisposition, is exposure to
radiation.



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/opinion/nyregionopinions/12LI-McMasters.html
    Op-Ed Contributor
The Nuclear Neighborhood
  a.. Sign In to E-Mail This
  b.. Print
  c.. Save



By KELLY MCMASTERS
Published: November 12, 2006
AT the geographic center of Long Island, just
before the fish tail splits, three plumes of
radioactive tritium snake through the earth. These
plumes extend from soil beneath Brookhaven
National Laboratory, where they originated during
experiments involving one of the lab's nuclear
reactors in the late 1990s, and travel by
groundwater east and south.

The United States Department of Energy, which owns
the Brookhaven lab, recently posted a legal notice
in local newspapers requesting public comment on
some options for cleanup. The department offered
five plans for the public to consider, from simply
monitoring the plumes to digging up the
contaminated soil and shipping it to an
undisclosed location. The department recommends
monitoring to be sure the plumes shrink over the
next decade as predicted. And if they don't?
"Additional actions will be evaluated."

The department's notice directed readers to a Web
site. Two maps there are particularly educational.
The first is called Operable Units and Areas of
Concern. It highlights 30 sites on the lab's
campus, including Graphite Research Reactor spill
sites, a Building 830 pipe leak and a Particle
Beam Dump. There is also the 123-acre stand of
pines and oaks known as the Gamma Forest, which
was irradiated with cesium-137 between 1961 and
1979 in order to research the effects of radiation
on plants.

In other words, the map charts decades of
accidental leaks and spills and intentional
releases of radiation, most of which issued from
the site's two decommissioned reactors. (Two other
reactors remain operational.)

The second map outlines groundwater flow from the
lab; two bright blue arrows point east toward the
Hamptons, and six point south directly at Shirley,
a mostly blue-collar community to the south that
shares the Hamptons' beautiful coastline but none
of their social cachet.

I grew up in Shirley. As a child there in the
1980s, I was fascinated by the lab, partly because
the neighborhood fathers who worked there - most
of them in support and service positions - traded
jokes about glowing in the dark. Today, the jokes
have turned sour.

A class action lawsuit has been filed against the
Brookhaven lab, and most of the plaintiffs are
from the Shirley area. The complaints range from
depressed real estate values as a result of living
in a contaminated area to the claim that cancers
and other illnesses have resulted from the
laboratory's pollution. A children's cancer
cluster - by 2000 there were 19 children in the
area afflicted by a rare soft-tissue cancer -
rings the lab like a necklace.

The plaintiffs' lawyer is Richard J. Lippes, who
fought and won the Love Canal case near Buffalo in
the 1970s. The Shirley case has been going on for
more than a decade already. During that time, the
lab has managed to clean up almost all of the
nuclear and chemical pollution flowing east toward
the Hamptons while largely ignoring Shirley.

When Brookhaven was constructed in 1947, Shirley
didn't exist; most of the East End of Long Island
was covered in potato farms and brush. It was this
isolation - the thick cover of pines and distance
from large populations - that made the site
attractive to scientists engaged in such
inherently dangerous research.

Sixty years later, the laboratory is still hidden
away in the middle of the Pine Barrens, but
beneath it lies an aquifer that is one of the
nation's largest single sources of drinking water,
serving nearly three million people.

I understand that the lab is worthy of
celebration - six Nobel Prizes have been won by
scientists associated with Brookhaven. I also unde
rstand that much of the work the lab conducts,
including medical research into addiction and
cancer, is vitally important. But over the six
decades the lab has been on Long Island, a dense
population has crowded around it.

Meanwhile, the lab released radioactive tritium,
cesium, europium, radium, strontium, plutonium and
several known carcinogens into the environment.
Cancer rates on Long Island have soared without
explanation. For many of these cancers, including
breast cancer, the only proven cause, aside from
genetic predisposition, is exposure to radiation.

With all that in mind, I would like to suggest my
own plan for Brookhaven's cleanup. Let's call it
Option 6: Close the remaining two nuclear reactors
on the Brookhaven National Laboratory property. It
is time.

Nuclear reactors made sense in the 1940s when most
of Long Island was brush and pines. But it makes
no sense to house them in a dense residential area
where so many lives are at risk and mistakes -
radioactive, potentially cancer-causing mistakes -
continue to be made. Shut them down.

Kelly McMasters, who teaches creative writing at
Columbia, is writing a book about the hamlet of
Shirley.

*****************************************************************
 52 NBHNT: Famous whistle-blower regrets having kept silent too long 

New Brunswick Home News Tribune

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Rick Malwitz                         
It had the feel of a '60s reunion concert. I half expected Neil 
Young. Anything new from Country Joe and the Fish?

Last week, Rutgers professor Lloyd Gardner — who taught the last
class I ever attended at Rutgers, when he came in and dismissed
us after telling the news about the shootings at Kent State —
invited an old friend to speak at the Student Center.

He invited Daniel Ellsberg, who actually needs an introduction
for many students today. From 1964 until 1971, Ellsberg, a
former Marine then working in the Pentagon, knew secrets about
U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He spilled the secrets in the
so-called "Pentagon Papers," which nearly put him and the
editors of The New York Times in prison.

Thugs from the Nixon White House sought to discredit Ellsberg by
breaking into the office of his psychiatrist, as part of
criminal activity known as Watergate.

The timing of the release of the papers has bothered him ever
since. What if he spilled secrets in 1964? How many lives would
have been saved? He realizes now that he had taken an oath to
"uphold the Constitution of the United States."

"I violated my oath a lot in 1964 and 1965 and later, by my
silence," he said, in an interview prior to addressing an
audience of several hundred at Rutgers, many of whom appeared to
be my age.

"I knew Congress was being lied to. I am as guilty as any
official, and there were thousands like myself," he said.

As certain as he is of his guilt in the 1960s, Ellsberg is just
as certain today that thousands of officials are similarly
guilty of having been silent during the lead up to the war in
Iraq, and are remaining silent as the Bush Administration plots,
according to Ellsberg, a war in Iran.

The problem is an historic one, reminding Ellsberg of his youth,
when President Harry Truman alone made the decision to go to war
in Korea. Ellsberg recalled the warning from Robert Taft, a
noted conservative in the 1950s, and someone Ellsberg loathed.
Ellsberg recalled Taft saying, "You will rue the day" Truman
sent troops to Korea.

"Taft was right," said Ellsberg.

Truman acted like a king. President Lyndon Johnson would so the
same thing, when he went to war in Vietnam, while people in his
administration kept dissent to themselves. Ellsberg recalled how
LBJ's Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara remained silent into
the 1990s, until he wrote a book. "McNamara's loyalty began and
ended with loyalty to the president," said Ellsberg.

Ellsberg wonders if Donald Rumsfeld has a similar book in him,
to be published 30 years from now, with Rumsfeld ultimately
admitting he knew Iraq would be a fiasco.

Loyalty to the president is akin to loyalty to the king, said
Ellsberg, who noted that as many as a third of the Colonists
were comfortable with having a king before the Revolutionary
War. Another third had no opinion. The third third — the
Washingtons, the Adamses, the Patrick Henrys — were, said
Ellsberg, "the traitors." Now they're patriots.

In making his case that kings can be a dangerous thing, Ellsberg
cited chapter and verse, quoting from the Old Testament book of
1 Samuel.

When the Israelites wanted a king, just like their neighbors,
God warned them, Chapter 8, Verse 11: "This will be the manner
of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons,
and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his
horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots."

Though few would agree with everything Ellsberg had to say, for
those of us old enough to recall his role in history it was a
blast from the past.

Rick Malwitz's column appears Sundays and Thursdays. Contact him
at , (732) 565-7291.

Daniel Ellsberg is one of the great heroes of the 20th Century.

We live now in a time when abuses are even more flagrant, while 
an impenetrable wall of secrecy hides them from the public eye. 
The powers that now prevail have mobilized forces and fostered 
corruption that would make Richard Nixon drool with envy.

Some of us who know a little of the truth have dedicated our 
lives to its revelation and suffered great losses, while an 
apathetic world grins condescendingly and rushes headlong into 
the quicksand.

This is the most dangerous time in history. The survival of 
civilization in any acceptable form requires that persons with 
stature and authority come forward to let the world know what it 
so desperately needs to know.

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 10:51 am   
  
  Copyright © 2006 Home News Tribune. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 53 Aljazeera: DU behind the surge in Cancer rates in Iraq - 

Aljazeera.com      

  11/12/2006 9:30:00 AM GMT   
  
(Photo courtesy: Paul Kitagaki Jr.)- Six-year-old Fatma Rakwan
was diagnosed with leukemia
  
In 1991, Washington and its Persian Gulf War allies used
armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium -- the first time
such weapons had been used in military conflicts -- as the
Iraqis retreated from Kuwait. 

Up till now, the battlefield remains a radioactive toxic
wasteland -- and depleted uranium munitions remain a mystery
despite many studies and many attempts by scientists to fully
discover its secrets. 

In military applications, when alloyed, Depleted Uranium [DU] is
ideal for use in armor penetrators. These solid metal
projectiles have the speed, mass and physical properties to
perform exceptionally well against armored targets. DU provides
a substantial performance advantage, well above other competing
materials. This allows DU penetrators to defeat an armored
target at a significantly greater distance. Also, DU's density
and physical properties make it ideal for use as armor plate. DU
has been used in weapon systems for many years in both
applications. 

Depleted uranium results from the enriching of natural uranium
for use in nuclear reactors. Natural uranium is a slightly
radioactive metal that is present in most rocks and soils as
well as in many rivers and sea water. 

Natural uranium consists primarily of a mixture of two isotopes
(forms) of uranium, Uranium-235 (U235) and Uranium-238 (U238),
in the proportion of about 0.7 and 99.3 percent, respectively.
Nuclear reactors require U235 to produce energy, therefore, the
natural uranium has to be enriched to obtain the isotope U235 by
removing a large part of the U238. 

Once DU round strikes a solid object like a tank, it bursts into
a burning spray of radioactive dust, which can remain on site
for years. 

Many reports and political experts confirmed that the U.S. and
British troops fired more than 940,000 depleted uranium
projectiles during the 1991 conflict. 

The Pentagon refuses to clarify the exact effects of depleted
uranium, but Iraqi doctors attribute the significant increase in
cancer and birth defects in the region to the U.S. and British
troops’ use of DU. 

Many researches conducted outside Iraq, and by several U.S.
veterans organizations, suggested that depleted uranium could
have played a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained
malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War
veterans. 

The U.S. is believed to have used 320,000 tons of depleted
uranium during the Gulf War alone. Also British Armed Forces
used depleted uranium in some of its ammunition. 
[ hspace=0 src=] 

Iraqi doctors reported significant growth in cancer and birth
defects during the period between 1991 and 2003; the period of
the two wars the country fought and in which the U.S. and the
British forces were involved. 

It was during these two wars that such weapons were used; which
led to the noticeable growth in cancer and birth defects in
Iraq. 

In 2001, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a study on
depleted uranium after serious doubts emerged over its damage to
health. 

The study claimed that depleted uranium had very little risk of
spreading. 

But a scientist who had worked for the WHO at that time later
stated that another study that was kept concealed from the
public contradicted WHO’s claim, and that it asserts that
depleted uranium can cause cancer. 

In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Dr. Keith Baverstock, who
worked on the published study, said that Depleted uranium
inhalation has geno-toxic effects on DNA. 

"When you breathe in the dust the deeper it goes into the lung
the more difficult it is to clear. The particles that dissolve
pose a risk - part radioactive - and part from the chemical
toxicity in the lung - and then later as that material diffuses
into the rest of the body, and into the blood stream, a
potential risk at sites like the bone marrow for leukemia, the
lymphatic system and the kidney," Dr. Baverstock said, adding
that this study was excluded from the report released earlier by
WHO. 

British and American troops in Iraq today continue using
depleted uranium weapons ignoring the deadly impact it has on
civilians’ lives and health. 

It had also been revealed that the Israeli occupation army used
uranium in the recent offensive Lebanon. 

Cancer rate in Iraq has increased tenfold, and the number of
birth defects has multiplied fivefold times since the 1991 war.
The increase is believed to be caused by depleted uranium. 

Many scientists sought to investigate these events, but
Washington is blocking any attempt to inspect the aftermath of
the war. 

Also the U.S. refused refused to cooperate with the United
Nations on the issue.
   
  The American pilots whom used Agent Orange in Vietnam war are
still being effected by it and dying by it. I am sure it is the
same for American soldires in Iraq. While Bush is enjoying his
ranch is Texas, American soldiers and Iraqi civilins are being
poisened by Depleted Uranium. Hopefully Americans will be more
forward and ask more questions from their leaders and stop them
from performing more criminal conducts, Or in the long run the
Ammerican Nation will pay dearly for it's ignorance.   
  
  
   Copyright 1992-2006 Al Jazeera Publishing, Dubai, UAE.
Aljazeera.com is a registered trade mark of Al Jazeera Publishing
*****************************************************************
 54 DAWN: N-safety pact with India likely -

November 12, 2006
 
By Qudssia Akhlaque

 ISLAMABAD, Nov 11: For Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir will be the
key issue at the foreign secretary-level talks with India next
week with emphasis on building on convergences already achieved
on this front, official sources told Dawn on Saturday.

 “We are very clear that Kashmir will remain the central issue
during the talks and the effort will be to build on the
convergences,” a senior foreign ministry official said when
asked about the likely focus of two-day discussions beginning in
New Delhi on Tuesday.

 A vital agreement in the area of peace and security is on the
cards. The accord will be on reducing risk of nuclear accidents,
it is learnt. A draft agreement on reducing risk of nuclear
accidents or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons has been under
discussion between the two countries since August 2005.

 At the last round of expert-level talks on nuclear CBMs in
Islamabad in April this year the two sides came close to
reaching an understanding but due to some reservations by
Pakistan it could not be firmed up.

 Apparently, Pakistan has now accepted the amendment made in the
draft by India.

 A draft agreement on prevention of incidents at sea proposed by
Pakistan at the last round to which India had agreed, will also
be discussed.

 Agreements on modalities of holding flag meetings between
sector-level commanders at the Line of Control and speedy
repatriation of inadvertent border crossers are also in the
offing.

 The two sides will try to narrow down differences on Sir Creek
and Siachen, officials said.

 The issue of prisoners, trade matters, including a
trans-Kashmir truck service, re-opening of consulates in Mumbai
and Karachi and visa regime would also figure in discussions.

 There are strong indications from both sides that modalities of
the joint anti-terror institutional mechanism that President
Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh decided to
put in place during their Havana meeting in September would be
firmed up.

 Pakistan is keen to establish the mechanism because it has
serious concerns about Indian-sponsored anti-Pakistan activities
in Balochistan and NWFP through Afghanistan in recent years, the
sources said.

© DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2006 
*****************************************************************
 55 Nevada Appeal: The best case against Yucca Mt. is in the Constitution, not science

Opinion
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
November 12, 2006     				 				
 					     				 			
Dan Mooney 

 There are some illuminating parallels between the proposed high
level nuclear waste depository at Yucca mountain and global
warming. As compared to global warming, Yucca Mountain is much
closer to home in mind, time and geography and, thus, perhaps,
easier to follow. Both issues rely heavily upon computer
modeling, or scientific voodoo, resulting in the abuse of
science to promote interests beyond global warming or the safe
storage of nuclear waste. Because even the most cautious layman
may not be able to tell the difference between good and bad
science, there is power in both. Those who act upon incompetent
science without verification almost deserve what they get. The
State of Nevada is no exception. 

The abuse of science is most evident when the physical sciences
are used like sorcery to influence political science.
Frequently, important political decisions are made by citizen
non-scientists, often public officials who trust scientific
conclusions they don't understand and cannot verify only because
the chosen conclusions most closely fit already established
values and beliefs or are promoted by a political favorite or
party. 

For example, we all know that predicting the future is not
possible. Yet the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Power
industry pretends to do so with abandon by presenting their
computer modeling inferences as fact. They use high and
legitimate sounding techniques to influence and modify our
belief that there are no future (long term) adverse consequences
to the storage of high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
Claiming that nuclear waste can be safely contained indefinitely
is clearly an inference based upon bad science, not upon
empirical evidence capable of being confirmed or verified. If
there are no adverse consequences to the storage of high level
nuclear waste, why not store it in those states in which it was
generated? Simply put, contemporary physical science is not
capable of solving the long term storage issue. 

Their relentless ramming of nuclear waste down Yucca Mountain's
throat is just another example of Eastern interests historically
usurping Western resources using Nevada as their dumping ground.
In their disingenuous claims of sound science, dishonest
conclusions are used to justify actions against our interests
ostensibly in the national interest but realistically in the
interest of the nuclear power industry. President Bush is using
the project to reward the eastern nuclear establishment.

On the other hand, aside from the transportation issue, our
belief that it cannot be contained at Yucca Mountain and that it
will seep into the environment or in some way infiltrate our
bodies is an artifice with even less fact than the computer
modeling done by the Department of Energy. Promulgated by Nevada
leaders and spread by fearful Nevadans, this belief has also
seeped deep into the Nevada psyche. My physicist friends who are
not beholden to the nuclear power industry or the federal
government privately tell me that, if competently supervised,
man can contain the material for a good long time, at least as
long as it takes to find methods to neutralize its potential for
human harm.

Which side is eventually found to be correct depends upon which
side can accurately predict the future. Of course neither side
can, so, except by chance, neither side can be correct. Neither
side has stored radioactive waste for 10,000, 5,000 or even 100
years. This simply means there is no empirical evidence one way
or another. Thus, both sides are guilty of treating predictions
based upon inference as fact. What we know is combined with what
we don't know along with speculation and bias representing
different interests. 

Yet the more powerful party will probably win the argument -
that is unless we change the subject to political science and
the tenth amendment to the United States Constitution. 

While considered a long shot, this is a states' rights issue,
not a scientific one. If we want to roll around in radioactive
waste, that should be our business. If we don't want to take a
risk that the stuff will kill us and our children, that's also
our business, not the business of federal government

The tenth amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people." This amendment reserves to the states all powers not
specifically granted by the constitution to the federal
government. Thus, one could question: "Does the United States
have the authority to dump radioactive waste from other states
into Nevada against our will?" Nevada is in a constitutional
struggle with the federal government. We cannot be abused unless
we allow it to happen. 

Let's move toward an aggressive offensive constitutional
strategy and forget the science of the matter.

• Dan Mooney is a 32 year resident of Carson City and frequent
contributor to the Opinion page. His e-mail address is
Nevada4@aol.com.

All contents © Copyright 2006 nevadaappeal.com
Nevada Appeal - 580 Mallory Way - Carson City, NV 89701                         
*****************************************************************
 56 Green Left: Environmentalists oppose mine discharge
 
Lisa Macdonald 11 November 2006

The Environment Centre of the Northern Territory and the No
Waste Alliance have written to the Environmental Protection
Authority (EPA) urging it not to grant a waste discharge license
for a new mine near the town of Batchelor, about 100 kilometres
south of Darwin. 

Justin Tutty from the NWA said on November 4 that Compass
Resources has applied to release contaminated water into the
already polluted Finnis river system. “When the EPA approved the
Browns Oxide project, it acknowledged the inevitable
radiological contamination that this would produce”, he said.
“So the EPA’s assessment report called on the company to consult
the public on a Radiation Management Plan to address these
impacts.
 
“This plan has been written by the Australian Nuclear Science
and Technology Organisation, which bears responsibility for the
nearby abandoned Rum Jungle uranium mine. But we have yet to get
a look at the plan.”
 
From: Australian News, Green Left Weekly issue #690 15 November
2006. 	 	   	   	 		 	 

Authorised by K. Miller, 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale, NSW.
Site by Kiwa Systems 	       

*****************************************************************
 57 Salt Lake Tribune: Ex-Envirocare boss sues EnergySolutions

By Judy Fahys 

The Salt Lake Tribune 

Article Last Updated:11/11/2006 01:09:36 AM MST

Was the state of Utah trying to jump into the radioactive waste
business? 

    A new $60 million lawsuit filed Thursday by Charles Judd,
onetime president of the radioactive waste company now called
EnergySolutions, says he was told such plans were in the works. 

    And the prospect the state would jointly run the massive
radioactive waste company prompted him to sell 315 acres to
EnergySolutions for its expansion at a cut rate and to abandon a
pending lawsuit against the company. 

    EnergySolutions, which has grown in the past year into the
nation's largest nuclear services company, would not
specifically address any of Judd's assertions. 

    “The allegations in the complaint are without merit,” said
corporate counsel Val Christensen. “EnergySolutions plans to
pursue a vigorous defense.” 

    Judd already is involved in a lawsuit over his defeated
efforts to develop a radioactive waste-disposal site to compete
with the mile-square landfill operated by EnergySolutions, the
nation's only privately owned and operated facility for
low-level radioactive waste. 

   Earlier this year, he sued Tooele County for rejecting his
proposal to open a site adjacent to the current EnergySolutions
facility. 

    In that suit, Judd says the county put his company, Cedar
Mountain Environmental, through 18 months of review before 
denying him a crucial permit on grounds that there was no need 
for more radioactive waste-disposal capacity. 

   Then, after an investor group joined early last year with
Steve Creamer to buy the landfill formerly called Envirocare of
Utah, the county granted permits for expansion on the land that
Judd had sold to his old employer and shrunk the county's
“Hazardous Industries Zone” to the perimeter around
EnergySolutions' disposal site. 

    “It's no question they are the only game in town,” Judd said
Friday. 

    Judd wants $60 million, plus damages, for what he claims was
EnergySolutions' fraud against him and violations of the Utah
Antitrust Act. 

   A 15-year employee of Envirocare, he served as president from
1997 to 2002, while the U.S. Energy Department barred the
company's then-owner from having a hand in day-to-day operations
because of corruption allegations. 

    The lawsuit Thursday also accuses EnergySolutions of using
its tight relations with government officials, discriminatory
pricing and strong-arm tactics to build a national waste
monopoly that is driving him and other competitors out of the
industry. 

    In addition, the suit claims EnergySolutions and its
representatives “provid[ed] various forms of economic
considerations to governmental officials and elected
representatives with the power to assist or enable the
maintenance of EnergySolutions' monopoly, including loans,
favors, employment opportunities, business deals and/or other
conduct in the nature of payoffs.” 

   Judd on Friday refused to elaborate on the allegations. 

    Efforts to reach representatives of Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman
Jr. were unsuccessful on Friday, a holiday for state and federal
offices. 

    fahys@sltrib.com 
    
© Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 58 AFP: Nuclear waste train arrives in Germany, demos await - 

Saturday November 11, 11:09 PM 

  [Several thousands of anti nuclear protestors demonstrate]   

BERLIN (AFP) - A train carrying 175 tonnes of nuclear waste
crossed the border between France and Germany while thousands of
demonstrators massed at its destination.

It had left the French reprocessing plant at La Hague in the far
northwest of the country on Friday evening bound for Gorleben in
northern Germany where the waste is to be stored.

The 12 containers of vitrified waste crossed the border at
Lauterbourg in Alsace just before 5:00 pm (1600 GMT), several
hours late because of (Advertisement)
[ src=]  demonstrations along the route.

It is not due to reach Gorleben, more than 500 kilometres (310
miles) north of Lauterbourg, until Monday morning.

During the day between 3,000 and 6,000 environmentalist
militants, according to police and organisers, demonstrated at
Gorleben - already home to 68 containers of the same type --
calling for the end of this type of transport and the closing of
the storage centre.

Some 16,000 police have been mobilized to protect the train as
it moves through Germany.

While in France it had been blocked on Friday night near the
station at Sequeux, in the northwest, by a group of about 10
anti-nuclear demonstrators who were close to the track.

Saturday afternoon it was diverted to pass through Metz and not
Nancy, both major northeastern French cities, with anti-nuclear
activists claiming that the organisers of the convoy wanted to
avoid Nancy where about 30 demonstrators were waiting for it and
had briefly deposited a coffin on a bridge over the station.

It also bypassed Avricourt, where Sebastien Briat, 22, who had
chained himself to the track, was struck and killed by a train
transporting nuclear waste on November 7, 2004.

As the train passed through Hoenheim, near the French frontier
city of Strasbourg, about 20 demonstrators laid roses on a level
crossing in memory of "all the victims of civil and military
nuclear power" and of Briat.

French police were present, while a helicopter flew overhead,
but did not intervene. 

AFP
*****************************************************************
 59 Raw Story: Thousands of police guard German railways as nuclear fuel passes

dpa German Press Agency

 Published: Saturday November 11, 2006 

Gorleben, Germany- Thousands of police were protecting railway
tracks from sabotage in Germany Saturday as a train hauled
high-grade nuclear waste towards a storage site in the north of
the country. The train had earlier been held up by protesters
blocking tracks in France, where a factory had converted the
spent fuel from German nuclear power stations into pellets of
glass and packed them inside a type of storage container known
as a "castor." 

All nine preceding rail convoys to the dump, a former salt mine
at Gorleben in northern Germany, have been disrupted over the
years by violent protests. Police were taking no chances in the
cat-and-mouse hunt for demonstrators who could block the track
at any point. 

Two years ago a man was killed in France when he lay on the
track and a laden nuclear train was unable to stop in time. 

The 12 castors were to be unloaded Monday from the train and
hauled the last few kilometres to Gorleben by truck. Thousands
of demonstrators gathered Saturday in Gorleben to demand the
closure of all nuclear power stations and the end of all waste
transport. 

Police, who said 16,000 personnel were deployed to guard the
train, described the protests at Gorleben as peaceful. 

The crowd, assessed by the police at 3,000, banged drums and
waved banners during a procession that took them as close as
allowed to the secure warehouse in Gorleben where 68 castors are
so far in storage. 

Barricades made of straw and old wood were set on fire. Police
said there was a lot of smoke but did no major damage. 

While 200 local farmers and many other local residents took part
in the demonstration, the issue has divided the Gorleben
community, with many others welcoming the facility because it
creates jobs. 

Germany's government has yet to decide whether to put the
castors down the Gorleben salt mine or find another site for
long-term storage. The name castor comes from an acronym for
"cask for storage and transport of radioactive material".
 
© 2006 dpa German Press Agency
 
*****************************************************************
 60 Ely Times: Reid jubilant with Majority Leader prospect

 - elynews.com :: 

Published on Friday, November 10, 2006

By PETE FOWLER Ely Times Reporter

Even before Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia conceded 
defeat to his Democratic rival Jim Webb on Thursday, Sen. Harry 
Reid was making plans for his party's takeover of the U.S. Senate 
after 12 years.

Reid held a telephone conference call Wednesday with Nevada 
reporters during which he said that Democrats would take control 
of the Senate and select him as their majority leader. He also 
said he wanted to work across party lines and reach out to 
Republicans in order to get things done.

Technically, control of the Senate hung in limbo Wednesday. Webb 
was leading with 49.56 percent of the votes compared to Allen's 
49.24 Tuesday night.

"Frankly, it doesn't mat ter whether h e (Allen) concedes or 
not," Reid said. "He's not going to make up 8,000 votes. All of 
our experts have told us that's our race."

Reid said he was happy with the outcome of the Nevada races, 
despite Republicans keeping their hold on many of the higher 
level state offices.

"Beginning this cycle, we had no Democrats in constitutional 
offices... I'm very happy with the state trending blue," Reid 
said. "From the attorney general on d own, we wo n every one of 
them."

Reid said it has been his intention for a long time to stop the 
proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility, and that 
he would stop any bills that would expand funding or change the 
law to help the project go through. However, he said there was no 
talk of actually transporting nuclear waste before 15 or 20 years 
from now and that people may be making the issue bigger than it 
is.

"I think that program's de ad," Reid said. "Right now, I don't 
think there's much to kill. The bureaucrats are still spending 
money up there, but there's never any talk about trying to 
transport nuclear waste."

Nationally, Reid mentioned political "winds of change," saying 
"the power is moving west" with Democratic victories in Colorado, 
Nevada, Oregon, Washington, California.

"In Kansas, a woman who is a Democrat in a heavily Republican 
state was el ected overwhelmingly, and along with that, 11 office 
holders switched parties to become Democrats," Reid said.

Reid called for bipartisan cooperation, saying he wanted to reach 
out to Republicans in order to get things done.

"Elections have consequences," Reid said. "I hope the president 
will understand, as will his

Republican colleagues here in the Congress, that to get anything 
done takes a bipartisan agreement. I don't ex pect the 
Republicans to compromise in any way any of their pr inciples, 
but I do think that they should recognize that legislation is the 
art of compromise -- consensus building -- and we need some 
consensus built here in Washington to get some things done."

Reid said he was in good mood Wednesday. He began the conference 
call with a joke, although he indicated that he may have only 
slept for about three hours or less due to election night 
excitement and an early morning phone call from Presiden t Bush. 
Reid painted a picture of himself as a serious se nator, who 
keeps his nose to the grindstone and mostly just works in 
Washington.

"I'm kind of a social dud," Reid said. "I hate to admit this. I'm 
not a socializer, so my life is working." </div>

*****************************************************************
 61 KnoxNews: Nuke material to be converted

Highly enriched uranium at Y-12 to be 'down-blended' to eliminate 
weapons capacity

By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com 

November 11, 2006

OAK RIDGE - More than 17 tons of highly enriched uranium 
currently stored at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant will be 
"down-blended" to eliminate its weapons capability and make it 
available for reactor fuel. 

The government unveiled the three-year project earlier this week 
and in December or January will solicit companies interested in 
bidding on the work. The National Nuclear Security Administration 
published the "notice of intent" at the Federal Business 
Opportunities Web site, www.fedbizopps.gov. 

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the 17.4 tons of HEU 
will be converted into about 290 tons of low-enriched uranium 
with an estimated value of $750 million. 

Y-12, a warhead manufacturing facility, is the nation's primary 
storehouse for weapons-grade uranium. 

Steven Wyatt, a federal spokesman at Y-12, said "almost all" of 
the material to be used in the program is stored at the Oak Ridge 
nuclear facility. The enriched uranium will come from the 174 
tons declared surplus in 1994 and set aside for non-weapons 
purposes, Wyatt said. 

The total amount of highly enriched uranium stored at Y-12 is 
classified, but the stockpile has been estimated at 400-500 
metric tons. DOE said the latest project supports the Bush 
administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. 

The program encourages the use of nuclear energy in countries 
that refrain from "pursuing their own enrichment and reprocessing 
technologies." Those technologies could be used to develop 
nuclear weapons. 

In a statement distributed to the news media, Energy Secretary 
Samuel Bodman said, "Establishing a reliable fuel supply supports 
the administration's twin goals of expanding the use of nuclear 
power and curbing nuclear proliferation. This will help countries 
to pursue nuclear power confidently, without the burden of 
producing their own fuel, while curbing the spread of sensitive 
technologies." 

The uranium stocks to be used in the down-blending project have 
an enrichment that ranges from about 20 percent up to 93.3 
percent, Wyatt said. The enrichment is the percentage of U-235, 
the fissile isotope of uranium, and anything above 20 percent can 
potentially be used to make a nuclear bomb. 

The materials will be mixed with lesser stocks of uranium to 
reduce the enrichment to 4.95 percent U-235, a level suitable for 
use in commercial power reactors. 

Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.

 					
© 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel
*****************************************************************
 62 SavannahNow.com: Weapons facility debated at public hearing | 

Josh Gelinas | 

Saturday, November 11, 2006 at 12:30 am

NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. - Savannah River Site supporters and
activists who oppose its nuclear mission were on opposite sides
of what seemed an impassable divide Thursday during public
hearings on the reservation's future. 

The National Nuclear Security Administration is consolidating
weapons work across the country to reduce costs and increase
security, part of a plan called Complex 2030 that could include
a Consolidated Plutonium Center at SRS that would help supply
the nation's nuclear arsenal. 

The security agency is gathering feedback from communities
around SRS and four competing sites. The input will help the
federal agency prepare environmental impact statements and make
its final choice, which is supposed to be released in the fall
of 2008. 

Dozens of political, economic and social leaders from South
Carolina and Georgia spoke in favor of the center, which would
produce plutonium pits - triggers for weapons - in addition to
research and development. 

"We're 100 percent in support of the new project," said state
Rep. Barry Fleming, a Georgia Republican who represents Columbia
County. 

That sentiment was repeated time and again, including by Aiken
County, which is suing the federal government over separate
plutonium shipments to SRS that are supposed to be converted
into fuel for commercial power reactors. 

"We believe that (the Department of Energy) has all the right
characteristics to be successful," Aiken County Council Chairman
Ronnie Young said. 

It would cost between $200 million and $300 million a year to
run the plutonium center, and it would employ about 1,000
people, according to records and officials. Construction is not
supposed to start until 2013. 

The center would produce an estimated 125 plutonium pits a year
and would have a lifetime of 50 years. 

Environmental activists said the United States should get out of
the nuclear weapons business altogether and that local
supporters were blinded by economic benefits. 

"We are not talking here about a deterrent," said Ted Brodek, an
activist from Atlanta. "We are talking specifically about new
weapons of aggression." 

Lou Zeller, a member of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense
League, argued that it did not make sense for the United States
to construct a new weapons plant - because of its
nonproliferation agreements. 

"It is a crime to move forward with the construction of a new
atom weapons plant," he said. 

The United States has not operated a full-scale plutonium plant
since 1989, and the center that is being proposed would only
replenish existing weapons, said George Allen, director of the
security administration's transformation office. 

The nation plans to have no more than 2,200 "strategic warheads"
by 2012, he said. "There is no military request for new
weapons." 

This is the second time in three years that the federal
government has proposed a plutonium factory at SRS. 

In 2003, it hatched a plan for a "modern pit facility" that
would have constructed 400 plutonium pits per year. Plans for
that facility have been scrapped, and some say the current
design is more of the same. 

"They bring back old wine in new bottles," said Bobbie Paul, an
Atlanta resident who spoke against the proposal. 	
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© 2006 SavannahNOW and the Savannah Morning News.
*****************************************************************
 63 KnoxNews: Reactor cleanup delayed again

Drug use latest problem for overdue, over-budget project at 
nuclear site

By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com 
                                
November 12, 2006

OAK RIDGE - Cleanup work at the Molten Salt Reactor has been 
postponed until late December or early January amid reports of 
dope smoking and other issues at the problem-plagued nuclear 
site. 

The effort to remove tons of highly radioactive fuel salts was 
already 20 months behind schedule and $10 million over budget. 

The Department of Energy's cleanup chief said the continuing 
mishaps and delays were so troubling that he considered putting 
the project on indefinite hold and shifting the money to other 
uses. 

"It's one of the harder decisions I've had to make," said Steve 
McCracken, who heads the environmental management program in Oak 
Ridge. "This thing is costing me money, and I can't seem to get 
it done. I need to get it done. I would very much like to get it 
done." 

Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's cleanup manager, and its team of 
subcontractors have run into a slew of technical difficulties in 
trying to process the tanks of high-hazard nuclear materials, 
which have been in storage since the experimental reactor was 
shut down in 1969. 

The project was halted May 6 because of a fluorine leak, and work 
was on the verge of restarting until the latest setback. 

Marijuana was reportedly found in one of the worker's vehicles 
during a mid-October inspection. There also were indications that 
workers may have been smoking pot in a break trailer, as well as 
sleeping on the job and playing cards. 

One worker was fired on the spot, and McCracken said two other 
workers quit their jobs rather than take mandated drug tests. 
Bechtel Jacobs, the managing contractor, ordered tests for all 
employees working at Molten Salt after drug-sniffing dogs "hit" 
on several areas at the work site. 

Even before the latest incident, it appeared that workers had 
"lost their edge," McCracken said. 

"The work force had been idled so long that they weren't sharp 
anymore, and we were seeing that as we were trying to get ready 
to go again," the DOE official said. "I really think that's more 
important than what they were doing in the break room, except for 
the drug thing. Somehow we allowed the work force to lose their 
edge on how to do this stuff." 

McCracken said he was disappointed and frustrated at the lack of 
progress. "It's a difficult job to do, but we're running into 
more problems than we would ever hope to have run into," he said. 

It will probably be necessary to do a full-scale operational 
readiness review before restarting the nuclear work, he said. "I 
have no choice right now but to say I've got to check out the 
workforce again to make sure we're good to go," he said. 

Reports about workers smoking marijuana and lolling around at the 
work site are damaging to DOE's image and the whole cleanup 
program, McCracken said. 

"I think that's bad for us," he said. "It reinforces what some 
people believe, and that's unfortunate." 

The Molten Salt Reactor was built in 1960 as an experimental 
facility to test reactor concepts, including the use of lithium 
and beryllium salts to cool the reactor's fuel. The reactor also 
tested fissile uranium-233 as a fuel, substituting it for the 
U-235. 

After reactor operations ceased, the fuel mixture was drained 
into two large tanks in the basement, and a third tank was used 
to store material that was flushed from the reactor's process 
systems. 

Removing that material has proved technically challenging. The 
plan is to use a chemical process to extract the U-233, which has 
potential use in nuclear weapons, and transfer it to a 
high-security storage facility. Then the radioactive fuel salts 
would be removed and put into casks, which eventually will be 
transported to an underground repository in New Mexico. 

"Getting rid of those materials, it's a huge step forward because 
it eliminates the hazard," McCracken said. 

Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.

 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel
*****************************************************************
 64 Hanford News: State vit plant hearing draws 1 comment
 
This story was published Friday, November 10th, 2006 

By Annette Cary 

Only one person showed up Thursday to comment at a
state-sponsored hearing on changes to Hanford's vitrification
plant that have been proposed by the Department of Energy. 

DOE and contractor Bechtel National have asked for a permit
modification for the $12.2 billion vitrification plant being
built to treat Hanford waste. Among changes requested was adding
one high level waste melter and decreasing one low activity
waste melter to have two of each. 

But with no assurances yet that a supplemental treatment
technology for low activity waste, bulk vitrification, will work
as well as the main vitrification plant, the state should not
allow DOE to reduce low-activity melters, said Allyn Boldt, a
former Hanford worker and the only person to comment Thursday. 

DOE proposed reducing the melters when it found two could treat
as much waste as it originally thought three could treat. 

The public comment period has been extended through Jan. 5.

 
© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 65 Tri-City Herald: DOE eyes new plan for sludge treatment 

Published Sunday, November 12th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

The Department of Energy is evaluating a potential new plan to
treat radioactive sludge from Hanford's K Basins. 

DOE is weighing cost, schedule and safety factors as it looks at
hauling the sludge to central Hanford for treatment rather than
preparing it for disposal where it is now near the Columbia
River. 

That could allow the area where the K Basins sit to be turned
over to Washington Closure Hanford sooner to finish cleanup. The
treatment process also could be less risky. 

But the change also could delay treatment of the waste for
years. 

DOE asked contractor Fluor Hanford earlier this year to develop
a plan to speed up the turnover of the K Basins to the
contractor cleaning up the river corridor, Washington Closure.
The request came amidst uncertainty in the sludge treatment
system that now appears to be mostly resolved and cleanup delays
at the basins in recent years. 

DOE plans to decide by the end of the month if it is interested
in pursuing some or all of the Fluor plan. It would then start
talks with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington
State Department of Ecology and the Defense Nuclear Facilities
Safety Board, which also need to approve the changes. 

The K East and K West Basins were built in the 1950s to store
irradiated reactor fuel underwater until it was processed to
extract plutonium for nuclear weapons. But after the last
Hanford processing plant was shut down, leftover irradiated fuel
remained in the pools, each holding more than 1 million gallons
of water, for more than a decade. 

The fuel corroded and particles mixed with dirt and concrete
that sloughed off the sides of the basins to form a radioactive
sludge. 

The fuel has been removed, but removing the sludge has proved
far more difficult and taken longer than DOE or Fluor Hanford
anticipated. Fluor recently completed vacuuming the bulk of K
East sludge into underwater containers and started pumping it
over to the K West Basin for storage until it can be treated. 

When the last of the sludge is pumped from the K East Basin this
spring, the way will be cleared for the water to be removed from
the basin and for work to begin to tear out the concrete. 

K East has leaked significant amounts of radioactive water in
the past, so getting it emptied is a higher priority than
draining the K West Basin. 

The plan has been to store 60 cubic yards of K East and K West
sludge in underwater containers at the K West Basin until a
treatment system was ready at the nearby Cold Vacuum Drying
Facility. 

The last of the sludge to be treated would be stored in the K
West Basin for 21/2 years, delaying further cleanup there and
the start of work by Washington Closure Hanford. DOE has until
the end of November 2009 to complete sludge treatment under the
legally binding Tri-Party Agreement covering Hanford cleanup. 

Under the proposed plan, the waste would be packed into vented
containers and taken to T Plant in central Hanford for storage
and later treatment there. That would allow the K Basins to be
removed and other cleanup work in the area to be completed
sooner. 

The plan also calls for the sludge to be treated at a lower
temperature and pressure, which would reduce the potential risk
to people and the environment in case of an accident. 

However, the treatment system would need some redesigning to fit
in T Plant. 

Storage of the sludge would start in October 2007 at T Plant,
but treatment would not start until November 2011. That is two
years after the current legal deadline for finishing treatment,
according to a weekly report of the Defense Nuclear Facilities
Safety Board. 

The delay in treatment could be longer than four years, but, "It
is conceivable that interim storage could be extended based on
future funding," the report said. 

DOE also will have to consider whether T Plant would be able to
treat K Basin sludge without disrupting other planned projects.
For instance, the plant is set to be used to treat
remote-handled transuranic waste. 

The new proposed treatment plan also addresses how the concrete
that forms the basins would be removed. 

The plan has been to add grout to the basins around debris and
fuel racks that covered the bottom of the pools. That grout
would then be cut into blocks and huge cranes and trailers would
be used to lift the blocks out of the basins and move them to
central Hanford. 

However, workers removed most of the debris that would have been
grouted in place after it proved too difficult to vacuum the
sludge around it. That clears the way for a more traditional
tear-down of the concrete in the basin. 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 66 washingtonpost.com: Hanford's Cleanup Project Deserves Support - 

Sunday, November 12, 2006; Page B06

The Nov. 1 news story "Nuclear Cleanup Site Has Cities Cleaning 
Up Financially," about the economics of cleaning up the Hanford 
nuclear reservation in Washington state, doesn't reflect all the 
facts and the real threat the site poses for the Pacific 
Northwest.

Hanford is not only the most contaminated Superfund hazardous 
waste site in America; it also threatens the Columbia River, the 
lifeblood of the Northwest, and is a danger to public health and 
safety. Without adequate cleanup, it is a potential target for 
terrorism and threatens the economic vitality of the region. 
Along with members of Congress who have fought for us, I continue 
to call for stable funding to clean up this deadly waste.

Several performance reviews and media reports have heightened
concerns about cost overruns and construction mistakes --
problems that Tri-Cities residents did not create. We need
stability and funding. We need real management and a commitment
by the federal government to get the job done.

The Hanford reservation was vital to America's defense. The
people of the Tri-Cities have done their part to win America's
wars, including the Cold War's nuclear standoff. In return,
America made a promise to clean up the mess left behind.

Time is not on our side. America cannot turn its back on its
responsibility at Hanford and to the people of the Northwest.

CHRIS O. GREGOIRE

Governor

Olympia, Wash.

Copyright 1996- The Washington Post Company 
*****************************************************************
 67 Dayton Daily News: Taxpayers, former workers pay the price for nuclear plant mess

DaytonDailyNews.com

First of three parts                                            
 		 	 	 		 		 	 	 		 	 		 	 	
By Lynn Hulsey, Tom Beyerlein Staff Writer                                                    

Sunday, November 12, 2006                                                                                                                                                              
	 		 	 	 	 		 	 	

PIKETON  It was a place defined by Cold War secrecy. 

For nearly five decades the government quietly enriched uranium
at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, first
for bombs, then nuclear reactors.

It stood as a proud monument to Ohio's nuclear legacy. 

Today that legacy isn't so pretty. The plant is in the midst of
a multi-billion dollar environmental cleanup, perhaps the most
expensive in Ohio history. 

It left behind untold numbers of sick workers, some of them
dying before they receive compensation for their occupational
illnesses. 

The government blames the plant's problems on decades of lax
safety practices, accidental toxic releases and routine
mishandling of chemical and radioactive material. 

The result: poisoned groundwater, hazardous landfills,
contaminated buildings. 

And a huge cleanup bill for taxpayers. 

"They made a big mess there," said Ken Dewey, assistant chief of
the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's southeast office. "If
they'd been doing things right, they wouldn't have made that
mess." 

DaytonDailyNews.com:
 			 				
Copyright ©2006 Cox Ohio Publishing, Dayton, Ohio, USA.
*****************************************************************
 68 Cincinnat ENQUIRER: Cleanup Of Piketon Uranium Plant May Top $4.5 Billion

  CINCINNATI.COM | 

 Reported by: A.P.
 Web produced by: Neil Relyea
 Photographed by: 9News
 First posted: 11/12/2006 11:16:41 AM 
Last Updated: 11/12/2006 5:51:53 PM 

PIKETON, Ohio (AP) -- The cost of cleaning up radioactive and
hazardous waste at a former uranium-processing plant in southern
Ohio could top $4.5 billion. 

There's also evidence that contamination has migrated off the
site. 

That's according to the Dayton Daily News. 

The newspaper says the government has spent one billion dollars
on clean-up so far. 

Officials with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency say the
Piketonplant's environmental record has improved. 

But in recent years the US Energy Department has found small
amounts of radioactive contamination outside the plant. 

The department told the newspaper that none of the amounts are
large enough to pose a health threat. 

Expanded A.P. Story, Updated: 11/12/2006 5:51:53 PM 

PIKETON, Ohio (AP) -- Cleaning up radioactive and hazardous
waste at a former uranium-processing plant may top $4.5 billion,
and there is evidence that contamination has migrated off the
3,714-acre site, the Dayton Daily News reported Sunday. 

The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which once enriched
uranium for weapons and nuclear fuel, closed in 2001. 

The newspaper said the government has spent $1 billion so far
digging up soil, emptying ponds, capping unlined toxic
landfills, treating groundwater and hauling contaminants away --
more than 43,000 containers of hazardous, radioactive and other
waste and 8,400 tons of radioactive scrap metal. 

Officials with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency say the
worst of the plant's contamination is confined to the federal
land, in part because thick bedrock slows the spread of
groundwater. 

They also say the plant's environmental record improved in
recent years as plant operators adopted modern waste-handling
practices and began following rules governing discharges to air
and waterways. 

Still, there is evidence of offsite contamination. According to
its most recent environmental reports, the U.S. Energy
Department in 2003 and 2004 found small amounts of radioactive
contamination outside the southern Ohio plant. 

Tests on two area deer killed by cars showed traces of uranium
isotopes in the livers of both and in the muscle of one. 

Traces of uranium were also found in milk and egg samples from
area farms, and in three vegetables taken from the gardens of
plant neighbors. 

Air, water and sediment tests also revealed small amounts of
radioactive uranium, plutonium or technetium, and three fish
from area waterways had traces of uranium or plutonium. 

The U.S. Department of Energy told the newspaper that none of
the amounts are large enough to pose a health threat. 

Messages seeking comment were left for the Energy Department by
The Associated Press. 

The cleanup hasn't ended disputes between the Energy Department
and the Ohio EPA. 

Most recently, the Energy Department pushed for a reduced
groundwater cleanup standard, arguing that the lesser standard
is appropriate because no one drinks the water underneath the
plant site, according to memos obtained by the Daily News. 

"We represent the taxpayers. Our goal here is to make sure we
are doing cost-effective, smart cleanup," William Murphie,
manager of the Energy Department office overseeing cleanup, told
the newspaper. 

Some of the most dangerous cleanup work is being done inside
three massive enrichment buildings, where workers are removing
uranium deposits that cling to surfaces inside equipment and 600
miles of piping. 

They must use extreme care because mishandling the radioactive
deposits could cause a small nuclear reaction a "criticality"
that could kill workers and spread radiation through the area. 

Murphie said nothing like that has happened. 

"We've never had a criticality event, and I have no reason to
believe that we ever will have a criticality event," he said. 

In 2000, the Energy Department launched an investigation that
identified hundreds of accidental releases of uranium gas or
toxic fluorine at the plant since the 1950s and concluded there
was a failure to properly monitor emissions or workers' exposure
to radiation. 

"We take a lot of lumps for the past processes and, face it,
mistakes that were made," Murphie said. "We've learned from the
past. We're all smarter than we were in the past." 

Murphie said the department remains committed to the cleanup and
trying new solutions if those now in place don't work. 

"DOE is very proud of the cleanup program here," he said. "We
believe we have accomplished a lot." 

All material © 2006 WCPO-TV Scripps Howard Broadcasting
Company. All Rights Reserved.
    
*****************************************************************

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this 
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who 
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for 
non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more 
information go to: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
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