***************************************************************** 11/21/06 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 14.276 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Korea Times: China Unfreezes NK Bank Accounts 2 Guardian Unlimited: 35 Nations Near Deal Over Iran Reactor 3 Guardian Unlimited: Diplomats Favor Denying Iran Request 4 AFP: UN atomic agency decision on Iran put off until Thursday - 5 AFP: US could bomb Iran nuclear sites in 2007 - analysts 6 AFP: US, China envoys on NKorea hold talks in Beijing 7 AFP: Talks on NKorea nukes likely to restart next month 8 Reuters: U.S. eyes mid-December for North Korea talks 9 UPI: North Korea talks may resume next month 10 UPI: Analysis: Hope afloat for N.Korea talks 11 The Australian: No nuclear subsidy needed - producer 12 Guardian Unlimited: Call to debate 'illegal' plan to replace Trident 13 Guardian Unlimited: Mystery deepens over poison used on Russian ex-s 14 AFP: India and China are "friends", Hu says 15 Japan Times: Missile shield policy may be reviewed NUCLEAR REACTORS 16 [NYTr] FCNL: Senate Approves Dangerous US-India Nuclear Deal 17 NEWS.com.au: Activists attack nuclear report 18 NEWS.com.au: Nukes 'would stop global warming' 19 NEWS.com.au: Report foresees 25 east coast reactors 20 Guardian Unlimited: Warning over energy demand 21 US: NRC: Ten NRC Executives Honored with Presidential Awards 22 Sydney Morning Herald: A 'greenwash' for the nuclear industry - 23 Sydney Morning Herald: Nuclear plants may be imposed on states - 24 Sydney Morning Herald: Iemma vows fight over nuclear power push - 25 Sydney Morning Herald: Taskforce plots nuclear path - 26 Sydney Morning Herald: Nuclear costs understated: report's critics - 27 AU ABC: Beattie says nuclear energy 'crazy' for Aust 28 thewest.com.au: Nuclear plants may be imposed on states 29 Xinhua: Chinese scientists to take part in ITER construction 30 Reuters: Study finds Australia nuclear power option viable 31 AFP: Accord signed in France on breakthrough nuclear reactor 32 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Arak reactor of medical nature - IAEA 33 AU ABC: Nuclear power a practical option for Australia. 34 AU ABC: Scientist discusses nuclear report 35 AU ABC: Report maps out Australia's nuclear future 36 AU ABC: Howard says nuclear energy the way forward 37 AU ABC: Vic Libs say no to nuclear power 38 The Australian: Switkowski defends nuclear power decision | | 39 AU ABC: Rann considers nuclear power plant ban. 40 AU ABC: Nuclear opponents criticise report 41 AU ABC: Ian Macfarlane on nuclear energy 42 AU ABC: Nuclear reactor sites flexible, Macfarlane says. 43 AU ABC: States reject nuclear power report 44 AU ABC: Nuclear reactors destined for major cities, experts say 45 The Australian: Premier says no to nuclear power | | NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY 46 Guardian Unlimited: Ex-Russian spy may have radioactive poisoning 47 US: Las Vegas SUN: CDC to release genetic results in Fallon cancer c 48 Sydney Morning Herald: Industry to rely on overseas workers - 49 US: Tucson Citizen: Local permit on toxic beryllium looser, not tigh 50 US: BP&SB: Radioactive material removed from BU 51 AFP: Former Russian spy may have been poisoned by radioactive thalli 52 AFP: Thallium 'unlikely cause' of ex-Russian spy's poisoning mystery NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 53 US: Guardian Unlimited: Report: Australia Should End Limits 54 Sydney Morning Herald: Waste site a long way down the track - 55 AU ABC: Nuclear energy debate sparks NT waste dump fears 56 US: Deseret News: What's in an arena's name? 57 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Glow of publicity: EnergySolutions belongs in 58 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Delta Center's out, EnergySolutions Arena is 59 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Arena's namesake has a contentious history 60 US: Deseret News: EnergySolutions Arena — Former Envirocare provides 61 US: Lincoln County News: Nuclear Waste Plan Poses Wiscasset Site Imp 62 US: Deseret News: EnergySolutions Arena? It's a mouthful 63 US: AU ABC: Mining industry welcomes nuclear energy review. 64 US: The Australian: Abbott backs uranium enrichment | | PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 65 DOE: DOE Clears Way for Closure of Emptied Waste Tanks at Idaho Nati 66 DOE: U.S. Signs International Fusion Energy Agreement 67 Star News: Energy secretary: Princeton lab has key role on reactor p 68 The Columbus Dispatch: Lawsuit fails to get federal support 69 KFDA: Safety Concerns at Pantex ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Korea Times: China Unfreezes NK Bank Accounts Hankooki.com > The Korea Times By Seo Dong-shin Staff Reporter China has unfrozen some North Korean accounts in a Macau bank that have been suspected of being linked to money laundering and other financial irregularities, Yonhap News Agency and KBS reported, quoting a Beijing-based diplomatic source yesterday. The move, which seems to have been conducted with the understanding of the United States, is likely to oil the wheels in the expected resumption of the six-party talks on North Korea¡¯s nuclear programs, reports said. The multilateral talks, which have been stalled for one year, are expected to resume as early as next month, as Pyongyang said it would return to the negotiation table late last month. China ordered its banks to stop financial dealings with Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in the Chinese territory of Macau, after the U.S. ordered similar measures for its financial institutions in September 2005. About $24 million of the North¡¯s holdings have been frozen. Angered by the U.S. move, Pyongyang withdrew from the six-party talks. But a diplomatic source in Beijing requesting anonymity was quoted as saying yesterday that China unfroze some accounts of North Korean companies in the BDA, allowing them to conduct normal financial transactions with Chinese banks again. The amount of the unfrozen accounts is estimated at a little less than $12 million. The accounts suspected of illegal activities remain frozen, according to the source. A North Korean official active in Beijing also confirmed the measures, adding ``it seems the United States has partly accepted our demand,¡¯¡¯ according to Yonhap. Some observers interpret the move as reciprocity from the U.S. as North Korea agreed to resume the six-party talks on Pyongyang¡¯s nuclear programs late last month. Pyongyang had repeatedly demanded U.S. lift the ``financial sanctions¡¯¡¯ first before reviving the multilateral talks. The move comes ahead of U.S.-China talks expected today. Christopher Hill, the top U.S. nuclear negotiator, arrived in Beijing yesterday to meet with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei during his 24-hour stay in the Chinese capital. U.S. President George W. Bush dispatched Hill following a summit of Pacific Rim leaders in Hanoi, Vietnam, where North Korea's nuclear weapons program was on the agenda. 11-20-2006 23:21 ***************************************************************** 2 Guardian Unlimited: 35 Nations Near Deal Over Iran Reactor From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday November 21, 2006 12:01 PM By GEORGE JAHN Associated Press Writer VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Most of the 35 nations at a key meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency have agreed to deny Iran technical aid for a plutonium-producing reactor, diplomats said Tuesday. Four participating diplomats said that Tehran's requests for International Atomic Energy Agency aid on seven other nuclear projects would be approved under the tentative agreement, but help building the Arak heavy-water reactor would be denied. The board hopes to reach consensus. But in the event of a vote forced by Iranian allies such as Cuba, the four diplomats said, the necessary majority of IAEA board members - 18- support the agreement. One diplomat said that more than 20 had agreed to the plan. Iran says it wants Arak to produce radioactive isotopes for diagnosing and treating cancer. But the plutonium the reactor would produce would give Iran a second possible path to a nuclear weapon. Most international efforts have focused on Tehran's efforts to enrich uranium. In prepared comments to a closed committee meeting that were made available to The Associated Press, Iran's chief delegate, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, lambasted nations opposed to aid for Arak, accusing them of ``imposing their politically motivated and discriminatory policies'' on the meeting. Alluding to the United States and its allies, Soltanieh accused them of ignoring the dangers that Israel - widely considered to have nuclear weapons - poses to the Middle East. ``Sooner or later the governments of these countries will be brought to judgment and shall be questioned for deception of their own nation as well as (the) international community,'' he declared. Critics argue that Iran's existing research reactor - which uses light-water technology - is more than adequate for the Islamic republic's stated needs of producing cancer-fighting isotopes. Denying Iran help with Arak - where it is seeking agency assistance to make sure the reactor is environmentally safe - would do little to slow construction of that facility or affect Tehran's uranium enrichment. Still, it would maintain at least symbolic pressure amid deadlock in the U.N. Security Council over how to pressure Iran to rein in its nuclear program. When finished - probably early in the next decade - Arak could produce enough plutonium for about two bombs a year. The decision to bar aid for Arak would be formally made on Thursday, once a committee meeting ends and the full board meeting begins. The chairman of that meeting would announce approval of all the projects except for Arak, said the diplomats, speaking independently and asking for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the substance of the closed board meeting. The United States said Monday that it would accept Tehran's requests for U.N. aid on seven of eight nuclear projects but not its request for help on Arak. The decision reflected U.S. recognition that it was useless to try to block IAEA help to Iran on all eight projects because of opposition by most of the board. The other seven projects were less controversial. One asks for help in developing nuclear capabilities for medical use. Another seeks legal aid for a Russian-built reactor at Bushehr that even the Americans have accepted as not posing a threat of nuclear proliferation. The remaining five ask for assistance in administrative or safety programs, according to a list made available to the AP. The IAEA board referred Iran to the Security Council in February, suggesting that Tehran had breached the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and might be trying to make nuclear weapons. The five permanent Security Council members agreed to move toward sanctions after Tehran ignored an Aug. 31 council deadline to stop uranium enrichment activities. But Russia - backed by China - opposes tough action advocated by the United States, Britain and France. Russian amendments to a Western draft resolution seek to reduce sanctions to a minimum, deleting language that would have choked off Iran's access to foreign missile technology and most nuclear procurements. That has resulted in increased attention to the Vienna IAEA meeting as a venue to continue applying pressure on Iran over its nuclear program. Iran has rejected a six-nation package of incentives that would have given it Western-produced light-water reactors in return for freezing both construction of Arak and its attempts to expand its enrichment program. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 3 Guardian Unlimited: Diplomats Favor Denying Iran Request From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday November 21, 2006 10:16 PM AP Photo XHS111 By GEORGE JAHN Associated Press Writer VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran's call for help in building a plutonium-producing reactor appeared headed for rejection, with diplomats at a 35-nation meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency saying Tuesday that many of Tehran's traditional allies favored denying the request. The diplomats - all participating in an International Atomic Energy Agency committee meeting - said there was majority support for approving IAEA aid on seven other Iranian projects, but for refusing help on the eighth: the construction of the Arak reactor that will produce plutonium, a possible pathway to nuclear arms. The United States was a chief supporter of that approach. ``There was a certain pragmatism that we weren't going to win on the other ones,'' a U.S. official told The Associated Press, explaining why Washington did not push for a ban on all eight Iran aid requests. Some diplomats accredited to the meeting also suggested a parallel U.S. decision to tread lightly while Washington considers seeking direct dialogue with Tehran on reducing Iraq violence. The U.S. official, who demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the issue - said: ``I would not discount that as a factor.'' The decision on IAEA technical aid to Iran was to be made formally Thursday, once the committee looking at hundreds of aid requests from member countries ends its work and the full board meeting begins. The chairman of that meeting will likely announce approval of all the Iranian projects except for Arak, four diplomats said, speaking independently and also asking for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the closed meeting. The diplomats emphasized that the agreement was tentative. But they said it was the most likely scenario for resolving differences over the issue. With the U.N. Security Council stalemated on the severity of sanctions on Iran for defying its demand to cease uranium enrichment, the focus has shifted to the board, which in February referred Iran to the council, suggesting it had breached the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and might be trying to make nuclear weapons. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose country is the chief opponent of strong U.N. sanctions, nonetheless admonished Iran for not cooperating with an IAEA investigation into its nuclear activities. ``We would like every blank spot uncovered by the IAEA in the Iranian nuclear program to be clarified,'' Lavrov told the ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies. Highly enriched uranium and reprocessed plutonium both can be used for the fissile core of nuclear warheads, even though Iran insists it wants to enrich to lower levels used to generate power and seeks to build the Arak reactor only to produce radioactive isotopes for medical use. Regardless of the decision on Iran's aid request for Arak, construction of the reactor was expected to be finished in the next decade, and could produce enough plutonium for about two bombs a year. Rebuffing Iran's Arak request would also have no effect on Iran's uranium enrichment. Still, it would maintain at least symbolic pressure during the Security Council stalemate. As the U.S. and its allies lobbied against approval of the Arak aid request, Iran's chief delegate Ali Ashgar Soltanieh accused opposing nations of ``imposing their politically motivated and discriminatory policies'' on the meeting. The agency routinely approves hundreds of technical aid projects each year, most of them dealing with nuclear medicine, agricultural pest prevention and similar programs with no obvious link to atomic arms. But fears that Tehran might be seeking to develop an arms program turned this year's technical aid committee meeting into a heavily politicized event, dooming the Arak request, even though it was nothing more than helping to make sure the reactor will be environmentally safe. The other seven projects are less controversial. One asks for help in developing nuclear capabilities for medical use. Another seeks legal aid for the Russian-built Bushehr reactor, which even the Americans have accepted as not posing a threat of nuclear proliferation. The five others request assistance in administrative or safety aspects of nuclear power. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 4 AFP: UN atomic agency decision on Iran put off until Thursday - by Michael Adler Tue Nov 21, 6:39 AM ET VIENNA (AFP) - The UN atomic agency will put off until Thursday deciding whether to help Iran" /> Iranbuild a nuclear reactor that could provide plutonium for weapons but the project is still expected to be rejected, diplomats have told AFP. The UN atomic agency will put off until Thursday deciding whether to help Iran build a nuclear reactor that could provide plutonium for weapons but the project is still expected to be rejected, diplomats have told AFP. Western and non-aligned states have been unable to reach a compromise on the matter at a session on technical cooperation running from Monday to Wednesday of the International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors, diplomats said Tuesday. Diplomats said the plan now was for the technical session to make no recommendation, as it usually does, on a package of aid projects and for the matter to be taken up fresh when the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors meets in a regular political session Thursday and Friday. "G-77 nations (developing states) are saying that approving aid is a technical decision but that removing a project is a political decision," a Western diplomat told AFP. IAEA deputy director for technical cooperation Ana Maria Cetto had Monday told the board that technical aid for Iran's Arak reactor, which Tehran is going ahead with in any case, did not pose a proliferation threat and so could not be denied by the agency. The European Union" /> European Union, however, argued that while the aid might be benign, the reactor itself would produce significant quantities of plutonium and would involve "a significant proliferation risk." "We cannot support providing technical assistance to a heavy water research reactor project that the board has several times asked Iran to reconsider," Finnish ambassador Kirsti Helena Kauppi said on behalf of the EU. Kauppi said Iran's request for IAEA funding was "not consistent" with the resolutions of the board of governors and the UN Security Council, which has threatened sanctions to get Tehran to rein in its nuclear program. US ambassador Gregory Schulte said "the reactor, once completed, will be capable of producing plutonium for one or more nuclear weapons each year." Iran is requesting technical help in guaranteeing safety at the heavy-water reactor under construction at Arak, 200 kilometres (120 miles) south of Tehran. Schulte said the United States would however not oppose seven other projects for Iran which are in the package of 832 projects being considered. Other Iranian projects include aid for "human resource development and nuclear technology support" and helping start up the Bushehr nuclear power reactor, according to IAEA data. The United States, the EU, Canada and Israel" /> Israelwere among those calling on the IAEA to block the Arak aid, while Russia, China and non-aligned states argued that it should be granted in speeches on Monday. The non-aligned states were particularly anxious to protect the principle of the transfer of peaceful nuclear technology to developing countries. The West has a majority on the board but is working for a consensus decision. Diplomats said a compromise being hammered out was to defer a decision on Arak, rather than reject the idea of technical cooperation outright. "The Arak project will be removed from the (technical cooperation) list so that the list can be adopted," one diplomat said. "The Arak project will be deferred without a deadline," the diplomat said, adding that Iran was pushing however for a deadline for aid to be forthcoming. The IAEA had in February asked Iran to "reconsider" building the Arak reactor. This was re-stated in a UN Security Council resolution in July, which also called on Iran to suspend making enriched uranium, which like plutonium can fuel civilian reactors but used in highly enriched form to make atom bombs. The Security Council is now working on a resolution to impose sanctions on Iran, as Tehran has refused to suspend uranium enrichment. Iran says it is building the Arak reactor to produce medical isotopes and to replace a smaller, ageing, light-water reactor in Tehran. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 5 AFP: US could bomb Iran nuclear sites in 2007 - analysts by Jerome Bernard Tue Nov 21, 7:42 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush" /> President George W. Bushcould choose military action over diplomacy and bomb Iran" /> Iran's nuclear facilities next year, political analysts in Washington agree. "I think he is going to do it," John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a military issues think tank, told AFP. "They are going to bomb WMD facilities next summer," he added, referring to nuclear facilities Iran says are for peaceful uses and Washington insists are really intended to make nuclear bombs, or weapons of mass destruction (WMD). "It would be a limited military action to destroy their WMD capabilities" added the analyst, believing a US military invasion of Iran is not on the table. US journalist Seymour Hersh also said at the weekend that White House hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney" /> Dick Cheneywere intent on attacking Iran with or without the approval of the US Congress, both houses of which switch from Republican to Democratic control in January after the November 7 legislative elections. The New Yorker weekly published an article by Hersh saying that one month before the elections, Cheney held a meeting on Iran in which he said the military option would never be discarded. The White House promptly issued a statement saying the article was "riddled with inaccuracies." Joseph Cirincione, Senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, a Democrat-friendly think tank, also believes the US government could decide to attack Iran. "It is not realistic but it does not mean we won't do it," he told AFP in an interview. "It is less likely after the elections but it is still very possible." "If you look at what the administration is doing, it seems that it is going to inevitably lead us to a military conflict," he said, adding that no alternative solution was being sought, including discussions with Iran on Iraq" /> Iraq, which could lead to talks on Iran's nuclear program and role in the region. "Senior members of the (Bush) administration remain seized with the idea that the regime in Iran must be removed," Cirincione said. "The nuclear program is one reason, but their deeper agenda is this belief that American military power can be used to fundamentally transform the regimes in the Middle East," he added. With the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, hardliners in the government have lost one of their leading advocates, and his replacement, former former Central Intelligence Agency" /> Central Intelligence Agencychief Robert Gates, has in the past favored direct talks with Iran, said the expert. "But they remain within the administration at the highest level, the office of the vice president, the national security council staff, perhaps the president himself," Cirincione added. He also accused neoconservative circles of promoting the military option against Tehran. In a Sunday op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, Joshua Muarvchik, resident scholar at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, called for getting tough with Iran. "We must bomb Iran," he said. "The path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere ... Our options therefore are narrowed to two: we can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it." Israel" /> Israelhas also been pushing Washington to get tough on Iran. Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh did not rule out preventive military action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, in a recent interview with the English-language Jerusalem Post. However, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems unperturbed. On Monday he said Israel was incapable of launching a military attack on Iran's nuclear sites and called Israeli threats "propaganda." Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 AFP: US, China envoys on NKorea hold talks in Beijing Tuesday November 21, 1:54 PM BEIJING (AFP) - The top US and Chinese envoys to the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program have met in Beijing, an official said, in an effort to kick-start the stalled diplomatic process. US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill held talks with China's vice foreign minister Wu Dawei and was due to fly back to the United States later in the day, a US embassy spokeswoman said. South Korean media said Hill would also meet with North Korea's chief negotiators to the talks, Kim Gye-Gwan, but the US embassy could not confirm the reports. On his arrival in Beijing on Monday, Hill said he would see with Chinese officials but ignored a question about a potential encounter with Kim. He reiterated the US position that the six-party talks, which North Korea has boycotted for over a year, were the best way to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programs. The six-nation talks, first launched in 2003 in an effort to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions, broke down a year ago when Pyongyang walked out in protest at US financial sanctions against it. North Korea surprised the world when it agreed on October 31 to return to the six-nation forum, which involve the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia. The apparent breakthrough came after a day of secret meetings in Beijing between Hill, North Korea's Kim and China's Wu. The development came after North Korea joined the global nuclear club with its first atomic test on October 9. In that meeting, North Korea and the United States agreed the sanctions issue would be discussed within the six-nation forum. But negotiators have since been struggling to fix a date for a resumption, with China and the United States calling for the talks to start as soon as possible. South Korea's Yonhap news agency said Monday Beijing had unfrozen some North Korean accounts in a Macau-based bank blacklisted by Washington in an apparent bid to make progress on the sanctions issue and jump-start the talks. The agency quoted a diplomatic source in Beijing as saying China unfroze some accounts of North Korea-based companies in Banco Delta Asia, apparently with the understanding of the United States. Yonhap quoted an unidentified North Korean official in Beijing as saying: "That is seen as the US accepting some of our demands." China's foreign ministry did not immediately comment on the issue when contacted by AFP on Tuesday. Japan's negotiator to six-nation talks, Kenichiro Sasae, said on Tokyo he could not confirm the report. Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information ***************************************************************** 7 AFP: Talks on NKorea nukes likely to restart next month November 21, 09:33 PM BEIJING (AFP) - The stalled six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program are likely to restart next month, the chief US envoy to the negotiations has said after meeting with his Chinese counterpart. "I believe we will have the six-party talks probably in the middle of December," US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters here before flying back to Washington on Tuesday. Hill gave his relatively optimistic timeframe after meeting with China's chief negotiator to the talks, vice foreign minister Wu Dawei, for more than four hours in Beijing. "I came up to talk with my counterpart about the preparations for the six-party talks and see how we'd like to proceed and we had very good discussions on that," Hill said. The six-nation talks, first launched in 2003 in an effort to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions, broke down a year ago when Pyongyang walked out in protest at US financial sanctions against it. North Korea then joined the global nuclear club by conducting its first atomic test on October 9. But North Korea surprised the world again when it agreed on October 31 to return to the six-nation forum -- which involve the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia. That breakthrough came after a day of secret meetings in Beijing between Hill, China's Wu and North Korea's envoy to the talks, Kim Gye-Gwan. In those meetings, North Korea and the United States agreed the sanctions issue would be discussed within the six-nation forum. But negotiators have struggled to fix a date for a resumption, with China and the United States calling for the talks to start as soon as possible. Hill said it was vital that once all sides returned to the talks that preparations were in place to ensure progress in the negotiations. "The most important thing is that we are well planned," he said. To that end, Hill said meetings held on the sidelines of last weekend's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit in Hanoi had been constructive. "This is part of the process of getting very well prepared," he said. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters on Tuesday that Wu and Hill had "in-depth exchanges" on the six-party forum, but declined to give specifics about a timeframe for a resumption. "We still believe the six-party talks are the most effective mechanism to solve the Korean peninsula nuclear issue," Jiang said. South Korean media said Kim was also scheduled to be in Beijing on Tuesday to meet with Hill and Wu, however both the Chinese and US sides made no mention of the North Korean envoy's presence. Hill and China's foreign ministry also brushed aside a report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency that Beijing had unfrozen some North Korean accounts in a Macau-based bank blacklisted by Washington. The agency quoted a diplomatic source in Beijing as saying China unfroze some accounts of North Korea-based companies in Banco Delta Asia, apparently with the understanding of the United States. Macau's Monetary Authority denied the report, while Hill said Wu had given him no indication during their meeting on Tuesday that the accounts had been unfrozen. Copyright © 2006 AFP. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 Reuters: U.S. eyes mid-December for North Korea talks Tue 21 Nov 2006 4:08 AM ET By Chris Buckley and Lindsay Beck BEIJING, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Six-party talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons programme could be held in mid-December, the top U.S. negotiator said on Tuesday, but he stressed the need for preparation as he ended talks in China. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill's visit was the latest step in an elaborate diplomatic waltz intended to draw North Korea back to talks and agree on steps towards ending its nuclear weapons development, which has alarmed regional capitals and even its longtime backer, China. "I believe we will have six-party talks, probably by the middle of December, but what is important for us is that they be well planned and that's why I came today," Hill told reporters before leaving the Chinese capital. "I came up to talk to my Chinese counterparts about preparations for the six-party talks to make sure we agree with how we would like to proceed." Hill was in Beijing last month for talks with China and North Korea that led to the North agreeing to return to the talks, which it had boycotted for a year over U.S. financial restrictions. Hill said this time he met Beijing's chief envoy to the talks, Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, but not North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan. BANK FREEZE The North agreed to return to the talks, which involve the two Koreas, the United States, host China, Japan and Russia, three weeks after it conducted a nuclear test on Oct. 9, which brought widespread international condemnation and UN-backed sanctions. Pyongyang agreed after Washington said it was willing to "address" North Korean concerns about the financial restrictions, which escalated in September last year when U.S. regulators named a Macau bank, Banco Delta Asia, as a conduit for illicit North Korean cash from money counterfeiting and drug trafficking. Macau is a small self-governed territory of China, and since the bank there was targeted, many other international banks have stopped or severely curtailed dealings with North Korea. On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu denied earlier South Korean reports suggesting that Beijing had eased a freeze on some of the North Korean money in the Macau bank. Jiang said the financial sanctions had been carried out by Macau, not Beijing. "We support the Macau government in handling this according to the law," she said. Hill also said he had received no confirmation of the reported bank easing. But Jiang also repeated China's position that the bank dispute should not impede restarting the disarmament talks. "We also hope that all sides will be able to focus on the bigger picture of the six-party talks," Jiang said, urging "an appropriate resolution as soon as possible." © Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved. [ border=] ***************************************************************** 9 UPI: North Korea talks may resume next month United Press International - NewsTrack - 11/21/2006 2:15:00 PM -0500 BEIJING, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill, who is visiting China, says six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program may resume in mid-December. Hill also said the United States wants a ''good outcome'' from the talks which will include China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas, reports the Kyodo news agency. Hill's comments came after his meeting with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, who is the chief negotiator for his country. North Korea agreed last month to return to the talks. A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman would only say a number of parties had expressed a desire to get the talks started at the earliest. But Hill said, "'I believe that we will have the six-party talks probably in the middle of December,'' Kyodo reported. He said talks in Beijing followed what he described as ''some very good discussions'' on the same issue last week in Hanoi, where U.S. President George Bush attended the Asia Pacific economic summit. Hill also was quoted as saying reports that China has lifted a freeze on North Korea-related bank accounts in Macao's Banco Delta are not true. © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 10 UPI: Analysis: Hope afloat for N.Korea talks United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 11/21/2006 10:43:00 AM -0500 By LEE JONG-HEON UPI Correspondent SEOUL, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Hopes are cautiously running high for the resumption of the long-stalled international talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program as early as next month after Washington offered new incentives to the communist country. The top U.S. nuclear envoy met his Chinese counterpart in Beijing on Tuesday to speed up preparations for the reopening of the six-nation nuclear talks, which also involve the two Koreas, Russia and Japan. Meeting with reporters, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he expected the next round of the six-nation talks to take place in mid-December. "I believe we will have six-party talks, probably by the middle of December," Hill said before leaving Beijing after two-day meetings with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei to discuss preparations to resume these talks. Hill was in Beijing late last month to meet his counterparts from North Korea and China, during which he won Pyongyang's promise to return to the six-nation talks, though it was on the premise that U.S.-led financial sanctions on the North would be discussed. According to diplomatic sources, Hill is likely to travel to Seoul on his way to Washington to meet his South Korean counterpart. Earlier, Seoul's nuclear envoy Chun Yung-woo forecast the next round of six-way talks before mid-December. "When the six-party talks are resumed, it's important to confirm the North's intention to scrap its nuclear programs," South Korea's chief nuclear delegate said in a local radio program. Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Aso also said his country wants six-nation talks to resume before next month's meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that begins Dec. 8. "We are trying to make it happen as soon as possible," Aso told reporters. North Korea has boycotted the six-party talks since November last year after the United States slapped restrictions on the Macau-based bank accused of laundering money for North Korea. Under the U.S. measure, Banco Delta Asia has frozen $24 million of North Korea's holdings in some 50 accounts and cut off transactions with Pyongyang. The North has called for the United States to lift the measure on BDA in a show of trust before seeking progress on nuclear matters, a demand rejected by Washington which said the financial issue is not relevant to the nuclear talks but a matter to be handled by law enforcement authorities. But there is a possibility that the United States would unfreeze part of the North Korean accounts in the Macau bank to lure Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. Seoul's Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that China has lifted its freeze on some North Korean accounts in the Macau bank, citing a diplomatic source in Beijing. BDA denied the report, saying the North Korean funds remain frozen. But the United States is expected to unfreeze North Korean accounts believed to be unrelated to its financial crimes in order to seek progress in the upcoming nuclear negotiations. The United States has already dangled a set of carrots for North Korea, including security guarantees and economic aid. In the summit with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in Hanoi over the weekend, President George W. Bush said the United States was willing to declare the formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War and establish a peace treaty, if North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons programs, according to South Korean officials. The United States, as the representative of 16-nation U.N. forces, is a signatory to the 1953 armistice agreement that technically ended the conflict. The peninsula still remains in a state of war as the hostilities ended without a peace treaty. The proposed end to the war is seen as a step toward concluding a peace treaty. North Korea has long called for the conclusion of a peace treaty with the United States to replace the armistice mechanism, saying it is essential to end the nuclear standoff. The North's call is widely believed to be part of Pyongyang's efforts to remove some 30,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea since the war. In line with the strategy, Pyongyang has recently come up with a demand to transform the six-way nuclear talks into an overall arms reduction negotiation that would also deal with the reduction of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Some analysts in Seoul say the new U.S. proposal could induce the North into giving up its nuclear drive because a peace treaty would be a guarantee for the North Korean security. "North Korea is likely to abandon its nuclear program if it concludes a peace treaty with the United States," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University. © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 11 The Australian: No nuclear subsidy needed - producer + NEWS.com.au | This story is from our news.com.aunetwork Source: AAP November 22, 2006 THE world's largest builder of nuclear power stations says it does not need a Government subsidy to build a reactor in Australia, provided the regulatory framework is right. Bertrand Barre, from French company Areva, said today appropriate regulations for a nuclear industry in Australia would include carbon pricing and independent safety monitoring of nuclear power plants. "We need some kind of way to take into account the CO2 problem," Mr Barre told ABC Radio. "It may be a tax, it be may a problem of timing, it may be a problem of regulation. "At present coal is cheaper (than nuclear energy), there's no doubt. But I don't think we need, really, a Government subsidy if the market is set for it. "What Australia needs is for the Government to set the posts for the right regulatory environment. "That means that there'd be in this country an independent regulator, you'd need to access the safety of the plants, of the computer system, completely independently of the operator." Mr Barre's comments follow the release of a federal-Government commissioned report that found 25 nuclear power stations could provide one-third of Australia's electricity needs by 2050. The report said nuclear power would not be competitive with Australia's cheap coal unless a price was placed on carbon emissions. Mr Barre said going nuclear was one way for Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change. "We have to live in relative carbon constraint if we don't want to take a very serious risk in terms of climate change," he said. "Going nuclear is one way to alleviate this problem (but) it is not the only way." Privacy Terms © The Australian ***************************************************************** 12 Guardian Unlimited: Call to debate 'illegal' plan to replace Trident Richard Norton-Taylor Wednesday November 22, 2006 The Guardian Government plans to upgrade or replace the Trident nuclear missile system are in breach of Britain's obligations under international law, disarmament campaigners said yesterday. As ministers prepare to put the final touches to a white paper on Trident's future, Greenpeace, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the Acronym Institute, an independent thinktank, demanded a full debate on the legality of the plans, and on alternative defence policies, before the promised Commons vote on the issue. The government has told the Commons defence committee that the debate about the future of Britain's nuclear deterrent is "less about the security position now" than about future risks that Britain might face over the next 50 years. In a legal opinion for Greenpeace, international lawyer Philippe Sands says: "Any justification for upgrading or replacing Trident predicated on the risk of some possible (but unknown) future threat is inherently incompatible" with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The treaty requires Britain and other nuclear states to negotiate "in good faith" to achieve nuclear disarmament. Ministers' claims that Trident would act as a deterrent against the use of non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction, such as biological or chemical attacks, also breach Britain's treaty obligations, Mr Sands says. In a report, Worse than Irrelevant?, released today, the Acronym Institute says a decision does not have to be taken now, especially in the light of the possibility of extending the life of Trident submarines. Guardian Newspapers Limited ***************************************************************** 13 Guardian Unlimited: Mystery deepens over poison used on Russian ex-spy Jeevan Vasagar, Barbara McMahon in Rome and Tom Parfitt in Moscow Wednesday November 22, 2006 The Guardian Doctors treating the former Russian spy who is seriously ill in hospital said yesterday that thallium was an "unlikely" cause of his illness after tests found less of the metal in his body than they expected. In an extraordinary twist to the case, the consultant caring for Alexander Litvinenko said the cause of his condition may never be known. The defector remains in intensive care because he has suffered damage to his immune system and has to be isolated to protect him from infection. Dr Amit Nathwani, the consultant treating him at London's University College hospital, said while thallium could not be ruled out, doctors were looking for other causes. "His symptoms are slightly odd for thallium poisoning and the levels of thallium we were able to detect are not the kind of levels you would see in toxicity." Another medical expert who has examined him suggested he may have been poisoned with a radioactive form of thallium, a toxic metal. Mr Litvinenko has symptoms which can only be explained by "something other than thallium", according to John Henry, a clinical toxicologist at St Mary's hospital. The damage done to his bone marrow and the fact that his white blood cells had been wiped out also suggested another factor. "Radioactive thallium adds a new dimension to this case," Mr Henry said. "It means his bone marrow is at very high risk and we have to see how his cells recover. It is very difficult to treat because you have to rely on the body's natural resilience." An associate, Alex Goldfarb, who has visited Mr Litvinenko in hospital every day, said his condition appeared to have worsened yesterday. He said his friend was more exhausted, had become thinner and spoke with more difficulty. "To me, he looks like he is slowly deteriorating," he said. Mr Litvinenko, who defected six years ago and is now a British citizen, had been investigating the murder of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya when he fell ill. Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch is looking at two meetings on November 1, the day Mr Litvinenko was poisoned; one was with two Russians at a London hotel and the second with an Italian espionage expert, Mario Scaramella, at a sushi restaurant. Dr Scaramella yesterday emerged from hiding in Rome to give a press conference in a side room of the Italian senate, where he gave an account of their meeting at Itsu in Piccadilly. The Italian, who described himself as a defence consultant, said he wanted to warn Mr Litvinenko about an email hit-list which featured both their names. He also had an email identifying a group of men responsible for the assassination of Politkovskaya. "The information was very disturbing and contained details regarding the security of a group of people in Britain and in Italy. It was four pages long in two emails and it was very detailed." Mr Litvinenko had told him he had another meeting planned in the morning and so they arranged to meet around 3pm. "We went to the sushi bar - we have been there before," Dr Scaramella said. Mr Litvinenko, who ate sushi and soup, said he was not worried about the email. Dr Scaramella, who left the press conference flanked by bodyguards, said: "It's of deep concern to me that anything like this could happen. [Mr Litvinenko] is a professional. He's a well-known analyst and activist." Doctors said that Mr Litvinenko was able to talk, but remained seriously ill. "At the moment he's not getting better, but he's holding up," Mr Henry, who is treating him, said. Asked how the poison was likely to have been administered, Mr Henry said: "In this case his symptoms are gastro-intestinal so the probability is that he has swallowed something that is poisoned." The most likely possibility is that he was poisoned with radioactive thallium, small quantities of which are used by hospitals for heart scans, but he may also have been given a cocktail of poisons including thallium and another radioactive substance. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 14 AFP: India and China are "friends", Hu says By Pratap Chakravarty [Chinese President Hu Jintao (L) and his host Indian counterpart A.P.J. Abdul Kalam] NEW DELHI (AFP) - Chinese President Hu Jintao has embarked on the first day of talks on a landmark Indian visit focusing on expanding trade ties and easing lingering tensions between two of Asia's most dynamic economies. Hu, making the first trip to India by a Chinese leader since a visit by his predecessor Jiang Zemin in 1996, asserted Beijing and New Delhi were on good terms and said he hoped his time in India would increase trust between the nations. "India and China are friends," (Advertisement) [ src=] the president was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India in his first public comments since arriving late Monday. "The purpose of my visit is to strengthen friendship, increase mutual trust, expand cooperation and chart a course for future," Hu said at a welcoming ceremony given by Indian President Abdul Kalam. "I am looking forward to in-depth discussions with Indian leaders on bilateral matters and issues of shared interests," he said, before heading for talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The visit comes amid booming trade between the two Asian powerhouses -- expected to reach 20 billion dollars this year, a jump of 37.5 percent from 2005. But some Indian papers seized on the protocol of Hu's arrival to stress that the political relationship remained "businesslike". The Hindustan Times said President Kalam had in the past personally travelled to the airport to greet US President George W. Bush, Saudi King Abdullah and Nepalese Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala -- whereas Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee performed the duty for Hu's arrival. Hu's tour, the paper said, was unlikely to go down as a "path-breaking" visit. Khaki-clad security forces were out in force across the capital, with a wide cordon set up around the five-star hotel where the Chinese leader is staying. During the visit, the world's two most populous nations are scheduled to ink 13 agreements "on a wide range of subjects including trade and commerce", Indian foreign ministry official said. The two sides are also expected to continue discussions on a free-trade area embracing 2.4 billion people, about one-third of mankind. China's ambassador to India Sun Yuxi said last week however that security-related bars to investment in India would likely be on the agenda as the issue has become a sticking point. New Delhi remains suspicious of China's close ties with India's arch-rival Pakistan, and has bristled over Beijing's support for Islamabad's nuclear power industry and military. Hundreds of Tibetans were set to continue their protests in New Delhi and in the home of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Dharamsala, to demand Hu address the status of their Himalayan region. The sticking points show that, despite improved relations nations, "anxieties and wariness" remain, said Uday Bhaskar from the New Delhi-based Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses. He noted that India and China have still not resolved their border dispute, despite several rounds of talks and the opening of a trade post this year at Nathu La in the Indian state of Sikkim, closed after a 1962 border war. New Delhi says Beijing occupies 38,000 square kilometres (14,670 square miles) of Indian territory in Kashmir, illegally ceded to it by Pakistan in the 1950s, while Beijing claims 90,000 square kilometres in Indian-administered Arunachal Pradesh. A formal ceasefire line is yet to be established, but the unsettled frontier has remained largely peaceful, thanks to agreements signed in 1993 and 1996. Hu is due to travel to the Taj Mahal city of Agra on Wednesday, and leaves for India's nuclear neighbour and rival Pakistan on Thursday. AFP ***************************************************************** 15 Japan Times: Missile shield policy may be reviewed Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006 Kyodo News The government may review a 2003 statement in which it vowed not to use the planned missile defense system to defend Japan's allies, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said Monday. "We are to discuss the matter. . . . Whether to review the statement or not is up to the result of the discussions," Shiozaki said at a news conference, referring to a recent controversy over whether Japan can intercept a U.S.-targeted missile. The government's current interpretation of the pacifist Constitution bars collective defense, that is coming to the military aid of an ally under attack. Shiozaki's remarks on reviewing the 2003 statement will inevitably prompt criticism at home and abroad because it could lead to a change in the postwar security policy focused exclusively on self-defense. A senior Defense Agency official, who asked not to be named, said he is not sure why it should be reconsidered. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has already called for studying whether the Self-Defense Forces can shoot down a missile flying over Japanese territory while its destination is unknown and is only suspected to be the United States. "The issue will be subject to keen discussions from this point forward," Shiozaki said. "What I'm saying is that the point on which the prime minister is calling for discussions has room for various interpretations." The December 2003 statement, issued by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda when the government gave the go-ahead to move forward on deploying a missile shield in conjunction with the U.S., says the deployment "is aimed solely at defending our country." "It will be operated at our independent discretion and will not be used for the defense of a third country and so poses no problems in terms of collective defense," the statement says. The Japan Times (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 16 [NYTr] FCNL: Senate Approves Dangerous US-India Nuclear Deal Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 15:25:02 -0600 (CST) X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu X-DSPAM-Result: mail; result="Innocent"; class="Whitelisted"; probability=0.0000; confidence=1.00; signature=N/A X-Spam-Class: HAM Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) - Nov 21, 2006 http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=2179&issue_id=2 Senate Approves Dangerous U.S.-India Nuclear Deal The Congress moved a step closer to undermining global efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons when the Senate voted 85 to 12, (see vote record) in mid-November to approve a proposed nuclear deal with India, S.3709. The House has already approved similar legislation that amends the Atomic Energy Act by lifting restrictions that prohibit the U.S. from sharing nuclear technology and fuel with countries that have refused to allow full safeguards of nuclear facilities and to actively stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Your lobbying efforts helped persuade the Senate to attach several amendments to the proposed agreement with India, including one that would require the president to certify that India is cooperating with international efforts to persuade Iran not to develop nuclear weapons. But despite intensive lobbying, the Senate rejected five of nine nonproliferation amendments, including one that would have required the president to certify that this agreement does not assist, encourage, or induce India to manufacture or acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. See a record of all of the amendments here. Next Steps The legislation will not become law until negotiators from the House and the Senate meet in a conference committee to reconcile differences between the versions of this legislation passed in each chamber. This will be no small task considering the limited amount of time Congress will be in session before it adjourns for the year and a newly elected Democratic majority takes over in January. If the deal is not reconciled and signed by the president this congressional session, the legislation expires and will have to be reintroduced in the new congress. The U.S.-India nuclear deal is still far from complete. Even if Congress does ultimately approve, and the president signs this legislation into law, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group must agree to separate deals with India. Finally, the U.S. Congress will vote again on the final implementation of the deal. This whole process will take years and may not be completed during the current Bush administration. Congressional approval of the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement, without amendments designed to ensure the agreement does not help India build more bombs, is a dangerous precedent. The Indian government has publicly expressed a desire to continue a nuclear weapons program and has threatened to pull out of any agreement that included additional restrictions on its nuclear bomb-making program. Congress swift passage of this legislation in effect accepts these Indian demands and disregards the nuclear nonproliferation regime. )1998-2006 FCNL | 245 Second Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 17 NEWS.com.au: Activists attack nuclear report NEWS.com.au. November 21, 2006 04:12pm Article from: AAP A GOVERNMENT-commissioned report on nuclear power delivers reckless conclusions that will consign Australia to a toxic legacy, conservationists say. Campaigners today forecast massive community opposition after the landmark report found 25 nuclear reactors, mainly on the east coast, could be producing a third of Australia's electricity needs by 2050. The Prime Minister's taskforce, chaired by former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski, found the cost of nuclear power would be substantially higher than fossil fuels, but the attachment of a price on carbon emissions could make the nuclear option viable. It found no insurmountable obstacles to developing an enrichment industry that would add billions of dollars in export value to Australia's reserves of uranium. Wilderness Society campaign director Alec Marr said the report was a public relations vehicle to "push the whole nuclear disaster down Australia's throat". "The report is reckless in the way it deals with critical issues such as what will happen to the nuclear waste," he said. "This reckless and flippant approach to one of the most intractable problems around the world is just a taste of what we can expect with this industry and with this government." Changing every light globe in the country to an energy efficient globe would save the same amount of electricity generated by a nuclear power station, he said. "We don't need to create a toxic legacy for the next 250,000 years, which would be the result of Mr Switkowski's approach," Mr Marr said. The Australian Conservation Foundation's David Noonan said the report's conclusion that there was no barrier to expanding Australia's uranium exports was dangerous. "(Dr Switkowski) has an agenda to lock us into the global stage as the dangerous Australian peddling our nuclear uranium for the private interests of corporations," he said. The Government faced a tough time convincing the community about the viability of nuclear power, Mr Noonan said. "There's no way the Australian community will accept reactor risks. There's no way we will accept being postcoded for a high level nuclear waste dump," he said. Greenpeace's Pacific campaign director Steve Campbell said the report contained serious flaws, deferring any serious action on cutting greenhouse gas emissions far into the future. "It doesn't take into account the clear savings in greenhouse pollution that we could be making right now and defers any action to some sort of fantasy never-neverland future starting in the year 2020," he said. Mr Campbell said a nuclear power industry in Australia also would contribute to the global threat from terrorism. "Would terror groups around the world want us to be involved in clean, green, safe renewable energy, or do they want us to start building nuclear reactors, producing nuclear waste and shipping increasing amounts of uranium offshore to other countries who may have issues around the proliferation of nuclear weapons?" he said. Australian Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the report delivered what Prime Minister John Howard wanted to hear, giving the Government an excuse to ignore climate change for years to come. "It certainly gave him the answers that he was looking for and that is an excuse not to do anything about climate change, not to do anything about greenhouse emissions for the next 10 or 15 years," Senator Allison said. "He knows that he doesn't have to make any difficult decisions. He knows he doesn't have to go down the path of emissions trading. But what he does know is that, in order to fund nuclear power, he's going to have to introduce a carbon price." Share this article (What is this?) Copyright 2006 News Limited. All times AEDT (GMT +11). ***************************************************************** 18 NEWS.com.au: Nukes 'would stop global warming' NEWS.com.au. November 21, 2006 11:49pm Article from: AAP THE only way Australia can justify going nuclear is if it decided to aggressively tackle global warming, the chair of the government-commissioned nuclear energy taskforce says. Nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski tonight said his taskforce was surprised by the strength of feeling recently generated on global warming. He said that feeling could be addressed by nuclear power. The only way you can justify adding nuclear into the mix is if you are determined to reduce greenhouse gases, Dr Switkowski told ABC TV tonight. But he was keen to ensure the report, which offers the possibility of 25 nuclear power plants powering Australia by 2050, is not seen as an endorsement. We are not recommending the country go nuclear. Dr Switkowski said nuclear would only be competitive if a carbon tax was introduced. He also said Australia would need to take care of its own nuclear waste. Copyright 2006 News Limited. All times AEDT (GMT +11). ***************************************************************** 19 NEWS.com.au: Report foresees 25 east coast reactors NEWS.com.au By Denis Peters and Robin Pash November 21, 2006 06:11pm Article from: AAP A NETWORK of 25 nuclear reactors built within kilometres of suburban homes could be supplying a third of Australia's power by 2050, the Prime Minister's nuclear taskforce says. The reactors would have to be close to cities and to large supplies of water, making the nation's east coast the most likely location. Taskforce chairman Dr Ziggy Switkowski said Australia could also massively increase its profits from uranium by developing an enrichment industry. Dr Switkowski's report, delivered at the National Press Club today, signals the nuclear debate in Australia has entered a new phase. It also finds that large areas of Australia are suitable for nuclear waste dumps. The seven-member panel's draft report is now open for discussion before a final report will be made to Prime Minister John Howard before the end of the year. Conservationists reacted with horror to the report, saying its views would consign Australia to a toxic legacy. Dr Switkowski painted one scenario of a significant nuclear electricity presence in a future energy mix for Australia. "Our panel considered a number of scenarios but one possible scenario for Australia saw a fast deployment of nuclear reactors beginning in 2020 and leading to a national network of 25 reactors by 2050," he said. "That's 25 1000-megawatt reactors over a 30-year period. "If we did this by 2050, at that point about a third of Australia's electricity would be nuclear sourced." Such a nuclear power plan would reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by up to 18 per cent by 2050, the report says. Mr Howard took a cautious line to the report, saying it was too early to say whether Australia could support 25 nuclear power stations along the east coast. "At the moment nuclear power is dearer than dirty coal, if I can put it that way, but as time goes by and clean coal technology, even in the most optimistic of circumstances, adds somewhat to the cost of using coal, then nuclear power comes very much into the equation," he said from Vietnam. The report found that nuclear power would cost 20 to 50 per cent more to produce than coal or gas-fired power but could be made viable if a price was attached to greenhouse gas emissions. The report concluded reactors would have to be close to populations and to power grids. "We haven't wrestled with the issue of where individual reactors would be located," Dr Switkowski said. "Obviously you want to have the generation of power reasonably close to where the market is. "Reasonably close means tens of kilometres. It does not mean hundreds of metres nor does it mean hundreds of kilometres. It's tens of kilometres. "It needs to be close to the national electricity transmission grid, similarly tens of kilometres." He said the current generation of reactors need cooling water. "Reactors are generally located on the coast or near rivers," he said. Labor leader Kim Beazley called on Mr Howard to explain where the 25 nuclear reactors would go. "If John Howard is re-elected, we will go down an inexorable course for 25 nuclear reactors in this country and tens of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste," Mr Beazley said. "If the Labor Party is elected, we will go down the path of clean coal and renewables. It's as simple as that." Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said using nuclear power in Australia would be "crazy" because it would damage the environment and the economy. "My government does not support nuclear reactors in Queensland," he said. Wilderness Society director Alec Marr said the report was reckless in the way it dealt with critical issues such as what would happen to nuclear waste. "This reckless and flippant approach to one of the most intractable problems around the world is just a taste of what we can expect with this industry and with this Government," he said. Australian Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the report delivered what Mr Howard wanted to hear, giving the Government an excuse to ignore climate change for years to come. Copyright 2006 News Limited. All times AEDT (GMT +11). ***************************************************************** 20 Guardian Unlimited: Warning over energy demand From Press Association [UP] Tuesday November 21, 2006 1:08 AM The gap between demand for energy and the supply of power is widening far quicker than anticipated and will have a "significant impact" on industry and consumers, a new report has warned. Energy intensive industries could be forced to shut down their operations at peak times, costing industry billions of pounds, it has been claimed. LogicaCMG, which provides business services to energy firms, said demand for energy could exceed supply by as much as 23% at peak times by 2015. The report also warned that power cuts would be just as likely in the summer as the winter because more homes and offices will have air conditioning to cope with the hotter weather. It added that building nuclear power stations would not solve the problem because they cannot be built in time to close the gap between supply and demand. Kieron Brennan, managing director of LogicaCMG's energy and utilities business, said: "Action needs to be taken now to reduce the energy gap. We are not trying to scaremonger but our job is to provide guidance to the businesses we work with and help them understand and manage their future energy requirements. "We all need to use energy more efficiently and the Government will have to take steps to resolve this issue. If this doesn't happen, it is almost certain that the power will go off and businesses will lose money." The report warned that power cuts could cost big firms millions of pounds a year, which would be "clearly unsustainable." The report called for an urgent review of planning laws on energy storage and construction of new facilities. © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 21 NRC: Ten NRC Executives Honored with Presidential Awards News Release - 2006-14 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 06-144 November 20, 2006 President George W. Bush has selected 10 senior managers at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for either Distinguished or Meritorious Executive Rank Awards for 2006. The Presidential Awards are granted for "sustained extraordinary accomplishment," focusing on leadership to produce results. Fewer than one percent of the career Senior Executive Service corps receives the prestigious Distinguished Rank award each year, and fewer than five percent of the corps receives the Meritorious Rank Award. The winners are selected through nomination by their agencies, evaluation by boards of private citizens, and approval by the President. Karen D. Cyr, General Counsel and Luis A. Reyes, Executive Director for Operations were selected to receive the Distinguished Executive Award. Edward T. Baker, A. Randolph Blough, E. William Brach, Cynthia A. Carpenter, Charles A. Casto, Farouk Eltawila, Glenn M. Tracy, and Michael F. Weber were selected to receive Meritorious Awards. The agency will recognize these individuals at its annual awards ceremony in the spring. Highlights of their valuable contributions to the agency follow. Karen Cyr has provided exceptional leadership as the agencys chief legal officer, making significant contributions to developing the legal framework for nuclear energy regulation for more than 28 years. Cyr provided key support and counsel on legislation incorporated into the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to enhance nuclear security, improve the agencys licensing framework, and position the agency to meet its human capital needs. She has also been in the forefront of the agencys responses to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by addressing such novel legal questions as the deputization of nuclear reactor security forces and the use of deadly force by private security guards. Luis Reyes has demonstrated exceptional leadership directing the NRCs regulatory, licensing, and administrative programs that has positioned the agency to meet the challenges of enhancing security of nuclear power plants and materials in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, preparing for future nuclear plant licensing to meet the Nations electric energy needs, and meet its human capital challenges. Reyes has helped establish the agency as the foremost nuclear regulatory body in the world and as the top-ranked regulatory agency in the 2005 list of the Top Ten Places to Work in the Federal Government in a survey of 150,000 Federal employees. Edward Baker, deputy Chief Information Officer and director of the Office of Information Services, has used innovative and creative strategies to institute change and successfully orchestrate resolutions for a myriad of issues. Two of his most noteworthy achievements were implementing a world-class program for addressing safety and security concerns submitted by the public or industry and concluding an international agreement on controlling high-risk radioactive sources. Randolph Blough, Region I (King of Prussia, Pa.), has consistently demonstrated superb performance throughout his 26-year career in the NRC. Among his achievements are his expert leadership to develop and implement a dramatically revamped Reactor Oversight Program, effective oversight of nuclear plants recovering from problems in controversial environments, positive influence on industry safety performance, and improvement of employee morale and teamwork. William Brach, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, has consistently demonstrated over a 35-year federal career, his exceptional ability to actively build team spirit and instill pride in ones accomplishments while at the same time address complex tasks and successfully bring them to closure. He is recognized both domestically and internationally as the agencys leading expert on spent nuclear fuel storage and transportation policy and safety issues. Cynthia Carpenter, director of the Office of Enforcement, made significant contributions to nuclear safety during her federal career. She exhibited leadership during a period of dynamic challenge at the NRC where she has overseen key decisions related to operator licensing, nuclear reactor inspection, rulemaking, environmental reviews, budgeting and performance management. Carpenter has also been key to ensuring the agency actively hires new staff to support new reactor licensing. Charles Casto, Region II (Atlanta, Ga.), while in numerous senior positions of responsibility, has engaged in innovative management practices to achieve exceedingly effective results, in his 21 years with the NRC. He has demonstrated outstanding leadership in the practical uses of information technology, improvements to NRCs inspection program, bolstering of public confidence, and development of a diverse employee workforce and cadre of new leaders in the region. Farouk Eltawila, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, is recognized worldwide as an expert in thermal-hydraulics, nuclear fuel behavior and severe accident issues. He has modernized the analytical tools that the agency uses for licensing decisions and directed a comprehensive safety research program for predicting the behavior of nuclear fuel, containment and safety systems for current and advanced plants under a variety of conditions. As a result of tremendous personal initiative, research was completed for timely certification of advanced reactor designs. Glenn Tracy, Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response, has consistently applied his keen strategic thinking and analytic skills over his 17-year career at NRC to nuclear safety and security programs of critical importance to the Commission and its stakeholders. Particularly noteworthy was his development of post-9/11 requirements and their implementation for improved security at nuclear power plants nationwide and his institution of a start-of-the-art force-on-force security program. Michael Weber, deputy director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, has distinguished himself during his 24 years at NRC as a highly effective government executive, exemplifying performance management, customer service, and inspiring leadership. He has a track record of successes in reactor safety, radioactive waste and materials, security, and emergency response. He has been recognized as a trend setter and leader in the agency. Weber was instrumental in the aftermath of Sept. 11, in establishing a successful response team and overseeing security enhancements at more than 200 sensitive nuclear facilities. NRC news releases are available through a free list serve subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC homepage at www.nrc.gov also offers a SUBSCRIBE link. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web site. Last revised Tuesday, November 21, 2006 ***************************************************************** 22 Sydney Morning Herald: A 'greenwash' for the nuclear industry - Opinion - smh.com.au www.smh.com.au Mark Diesendorf November 22, 2006 THE draft report on uranium mining processing and nuclear energy is an exercise in "greenwash" for a dirty and dangerous industry. It skates over the serious risks of proliferation of nuclear weapons, nuclear terrorism and nuclear waste management, misrepresents the carbon dioxide emissions from the nuclear fuel chain, and presents a highly selective and excessively optimistic choice of numbers for the cost of nuclear electricity. The single positive outcome of the report is the recognition that carbon pricing - either in the form of a carbon tax or an emissions scheme - is essential for reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. However, a more realistic assessment of nuclear economics would recognise that the carbon price range envisaged in the report - $15 to $40 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted - is far too low to make nuclear power competitive with dirty (conventional) coal-fired power stations. Indeed, the report recognises this implicitly where it admits: "If investor perceptions of risk were greater [than for other base-load technologies], higher carbon prices or other policies [that is, subsidies] would be required to stimulate investment in nuclear power." The report's very low estimates of carbon prices, required to make nuclear power economically viable, are achieved by a magician's trick. The report shows the cost estimates depend critically upon interest rates and that, at the high interest rates prevailing in a competitive market, nuclear electricity is likely to cost about 10 cents a kilowatt-hour. However, in the comparison with the costs of competing technologies, the report selects much lower interest rates for nuclear power, in effect halving the cost of nuclear electricity. These carefully selected results are then reproduced in the executive summary, without any explanation that low interest rates were assumed, without justification. As spelled out clearly in the unbiased Ranger Uranium environmental inquiry, published a generation ago, nuclear power inadvertently contributes to the spread of nuclear weapons and hence the risk of nuclear war. Since then, the risk has become much worse. India, Pakistan and North Korea have all used civil nuclear technology to develop nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the fragile barrier to nuclear proliferation - the nuclear non-proliferation treaty - is being actively undermined by the United States and Australia. The US is selling uranium to India and Australia is permitting sales to Taiwan. Neither country has signed the treaty. These sales are part of a US strategy to build a nuclear wall around China. The obvious response by China will be to expand its own nuclear weapons arsenal. However, China's uranium reserves are too small to do this and fuel its nuclear power stations as well. Don't worry, Australia has come to the rescue with its uranium sales to China. This will free Chinese uranium for more nuclear weapons. A future confrontation over Taiwan could be hot indeed. The report's conclusions on proliferation are breathtaking in their complacency: "Increased involvement [in the nuclear industry] would not change the risks" and "Australia's uranium supply policies reinforce the international non-proliferation regime". This goes beyond greenwash to repainting black as white. It gets even better. The report dismisses nuclear terrorism with "nor would Australia's [electricity] grid become more vulnerable to terrorist attack". What about an attack on a nuclear power station, high-level nuclear waste in a cooling pond, or highly radioactive nuclear materials being transported? Even if they didn't hijack a jumbo jet, a small paramilitary group with suicidal tendencies could make a ground attack to take over the control room of a nuclear power station and initiate a core meltdown, creating hundreds of thousands of casualties. The idea of adding value to uranium mining by introducing uranium enrichment is appealing to the authors of the report. However, there is a global over-capacity for uranium enrichment at present and the US is building a new plant. With no market, there would be no value-adding. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Federal Government's push for nuclear power, assisted by the Switkowski report, is a means of distracting attention from its failure to implement strong policies in response to greenhouse gases. As shown in the report A Clean Energy Future for Australia, commissioned by the Clean Energy Australia Group, carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity industry could be cut by 80 per cent by 2040 using a mix of efficient energy use, bioenergy, natural gas and wind power. The barriers are neither technological nor economic, but rather the political power of the big greenhouse gas emitters. Dr Mark Diesendorf is with the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of NSW. ***************************************************************** 23 Sydney Morning Herald: Nuclear plants may be imposed on states - www.smh.com.au November 22, 2006 - 9:05AM Nuclear power plants could be imposed on the states even if they oppose them, the head of a task force investigating atomic energy says. Former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski has released his report on a possible nuclear energy industry in Australia, concluding 25 nuclear reactors could produce a third of Australia's electricity by 2050. The report found nuclear reactors would need to be built close to population centres, mainly on the east coast, but that nuclear power would not be competitive with coal unless a price was placed on carbon emissions. Dr Switkowski has conceded the states could be forced to house nuclear power plants. "I'd be prepared to accept that judgment," he told ABC Radio. "Hypothetically, and based on the sort of advice you're getting, I imagine that is a scenario. "However, as we have found around the world, where the nuclear industry has been most effective is where there's alignment between the interests of the federal government, the states, the local councils and the communities. "And given that, we think if nuclear is going to be adopted, it's going to be a process that's going to unfold over the years. That's enough time to get everybody at least accepting the facts and supporting the decision." Dr Switkowski said he was confident that if presented with the facts and given enough time to debate the power source, Australians would see the merits of nuclear energy. He said while he believed Australia needed to be doing more to encourage renewable technologies such as solar, wind and hydro power, nuclear was the best way of reducing greenhouse emissions. "But frankly, if you're going to make a contribution to significant greenhouse gas abatement, and support the growing appetite for baseload electricity in this country, those two considerations pointed to only one answer, and that is the introduction of nuclear electricity," he said. Dr Switkowski said nuclear energy would not be supported if industry, investors and infrastructure funds decided there were no economic returns. Deputy Labor leader Jenny Macklin later said Prime Minister John Howard must reveal whether he would use his Commonwealth power to impose nuclear waste dumps and nuclear power stations on unwilling states and territories. "That's the real question for John Howard today," she told reporters in Melbourne. "The states and territories have indicated that they do not want these power stations, they don't want the nuclear waste dumps in their states or territories. "What we need to know from John Howard is, is he going to use his commonwealth powers to force these power stations, to force these nuclear waste dumps where they're not wanted?" Ms Macklin said Mr Howard had "form" on the issue, recently ramming legislation through parliament that imposed a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory. "They didn't want it, their government was opposed to it, but John Howard has gone ahead," she said. "Is he going to do the same to the rest of Australia?" Deputy Labor leader Jenny Macklin later said Prime Minister John Howard must reveal whether he would use his commonwealth power to impose nuclear waste dumps and nuclear power stations on unwilling states and territories. "That's the real question for John Howard today," she told reporters in Melbourne. "The states and territories have indicated that they do not want these power stations, they don't want the nuclear waste dumps in their states or territories. "What we need to know from John Howard is, is he going to use his commonwealth powers to force these power stations, to force these nuclear waste dumps where they're not wanted?" Ms Macklin said Mr Howard had "form" on the issue, recently ramming legislation through parliament that imposed a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory. "They didn't want it, their government was opposed to it, but John Howard has gone ahead," she said. "Is he going to do the same to the rest of Australia?" © 2006 AAP Brought to you by [aap] | | | Copyright © 2006. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 24 Sydney Morning Herald: Iemma vows fight over nuclear power push - www.smh.com.au November 22, 2006 - 5:04AM Prime Minister John Howard is in for a fight if he plans on building a nuclear power station in NSW, Premier Morris Iemma says. The prime minister's nuclear taskforce found that a network of 25 nuclear reactors built within kilometres of suburban homes could be supplying a third of Australia's power by 2050. But Mr Iemma said no nuclear power station would be built in NSW while he was premier. "John Howard will have the fight of his life on his hands if he thinks the Iemma Labor government is going to support having a nuclear power station in NSW," Mr Iemma said. "We currently have legislation in NSW that outlaws nuclear power, and we have absolutely no intention of changing that law so long as I am the premier." Mr Iemma also challenged opposition leader Peter Debnam to rule out any support for a nuclear power station in NSW. The premier said there were better, cheaper, more effective ways of dealing with climate change than nuclear power. © 2006 AAP Copyright © 2006. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 25 Sydney Morning Herald: Taskforce plots nuclear path - www.smh.com.au Stephanie Peatling November 22, 2006 AS MANY as 25 nuclear power plants could be built by 2050, producing one-third of Australia's power and slowing the growth of greenhouse emissions, at a cost of more than $75 billion. They might be built in areas that house coal-fired power stations, such as the Hunter Valley. But a nuclear industry would be cost-effective only if a price was put on carbon dioxide emissions, forcing up the cost of electricity produced from coal, a taskforce has told the Federal Government. "If you don't impose a cost on carbon then investment in nuclear power could not proceed and should not proceed," said the chairman of the taskforce, the former Telstra boss and nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski. The report did not specify locations for any plants but noted they would need to be near big cities, rivers or oceans, and the electricity grid. It said they might be built near existing coal-fired stations, raising the possibility of nuclear plants in the Hunter and Victoria's Latrobe Valley. The Premier, Morris Iemma, vowed to fight any nuclear push in NSW. The Industry Minister, Ian Macfarlane, said last night the plants did not need to be close to major centres, adding that modern nuclear power stations had lower requirements for both water and proximity to the grid. No plants are likely to be in operation before 2020 because of a lack of skilled workers, the need to create a regulatory framework and winning public support, the taskforce warned. It put the cost of each plant at between $2 billion and $3 billion and said the Federal Government would need to provide some money. These figures did not include the cost of insurance or decommissioning the plants at the end of their lives. The report suggested that if the 25 stations were built, Australia's greenhouse gas emissions would be between 8 and 18 per cent lower by 2050 than if it continued to rely heavily on coal. But emissions would still rise significantly. Scientists have warned emissions need to be reduced by 60 per cent by 2050 if the dangerous effects of climate change are to be avoided. The Prime Minister, John Howard, suggested yesterday no decision on nuclear power would be made before next year's federal election. "We're talking about a debate that is going to go on for some time. We can't expect instant policy gratification," he said. Mr Howard would not say whether he was in favour of as many as 25 nuclear power stations or whether he would introduce a carbon tax. He has previously said another taskforce would examine carbon prices. Because of Australia's abundance of coal, nuclear power is between 20 and 50 per cent more expensive. But this would be changed by introducing a charge on emissions. The Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, promised no nuclear power stations would be built under a Labor government. "If John Howard is re-elected, we will go down an inexorable course for 25 nuclear reactors … and tens of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste. If the Labor Party is elected we will go down the path of clean coal and renewables." When news happens:send photos, videos &tip-offs to 0424 SMS SMH Copyright © 2006. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 26 Sydney Morning Herald: Nuclear costs understated: report's critics - www.smh.com.au Wendy Frew Environment Reporter November 22, 2006 TAXPAYERS could be forced to subsidise the nuclear energy industry to the tune of several billion dollars as well as facing higher electricity prices, to get the industry up and running in Australia, energy experts say. A Federal Government-commissioned report published yesterday underestimated the current operating costs of nuclear energy, and put too low a price on the carbon pollution generated by coal-fired power, critics said. Alternative forms of energy will only be able to compete with coal if coal pays for its greenhouse gas pollution. But a carbon price at least double that recommended by the taskforce, which was headed by the former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski, would be necessary if nuclear power was to compete with coal, said Mark Diesendorf, a lecturer at the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of NSW. On top of that, it was likely extra government support would have to be offered to private companies to encourage it to invest in the industry, a point even the taskforce conceded in its report. "The difference between me and Mr Switkowski is that I don't think nuclear power will get up even with carbon pricing … I don't think it could compete with coal on a price of $40 a tonne of carbon," Dr Diesendorf said. Based on Massachusetts Institute of Technology research, the Sydney academic has estimated construction of a 1000-megawatt nuclear reactor would cost about $3 billion. That does not take account of the cost of insurance, storage of highly radioactive waste and its eventual decommissioning. In his report, Dr Switkowski said nuclear power would be between 20 and 50 per cent more costly to produce than coal or gas-fired power. "This gap may close in the decades ahead, but nuclear power and renewable energy sources will only become competitive in Australia in a system where the costs of greenhouse gas emissions are explicitly recognised," the report said. "Even then, private investment in the first-built nuclear reactors may require some form of government support or directive." It said nuclear power plants were initially likely to be 10 to 15 per cent more expensive than in the US because Australia had no nuclear power construction experience or any physical or regulatory infrastructure. Studies by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago showed the industry would also initially suffer from what is known as "first of a kind" costs common in complex engineering projects and initial learning curves. However, the report dismissed those costs. A campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation, Dave Sweeney, agreed the taskforce's calculations were unrealistic. "We welcome a carbon price, but on this basis [$15-$40 a tonne of carbon] I don't think that it will be significant enough to cover all the costs associated with nuclear power, and that is reflected in the report itself, which says the first plants in Australia could not be built as cheaply as they could be built in the US, and would need additional measures to kick start them. "This is saying very clearly that if nuclear power is pursued in Australia the public purse will have to be open a very long time." A campaigner with Friends of the Earth, Jim Green, said the Switkowski report's estimate that nuclear power was now up to 50 per cent more expensive than coal or gas-fired power was optimistic. A recent Victorian Department of Infrastructure report had found that nuclear power was twice as expensive as coal-fired power, Dr Green said. THE DRAWBACKS Insurance companies will not take on the risk associated with nuclear plants, forcing governments to act as underwriters. The cost of cleaning up Britain's ageing nuclear facilities stands at £90 billion ($222 billion). A carbon price of about $35 a tonne would make wind power competitive with coal. When news happens:send photos, videos &tip-offs to 0424 SMS SMH Copyright © 2006. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 27 AU ABC: Beattie says nuclear energy 'crazy' for Aust ABC Queensland | Local News | Story Tuesday, 21 November 2006. 15:31 (AEDT)Tuesday, 21 November The Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, says he will carefully study a new report into nuclear power in Australia, but he remains opposed to the concept. A government-commissioned review headed by Doctor Ziggy Switkowski has found nuclear power could feed into the grid within 10 to 15 years. It says uranium production would help ease greenhouse gas emissions, but efforts must also continue to reduce carbon emissions from coal and gas. Mr Beattie is suspicious about the Federal Government's motivation behind the report. "I think what happened is that the Federal Government has done some research which shows the biggest single issue in the next federal election campaign is climate change, and what they've been doing is conning everyone ever since," Mr Beattie said. "The whole strategy about this is designed to get re-elected, it's not about energy or climate change." Mr Beattie says he remains opposed to nuclear power plants. "One of the most dishonest parts, I think, of this report as I understand it, is that there is no clear identification of where the sites will be," he said. "Nuclear power plants require a lot of water, and under those circumstances - I believe that we're in our worst drought in 100 years - that's crazy." Mr Beattie says he fears the Federal Government will now want to build nuclear plants in Queensland and he may not be able to stop it. "I haven't given up on that yet, but my understanding is they are likely to have the power to do," he said. "But in a country that's got 250 to 300 years' supply of coal, this is a crazy proposal. "Why would we give up the most efficient and cheap source of energy, that is coal, and replace it with nuclear when we haven't resolved the disposal issue?" ***************************************************************** 28 thewest.com.au: Nuclear plants may be imposed on states 22nd November 2006, 9:25 WST Nuclear power plants could be imposed on the states even if they oppose them, the head of a task force investigating atomic energy says. Former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski has released his report on a possible nuclear energy industry in Australia, concluding 25 nuclear reactors could produce a third of Australia's electricity by 2050. The report found nuclear reactors would need to be built close to population centres, mainly on the east coast, but that nuclear power would not be competitive with coal unless a price was placed on carbon emissions. Dr Switkowski has conceded the states could be forced to house nuclear power plants. "I'd be prepared to accept that judgment," he told ABC Radio. "Hypothetically, and based on the sort of advice you're getting, I imagine that is a scenario. "However, as we have found around the world, where the nuclear industry has been most effective is where there's alignment between the interests of the federal government, the states, the local councils and the communities. "And given that, we think if nuclear is going to be adopted, it's going to be a process that's going to unfold over the years. That's enough time to get everybody at least accepting the facts and supporting the decision." Dr Switkowski said he was confident that if presented with the facts and given enough time to debate the power source, Australians would see the merits of nuclear energy. He said while he believed Australia needed to be doing more to encourage renewable technologies such as solar, wind and hydro power, nuclear was the best way of reducing greenhouse emissions. "But frankly, if you're going to make a contribution to significant greenhouse gas abatement, and support the growing appetite for baseload electricity in this country, those two considerations pointed to only one answer, and that is the introduction of nuclear electricity," he said. Dr Switkowski said nuclear energy would not be supported if industry, investors and infrastructure funds decided there were no economic returns. Deputy Labor leader Jenny Macklin later said Prime Minister John Howard must reveal whether he would use his Commonwealth power to impose nuclear waste dumps and nuclear power stations on unwilling states and territories. "That's the real question for John Howard today," she told reporters in Melbourne. "The states and territories have indicated that they do not want these power stations, they don't want the nuclear waste dumps in their states or territories. "What we need to know from John Howard is, is he going to use his commonwealth powers to force these power stations, to force these nuclear waste dumps where they're not wanted?" Ms Macklin said Mr Howard had "form" on the issue, recently ramming legislation through parliament that imposed a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory. "They didn't want it, their government was opposed to it, but John Howard has gone ahead," she said. "Is he going to do the same to the rest of Australia?" Deputy Labor leader Jenny Macklin later said Prime Minister John Howard must reveal whether he would use his commonwealth power to impose nuclear waste dumps and nuclear power stations on unwilling states and territories. "That's the real question for John Howard today," she told reporters in Melbourne. "The states and territories have indicated that they do not want these power stations, they don't want the nuclear waste dumps in their states or territories. "What we need to know from John Howard is, is he going to use his commonwealth powers to force these power stations, to force these nuclear waste dumps where they're not wanted?" Ms Macklin said Mr Howard had "form" on the issue, recently ramming legislation through parliament that imposed a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory. "They didn't want it, their government was opposed to it, but John Howard has gone ahead," she said. "Is he going to do the same to the rest of Australia?" AAP thewest.com.au Australian' is a trademark of West Australian Newspapers Pty Ltd 2006. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 29 Xinhua: Chinese scientists to take part in ITER construction www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-21 23:55:29 CHENGDU, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- China will send 30 scientists to France for the construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world's most advanced nuclear fusion reactor. Zhou Caipin, one of the scientists, said he would fly to Paris next month for the project, which more than 30 countries signed up to on Tuesday. The ITER plan is aimed at developing a clean, cheap and abundant energy source to replace fossil fuels, said Zhou, vice director of the Center for Fusion Science under the Southwest China Institute of Physics. After months of wrangling, France edged out Japan last year in its bid to host the 10-billion-euro (12.8 billion US dollars) ITER, which will be built at Cadarache, near the southern city of Marseille. China will fund 10 percent of the total cost of the project. China, the United States, South Korea, India, the European Union, Russia and Japan are participating in the ten-year project. "China will share equally the intellectual properties coming from the scientific developments and research results during the construction of the reactor and implementation of the project," he said. The seven participants of ITER signed in May the draft text of the Prospective Agreement on the Establishment of the ITER International Fusion Energy Organization for the Joint Implementation of the ITER Project as well as the draft text of the Agreement on the Privileges and Immunities of the ITER. The project is expected to recreate the conditions of the sun under which a nuclear fusion reaction takes place, given it the named "artificial sun", said Zhou. China would contribute its due effort and promote its development, said Xu Guanhua, Minister of Science and Technology. Controlled nuclear fusion is seen as an efficient way to generate infinite, clean energy to replace fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Scientists believe the fuel, deuterium, can be extracted from the sea and an enormous amount of energy can be obtained from a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction under a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius. After nuclear fusion, the deuterium extracted from one liter ofsea water will produce the energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline. China's self-designed superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, dubbed EAST (experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak), is undergoing trials. It is the first one of its kind in the world. EAST could offer research and experimental experiences for the construction of ITER, said Xu. Editor: Luan Shanglin ***************************************************************** 30 Reuters: Study finds Australia nuclear power option viable Tue 21 Nov 2006 2:00 AM ET By James Grubel CANBERRA, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Australia, with about 40 percent of the world's uranium, could have a viable nuclear enrichment and power industry within 15 years, a government report said on Tuesday, as the cost of cleaner coal and gas power increases. The report by former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski found nuclear power would be competitive with coal-fired power if pollution and carbon emissions were taxed, while enrichment could add A$1.8 billion ($1.4 billion) to the value of uranium exports. But critics said nuclear energy would be unworkable without bipartisan political support in Australia, and without either a tax on carbon emissions or a significant government investment to make nuclear energy competitive with coal and gas. "These are huge investments, they require some assurance that popular opposition will not stand in the way of a project and that political parties won't stop a project half way through," Jim Falk, science professor at Melbourne University, told Reuters. Australia's centre-left Labor opposition re-affirmed its long-held opposition to nuclear power, saying that Australia needed clean coal and gas and more renewable energy. But Switkowski said Australia could have about 25 nuclear reactors, which could supply one third of the nation's electricity by 2050, drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions. He said the cost of nuclear power would be between 20 percent and 50 percent higher than coal or gas-fired power, but the gap could close in the years ahead if the cost of carbon pollution was recognised in Australia. KYOTO REFUSAL Australia's conservative Prime Minister John Howard set up the Switkowski nuclear inquiry in June to find out if a nuclear industry was viable in Australia and whether nuclear power would be a clean alternative to coal-fired power generation. Howard, a close ally of U.S. President George W. Bush, has refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change and has ruled out a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading in Australia. But opinion polls show voters in Australia want the government to do more to combat greenhouse gas emissions, and Howard has said scientific support for nuclear energy was growing because it is a cleaner energy source. Australia is also one of the world's biggest exporters of coal, used widely in power generation, and Howard has strongly supported coal companies despite calls for more renewable energy. Falk said the high cost of building nuclear power plants, and the untested newer technology, made it more likely investors would look to other sources of electricity to meet future demand. "Wind and renewables make more sense, natural gas co-generation makes more sense, cleaning up the act with our most inefficient coal-burning stations makes more sense, and that efficiency above all makes more sense," he said. Environment group Greenpeace released its own report on Monday which said renewable energy could drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions over the next 15 years, while nuclear energy would be dangerous and would not be any cleaner. "In an age of terrorism and fears about nuclear proliferation, and with so many other forms of safe renewable energy available, expanding the nuclear industry in Australia is a dangerous mistake," Greenpeace Australia chief executive Steve Shallhorn said. ($1=A$1.30) ((Editing by James Thornhill, james.grubel@reuters.com; Reuters Messaging: james.grubel.reuters.com@reuters.net, +612 6273 2730)) © Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 31 AFP: Accord signed in France on breakthrough nuclear reactor Tue Nov 21, 7:30 AM ET PARIS (AFP) - A seven-member international consortium has signed a formal treaty to build a multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear reactor emulating the power of the sun, sealing a decade of negotiations. "This is a new step in an exceptional adventure," French President Jacques Chirac" /> President Jacques Chiracsaid Tuesday after leading the signing ceremony in Paris. Representatives from China, the European Union" /> European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea" /> South Koreaand the United States signed the pact on the construction of the 10-billion-euro (12.8 billion dollar) reactor. Originally called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor but now known officially by its initials ITER (or "the way" in Latin), the facility is to be built in Cadarache, in southern France, over a decade starting 2008. The project aims to research a clean and limitless alternative to dwindling fossil fuel reserves by testing nuclear fusion technologies. Instead of splitting the atom -- the principle behind current nuclear plants -- the project seeks to harness nuclear fusion: the power of the sun and the stars achieved by fusing together atomic nuclei. If it is successful, a prototype commercial reactor will be built, and if that works, fusion technology will be rolled out across the world. Chirac said the experimental reactor was "a hand held out to future generations" and predicted that, if it proved successful, "we will be able to derive as much energy from a litre of seawater as from a litre of petrol or a kilo of coal." The EU is to put up half the cost of building the reactor, with the rest evenly divided among the other parties. The project will employ 400 scientists, two-thirds of them non-French. Following years of wrangling, Japan agreed in 2005 to withdraw its bid to host the project -- in exchange for 20 percent of staff posts including the director general's job. A Japanese engineer turned ambassador, Kaname Ikeda, was named earlier this month to head the project. European Commission" /> European CommissionPresident Jose Manuel Barroso, who was also in Paris Tuesday, called the signing "a major event" and a step forward to finding new energy sources that did not cause climate change. In a fusion reaction, energy is released when light atomic nuclei - the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium - are fused together to form heavier atomic nuclei. To use controlled fusion reactions on Earth as an energy source, it is necessary to heat a gas to temperatures exceeding 100 million Celsius - many times hotter than the centre of the sun. One of the attractions of fusion is the tiny amount of fuel needed. The release of energy from a fusion reaction is 10 million times greater than from a typical chemical reaction, such as burning a fossil fuel. But the project has been criticised by environmental groups like Greenpeace, who argue that the enormous cost will suck funds away from other areas of alternative energy research, with no guarantee that an effective method of simulating and harnessing the fusion process will ever be found. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 32 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Arak reactor of medical nature - IAEA 2006/11/21 The reactor and seven other projects for which the Islamic Republic of Iran demanded technical assistance from the UN nuclear agency do not pose a proliferation threat, IAEA Deputy Director General Anna Mariacetto said on Monday. She told the meeting of board of governors of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reviewing Iranian demand for expertise from the agency that all Iranian projects are in conformity with the relevant security council resolution and "specifically these projects do not contribute to enrichment-related or reprocessing activities in IRI." She said that the Arak reactor has been designed for medical application to produce cancer fighting isotopes. The board of governors reviewing Iranian demand adjourned the debate until Wednesday. Iranian ambassador to IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh said on Monday that technical cooperation between IRI and the UN agency would serve close cooperation and to prove transparency of Iranian nuclear program. Meanwhile, Secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani said that IRI has never left IAEA letter for inspection unanswered. "IRI has always given positive response to IAEA seeking inspection for all nuclear sites," he said reaffirming Iranian commitment to safeguards agreement of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). 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 ***************************************************************** 33 AU ABC: Nuclear power a practical option for Australia. 20/11/2006. ABC News Opinion By Dr Ziggy Switkowski The review was established to examine uranium mining, value-added processing and the contribution of nuclear energy in Australia in the longer term. It is intended to provide a factual base and an analytical framework to encourage informed community discussion. The draft report provides an opportunity for the public to comment on the task force’s findings. The task force examined the capacity for Australia to increase uranium mining and exports. As a holder of substantial reserves (38 per cent of known low cost global reserves) and producer of uranium (23 per cent of global production), Australia is well positioned to meet growing market demand. Value adding to Australia’s resources is possible and could be worth $1.8 billion annually. However, this is not without its challenges. Australia’s demand for electricity will more than double before 2050. More than two-thirds of existing electricity generation will need to be substantially upgraded or replaced and new capacity added. This additional capacity will need to use near-zero greenhouse gas emitting technology if Australia is just to keep greenhouse gas emissions at today’s levels. On average, nuclear power would be 20–50 per cent more expensive than coal in Australia but can become competitive with fossil fuel-based generation in Australia with the introduction of low to moderate pricing of carbon dioxide emissions. Nuclear power has a low emissions signature. Although the priority for Australia should continue to be to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal and gas, the task force sees nuclear power as a practical option for Australia. The handling and storage of radioactive waste was an issue often raised in submissions. The safe disposal of low and intermediate-level waste is practised today at many sites around the world. Australia has suitable locations for deep underground repositories for the safe storage of high level waste and spent nuclear fuel. Many Australians associate nuclear power with the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The task force visited these sites and found that while the health and safety legacy from Chernobyl is real, the nuclear industry is far safer than other energy-related industries. However, no industry is risk-free. Nuclear weapons proliferation is another issue of concern to the public. Increased Australian involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle would not change the risks. It is clandestine activity that is likely to lead to the production of nuclear weapons, not civil nuclear activities. Nuclear power today is a mature, safe, and relatively clean means of generating baseload electricity. Nuclear power is an option that Australia should seriously consider if it is to meet its growing energy demand and reduce its greenhouse gas signature. Have your say on the nuclear issue. Dr Ziggy Switkowski gave a speech to the National Press Club on November 21 outlining the findings of the Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy draft report. The Federal Government review of uranium mining and nuclear power has found nuclear energy is a practical option for Australia. [] [] [] [] A report commissioned by the Prime Minister on the prospects for nuclear power in Australia says reactors could produce more than one third of our electricity by 2050 - but nuclear energy will only become competitive if the costs of greenhouse emissions from coal and gas power are explicitly recognised. [] [] [] Sustainability Centre director Mark Deisendorf discusses the findings of the Switkowski report into nuclear power. [] [] [] Next week the Federal Government is putting before Parliament a Bill to boost the powers of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and give it the authority to deal with nuclear waste. [] [] ***************************************************************** 34 AU ABC: Scientist discusses nuclear report The World Today - Tuesday, 21 November , 2006 12:41:00 Reporter: Eleanor Hall ELEANOR HALL: Joining us now with his reaction to the Switkowski report is Dr Mark Diesendorf, the Director of the Sustainability Centre at the University of New South Wales. He's been looking at the report, and joins us now in Sydney. Dr Diesendorf, your reaction we've been told that the ... it is possible to have nuclear energy within 15 years, that it is safe and that it is clean. Is nuclear energy the solution to the problem of climate change? MARK DIESENDORF: Well, I see this as a rather biased report, I'm afraid, unlike the Ranger Inquiry Report that came out 25 years ago. This is a green wash for a dirty and dangerous industry, and just looking through the report now, I mean its treatment of key issues like the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the risk of nuclear terrorism, and the economics of nuclear power is incredibly superficial. ELEANOR HALL: Well, on the economics of nuclear power, the report says that if we were to process uranium domestically, we could add $2-billion to the economy. That's something worth considering, isn't it? MARK DIESENDORF: Well, yes, if there was a market. But the problem is that for uranium enrichment, there is an over-capacity in the world, and the United States is building a new enrichment plant. So, although the rhetoric about adding value sounds terrific, in practice, it seems ironic that an environmental scientist has to point out basic economics. You've got to have a market, and that market does not exist at present for enriched uranium. ELEANOR HALL: The report also says that we could have a third of our electricity supplied by uranium by 2050. Isn't that, someone who's concerned about sustainability, isn't that something that would be very useful in dealing with the climate change problem? MARK DIESENDORF: Well, the study that my colleagues and I did show that we could have half of our electricity produced from renewable sources by the same period of time, without nuclear power, without even clean coal, so-called "clean coal". So, look, setting up this whole thing as a debate between coal and nuclear is a really false premise. With energy efficiency and renewable energy, we could halve our greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 and we could go on from there. But the problem is that the Federal Government at present is running an attack, a series of attacks on renewable energy, pretending that it can't provide baseload power, pretending that it is all intermittent, and all these things are untrue. ELEANOR HALL: You're saying that renewable energy sources like wind and solar can provide baseload power? MARK DIESENDORF: Renewable energy can provide baseload power. There's a wider mix of sources. So, in bio-energy from copper residues is just as reliable as coal. Hot dry rock geothermal is coming along rapidly, also has baseload power. And actually wind power, with a small amount of peak load backup is also ... can substitute for some but not all coal-fired power stations. So, we could have a renewable energy scenario that halves our greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, and is just as reliable as the existing system. ELEANOR HALL: What about cost? How much would it cost to do that, compared to the cost of bringing in a nuclear industry? MARK DIESENDORF: Well, our scenario would be much cheaper, because I don't accept the economic statement in the summary part of Ziggy's report. He claims that nuclear power is only going to be 20 to 50 per cent dearer. But in fact, if you look at the main body of the report, it acknowledges that some estimates, by very reputable bodies like the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put the additional costs at more than double the current costs of coal power. The reality is that nuclear power in the United Kingdom and the USA is actually dearer than wind power right now, and wind power is going to get a lot cheaper, rapidly. So, the whole economic argument really falls down. It's true that the one limitation on renewable energy is that we can't have endless rapid growth in demand for energy. We do have to draw the line and level-off growth so that energy efficiency and renewable energy can actually make a major contribution. The notion that we can keep on growing energy demand rapidly forever and forever is crazy, and certainly has to be resisted. ELEANOR HALL: Dr Diesendorf, thanks very much for joining us. That's Mark Diesendorf, the Director of the Sustainability Centre at the University of New South Wales. ***************************************************************** 35 AU ABC: Report maps out Australia's nuclear future PM - Tuesday, 21 November , 2006 18:10:00 Reporter: Lynn Bell MARK COLVIN: Nuclear power flowing into Australia's electricity grid within 10 to 15 years - that's the prospect raised by the report of the Prime Minister's Taskforce on nuclear energy, released in Canberra today. The report proposes one scenario in which 25 reactors could be providing over a third of Australia's electricity by the year 2050. The Chairman of the Nuclear Taskforce, Dr Ziggy Switkowski, released the draft report. It says nuclear power would cost between 20 and 50 per cent more than coal or gas-fired power, but that this gap would close if the costs of greenhouse gas emissions were explicitly recognised. Dr Switkowski describes nuclear power as a practical option for producing electricity in Australia. The six-member taskforce also supports an expansion of uranium mining and increasing uranium exports. The Industry Minister, Ian MacFarlane said in May this year that the economics of nuclear power simply didn't add up. Today he said the report provides the unvarnished facts about the potential for nuclear power, and the Government would consider it carefully. From Canberra, Lynn Bell reports. LYNN BELL: The chair of the Prime Minister's Nuclear Review Taskforce, Dr Ziggy Switkowski says one of the most compelling reasons to adopt nuclear power is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ZIGGY SWITKOWSKI: If the community does not have a conviction about climate change, nor therefore an appetite to move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then there is really no case for consideration of nuclear power. LYNN BELL: He says Australia's abundance of cheap coal and gas means there's no need to consider nuclear power to secure the nation's electricity supplies or to lower the cost of electricity. In fact, today's draft report says nuclear power would cost between 20 and 50 per cent more than coal or gas fired power. And nuclear power would only really be competitive if the cost of greenhouse gas emissions were taken into account. Overall the taskforce says nuclear power is a practical option for the production of electricity in Australia and it says the soonest it could be delivered to the grid is 10 years from now. It suggests if nuclear power was up and running by 2020, 25 reactors could be in place by the year 2050. The Industry Minister Ian McFarlane. IAN MCFARLANE: Well, I mean it's a scenario portrayed by the committee and I think what we need to do now is have a debate in Australia about whether or not people want to see nuclear energy as part of our future - a low emissions energy mix. The reality is that nuclear energy is a safe energy; it is an energy that doesn't emit CO2, it is the least cost low emission technology available and what we want to see now is Australians consider that. LYNN BELL: But the Labor leader Kim Beazley remains firmly opposed to nuclear power and the enrichment of uranium. KIM BEAZLEY: We now have another clear-cut distinction between the Government and the Labor Party at the next election. If John Howard is reelected, we'll go down an inexorable course for 25 nuclear reactors in this country and tens of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste. If the Labor Party is elected, we will go down the path of clean coal and renewables. It's as simple as that. LYNN BELL: The nuclear taskforce supports an expansion of uranium mining in Australia and an increase in uranium exports, though it notes there are still a number of regulatory obstacles to overcome to make that a reality. Mitch Hooke is the Chief Executive of the Minerals Council of Australia and he welcomes the proposal. MITCH HOOKE: The reality is it will have to go through the ALP's annual conference next year, so this just adds another string to the bow in political pressure on the ALP that the no new mines policy is an artificial restriction on exploiting Australia's natural resources that would be to society's benefit. But we're limited in doing so. The legacy of that is that we've got critical skills shortages in the industry, there are artificial restrictions on the transport of products containing uranium in some states. We don't have a harmonious and nationally consistent regulatory arrangement and we don't have a very good platform for expanding an industry where we have by far the largest identified uranium resources in the world. LYNN BELL: But the Greens Senator Christine Milne takes a different view. CHRISTINE MILNE: It is very clear to me that this is a push by the nuclear industry for huge amounts of public money put into universities, put into skills training, all for the nuclear industry, to the detriment of the renewables, which can provide a solution to climate change. LYNN BELL: Australia's exports of uranium oxide were worth $573 million last year and the report says that could increase by $1.8 billion if the uranium was enriched onshore. Australia has almost 40 per cent of the world's uranium reserves and Peter Hendy from the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Industry says enrichment could have very positive outcomes for the economy. PETER HENDY: If Australia can take advantage of further processing, enrichment of uranium then it's something that Australia should be looking at seriously. LYNN BELL: Dr Switkowski says any nuclear power plant would ideally be located near water, the national electricity grid and the market. He says radioactive waste could be disposed of safely underground and he believes Australia has a number of suitable sites. The report also says adopting nuclear power would not make Australia's energy grid more vulnerable to a terrorist attack, but the Democrats Senator Lyn Allison takes issue with a number of the findings. LYN ALLISON: The problem is that it's fundamentally misleading. It suggests to us that nuclear power is as safe as any other power source. That's clearly absurd. This report suggests that a deep repository can be constructed in this country. The main problem in this report is its dismissal of nuclear energy as a potential source of base load power in this country. LYNN BELL: For all the talk about reducing the impact of climate change, green groups aren't happy with the findings either. Steve Campbell from Greenpeace Australia Pacific. STEVE CAMPBELL: This report is seriously flawed. It doesn't take into account the clear savings in greenhouse pollution that we could be making right now and defers any action to some sort of fantasy, never-never land future starting in the year 2020. LYNN BELL: The government's nuclear taskforce will now take public submissions on the draft report and it's due to produce its final report at the end of the year. MARK COLVIN: Lynn Bell. ***************************************************************** 36 AU ABC: Howard says nuclear energy the way forward PM - Tuesday, 21 November , 2006 18:14:00 Reporter: Graeme Dobell MARK COLVIN: The Prime Minister says nuclear power must be part of Australia's energy future. Mr Howard says nuclear power will help fight climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. He says the cost of cleaning up coal power will make nuclear energy economically competitive. The Prime Minister was commenting on the Switkowski report as he finished his official visit to Vietnam, and left to fly home. From Ho Chi Minh City, Graeme Dobell reports. GRAEME DOBELL: The Prime Minister who was a global warming skeptic is now a global warming believer. The Prime Minister who won't sign the Kyoto protocol because it'd damage Australia's economic advantage - its cheap coal-powered electricity - now says the price of that coal power must rise. On that basis, nuclear power becomes cost competitive. And in this argument there is now an almost automatic linkage. For Mr Howard, talking about nuclear power leads to an immediate link to climate change. JOHN HOWARD: Well, the most important thing is that we have a proper debate about climate change and that proper debate must include a root and branch consideration of the contribution that nuclear power can make. It's quite unrealistic to talk about fighting the problem of greenhouse gas emissions unless you are open-minded and progressive and forward looking enough to look at each and every available alternative. There's no one single solution to the problem of climate change. You need every weapon in the armory, and one of them, of course, is obviously nuclear power. GRAEME DOBELL: So it's the debate we have to have. Mr Howard says it's too early to say how quickly and to what extent Australia will embrace nuclear power. But if you start talking about "dirty coal", as the Prime Minister now does, then other things start to follow. JOHN HOWARD: At the moment nuclear power is dearer than dirty coal, if I can put it that way, but as time goes by, and clean coal technology, even in the most optimistic of circumstances adds somewhat to the cost of using coal, then nuclear power comes very much into the equation. GRAEME DOBELL: More than just into the equation, Mr Howard says if the debate is not prejudiced, then Australia will see the need to get some of its future electricity from nuclear power plants, although the Prime Minister says it's not yet time to say how many plants, or where they'll be built. JOHN HOWARD: It's too early for me as the leader of the Government to start speculating about particular numbers by particular dates, but the economics are obvious and compelling and they are very much that right at the moment, if we go on using the fossil fuels that we have and we don't do anything to reduce the greenhouse gas emission impact of them, well, coal remains the cheapest source. But if we're worried about climate change, then we have to bring about some reduction in the greenhouse emitting properties of coal and once you start doing that, you add to the cost of its use. And that then brings nuclear into the equation. GRAEME DOBELL: The other part of this equation is the politics. And Mr Howard says he can be a friend to both coal and nuclear, in contrast to his portrayal of the approach of the Labor Party and the Greens. JOHN HOWARD: Well, I think the Australian coal industry has a guaranteed place in the future of the Australian economy. My approach will protect the coal industry; the approach of others will undermine it because they see the coal industry as the cause of the problem. I see the coal industry as part of the solution, as I see nuclear power, as I see renewables. We've got to be broadminded enough to look at all of them and it's the Labor Party and the Greens who are against looking at nuclear power. MARK COLVIN: The Prime Minister John Howard. ***************************************************************** 37 AU ABC: Vic Libs say no to nuclear power PM - Tuesday, 21 November , 2006 18:22:00 Reporter: Jane Cowan MARK COLVIN: That problem of where to put the power stations and how to persuade local communities to accept them landed like a depth charge in the Victorian State election campaign today. Both sides of politics sent a clear message to Canberra on nuclear power - keep out. Both Labor and the Liberals promised voters a nuclear-free future. For Labor it's a long held view, but the Liberals' stance puts them at odds with the federal party. In Melbourne, Jane Cowan reports. JANE COWAN: Labor made its anti-nuclear stance plain in its campaign launch last week, and leader Steve Bracks reiterated it today. STEVE BRACKS: We are very strong on this. We are not going down the nuclear road, but I know our opponents will and of course working in tandem with the Federal Government you could expect that would happen. JANE COWAN: But now the Victorian Liberals have matched Labor's promise, the Environment spokesman David Davis ruling out nuclear power. DAVID DAVIS: The Liberal Party's position in Victoria is that we have no plans for any nuclear facilities. JANE COWAN: How do you resolve that split within the Liberal Party? DAVID DAVIS: Well, the views of the Federal Government are a matter for the Federal Government and our view in Victoria is that we have a strong energy future with coal and other renewable sources. JANE COWAN: What guarantee is there that you won't be forced to change that position to fall in line with the federal party down the track? DAVID DAVIS: Well, we've put our policies on the table and that will be our road map. JANE COWAN: Political commentator Dr Nick Economou says the nuclear debate shows up a generational divide within the Liberal Party between older members like the Prime Minister, who nurse 1960s notions of nuclear power, and a younger cohort who worry about the costs of a massively state-subsidised nuclear industry. He says it would be political suicide for the Victorian party to make nuclear power a point of difference between it and Labor. NICK ECONOMOU: The Federal Liberal Party can participate in an intellectual fishing exercise because they're still a year-and-a-half out from an election. The Victorian Liberals have got an election next Saturday. JANE COWAN: But Monash University constitutional law lecturer Dr Matt Harvey says both political parties might be taking a stand they can't hold MATT HARVEY: If the Commonwealth wanted to put a nuclear reactor in a state, the state has prima facie control over how its land is used. But if the Commonwealth can find a power under which it says it's establishing this reactor, then subject to a High Court challenge, that power prevails over the state. JANE COWAN: How meaningful then, are electoral pledges to ban nuclear power stations in this state? MATT HARVEY: Well, they're valid as statements of principle that the State Government will do all it can to prevent a nuclear reactor being built. We've already seen every state, I think, refusing a nuclear waste dump. They can do a lot to make it difficult for the Commonwealth, but ultimately they can't prevent the Commonwealth putting a reactor on their land. MARK COLVIN: Constitutional law lecturer Dr Matt Harvey ending that report from Jane Cowan. ***************************************************************** 38 The Australian: Switkowski defends nuclear power decision | | + NEWS.com.au | This story is from our news.com.aunetwork Source: AAP November 22, 2006 THE amount of waste generated by a modern nuclear power plant would be small enough to fit inside a household bathroom, says the head of a task force investigating atomic energy. Former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski yesterday released his report on a possible nuclear energy industry in Australia, concluding 25 nuclear reactors could produce a third of Australia's electricity needs by 2050. The report found nuclear reactors would need to be built close to population centres, mainly on the east coast, but that nuclear power would not be competitive with coal unless a price was placed on carbon emissions. Dr Switkowski today attempted to quell community fears about the disposal of radioactive junk, saying modern reactors generated "very little waste". "A typical nuclear power station would probably produce as much waste as would fill maybe a bathroom in a small house," he said on Channel 9. "The design would be to keep that waste on-site at the reactor, but eventually it would have to be relocated to a national depository." Almost all parts of Australia were suitable for such a facility as they were geologically stable and a long way from major population centres, he said. Dr Switkowski said nuclear power had been around for about 50 years and was in use in more than 440 reactors in 31 countries. "Our observation of modern nuclear reactors is that they are very impressive bits of technology, very safe, arguably safer than alternative ... fossil fuel generators, and environmentally (they) don't constitute a hazard," he said. "The world has had a long experience of nuclear electricity but Australia has not." Dr Switkowski rejected Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane's comments that nuclear power plants did not need to be built close to towns or cities. "Reactors should be placed near the big markets ... tens of kilometres away (from population centres)," he said. "They need to be located with access to the national electricity grid. They use water, often sea water, so you'll find many reactors located on the coast. "Some countries have decided to co-locate their reactors with existing generating facilities such as coal power stations. "So that gives you a sense of where Australia's reactors ... might be found." Dr Switkowski said he wanted his report to inform community debate on whether nuclear energy had a role in Australia's future, particularly as part of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "If there is a price for greenhouse gases of moderate proportions, all of a sudden nuclear and other renewables become competitive," he said. Privacy Terms © The Australian ***************************************************************** 39 AU ABC: Rann considers nuclear power plant ban. 21/11/2006. ABC News Online The South Australian Government will consider banning nuclear power stations. The Premier, Mike Rann, says statements by the Prime Minister after the release of the nuclear power inquiry's report suggest he has only just discovered that climate change is a problem, and that alternative energy sources need to be found. Mr Rann says he will consider legislation to rule out a nuclear power plant in South Australia. "A very firm 'no' to a nuclear power plant; unnecessary, we do not have the population mass to support it, and secondly we're saying no to an enrichment plant," Mr Rann said. He says nuclear power would displace other energy sources, and place all energy supplies in one basket. The state Opposition has not yet responded to the report. Greens MP Mark Parnell welcomes Mr Rann's pledge, but says it is hypocritical to oppose nuclear power and enrichment, but support uranium mining. "Because he's happy to export the nuclear problem overseas," he said. The Democrats' Sandra Kanck says a nuclear power station was never on the cards for South Australia, and has accused the Premier of chest-beating. ***************************************************************** 40 AU ABC: Nuclear opponents criticise report 21/11/2006 Reporter: Matt Peacock KERRY O’BRIEN: Political editor Michael Brissenden. The nuclear industry has hailed the Switkowski report as proof that it has a rosy future in Australia. But nuclear opponents say the report has provided more proof that the industry is a non-starter in this country. Matt Peacock reports. MATT PEACOCK: It's official, until and unless Australians pay for this fossil fuel pollution, then nuclear power can never compete with coal. LORD OXBURGH, FORMER UK CHIEF DEFENCE SCIENTIST: Perhaps in an ideal world one wouldn't have nuclear power but given the threat of global warming, I think it is the lesser of two evils. BERTRAND BARRE, FORMER DIRECTOR, FRENCH ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION: It's not sustainable that the average Australian emits three times more CO2 than the average European. We have the same way of life, we have the same wealth but we don't have the same impact and that's not sustainable. MATT PEACOCK: Today's Government report confirms what overseas nuclear enthusiasts like the former British defence scientist and chairman of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, have already been saying, that in a country with vast, cheap coal reserves only a price on carbon emissions could make the nuclear sums add up. LORD OXBURGH: Australia really has, if it's going to reduce its carbon footprint as I believe that almost certainly it will want to, you've got the choice of burning the coal cleanly or using nuclear. You've got the uranium and you've got the coal. Now, the fact is that the technology for burning coal cleanly is probably 10 years away. MATT PEACOCK: But nuclear power too is at least 10 years away and that's just too long for the planet, according to environmental scientist Mark Diesendorf. MARK DIESENDORF, ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTIST, UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES: Nuclear power is being used in Australia right now politically as a way of distracting attention away from the fact that the present government has failed to deal with the greenhouse problem, it's failed to promote renewable sources of energy, some of which are available now and are actually cheaper than nuclear power and could be installed much, much faster. MATT PEACOCK: US President George Bush was also talking greenhouse when he met with Prime Minister Howard earlier this year. GEORGE W BUSH, US PRESIDENT: Nuclear power helps us protect the environment. And nuclear power is safe. MATT PEACOCK: President Bush proposed a global nuclear energy partnership, or GNEP, under which countries that enriched uranium would lease the fuel to others and then take back their waste. It's this scheme in part that prompted Mr Howard to rekindle the nuclear debate at home. BERTRAND BARRE, FRENCH ATOMIC ENERGY FOUNDATION: One of the parts of GNEP was this question of fuel leasing, this question of containing the "Sensitive" part of the fuel cycle technologies to a few countries. MATT PEACOCK: While France has nearly 60 nuclear power stations, Australia's yet to build even one. According to Bernard Barre of the French nuclear company Areva, that makes any talk of joining the enrichment club seem a little premature. BERNARD BARRE: The right time for Australia to go to enrichment would be having already nuclear power and then that would make a lot of sense. MATT PEACOCK: Although Australian enrichment could be lucrative, today's report also warns it would be a very difficult market to break into. According to Melbourne University's Professor Jim Falk, it's not going to happen. PROFESSOR JIM FALK, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: I think a bit of reality has struck. There is no prospect for an enrichment industry for Australia unless we were to subsidise it to the hilt, and we don't have the technical capacity to do it anyway and there is a surplus of supply on the market for the conceivable short- to mid-term future. MATT PEACOCK: There is, too, another dimension to the nuclear debate, graphically highlighted by North Korea's recent weapons test. Does the spread of nuclear power increase the risk of nuclear war? LORD OXBURGH: Certainly if you have a degree of nuclear competence that you've gained through the power industry, it is less of a step to move into the weapons area than if you don't have any competence. But, frankly, there is still a world of difference between the two. MARK DIESENDORF: We need to be looking much more closely at the spread of nuclear weapons. This is a very serious problem and since September 11, we should be focussing on nuclear terrorism as well. It's really strange that the present Government expresses so much concern about terrorism and yet it is proposing to build an ideal source of terrorism in terms of nuclear facilities in Australia. It is so easy for a small, armed group to create major nuclear destruction. MATT PEACOCK: Ironically, today's report has provided as much comfort for the industry's critics as its supporters. JIM FALK: Funnily enough, I think the report is more anti nuclear report than pro-nuclear report when you put it all together. It says most of the nuclear fuel cycle is inappropriate for Australia and the picture it paints of a nuclear reactor future seems economically and technically unrealistic. ***************************************************************** 41 AU ABC: Ian Macfarlane on nuclear energy 21/11/2006 Reporter: Kerry O'Brien KERRY O’BRIEN: That report from Matt Peacock. The Prime Minister was preparing to leave Vietnam for Australia when the Switkowski report was released and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane was in India, but I spoke with him by satellite in New Delhi this afternoon. KERRY O’BRIEN: Ian Macfarlane, in your mind, does this task force report now move Australia closer to nuclear power in Australia? IAN MACFARLANE, INDUSTRY MINISTER: Well, it moves us closer to the option of considering nuclear power in Australia. It moves us towards having a basis to debate the issue of nuclear power as part of our future energy mix, particularly in the perspective of dealing with some of our greenhouse gas emissions issues, bearing in mind that electricity generation will double in the next 30 to 40 years and we need to do something about producing electricity at a much lower greenhouse gas emission rate. KERRY O’BRIEN: You've been such a self described greenhouse sceptic for so many years now that it seems a trifle bizarre to hear you embracing nuclear power as a clean, green option to deal with greenhouse emissions. IAN MACFARLANE: I've never been sceptical about lowering our CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions. The issue really is how we best do that and what sort of science we employ to do it. We can go down the route of a mix of renewables plus low emission coal, but without nuclear we're really trying to combat the issue of low emissions with one arm tied behind our back. KERRY O’BRIEN: Well, the committee has made very clear that it believes that nuclear power only becomes a commercial, viable option if the cost of electricity, as it's currently supplied to us, is raised. That is, if there is an emissions trading scheme, a tax on carbon. Now you have so far spoken very strongly against any tax on carbon. In fact, you've promised you'd never be a part of it. So why the change on that front? Are you now prepared to embrace an emissions trading tax? IAN MACFARLANE: Well, we're certainly prepared to consider an emissions trading system providing the whole globe is involved in it. A national carbon trading scheme or a carbon trading scheme such as the failed Kyoto scheme will not help reduce emissions and what it will do, though, is reduce Australia's competitiveness and therefore costs us jobs and economic growth. So the reality is that, yes, we are prepared to consider a global carbon trading scheme and such a scheme would make nuclear power viable in Australia but, also, if we require even without such a trading scheme that future power stations lower their emissions, that is to say, to lower them from the high levels we see from coal fired power stations now, through the introduction of low emission technology, then nuclear power will be more than competitive with fossil based fuel. Of course, nuclear power is already much more competitive, much cheaper than renewable energies such as wind and solar. KERRY O’BRIEN: You have described nuclear as clean and green. What does it say to you that after 50 years, or 50 years after the first nuclear power station was developed, there is still not one single permanent storage facility for high level nuclear waste anywhere in the world? IAN MACFARLANE: Well, it says two things. Firstly, that until the waste is around about 40 years old, it's not required to be put in a deep geological repository and, secondly, because of some of the scare tactics employed, particularly by the green movement, the construction of those repositories have been slowed down. But we will see those repositories built. In fact, the first will be built in Europe within the next decade. KERRY O’BRIEN: America has been trying to build a high level waste storage site in Nevada for nearly 20 years. So far it's cost $10 billion and will ultimately cost tens of billions of dollars more. Your Government has spent years trying to establish a site for even low level waste and you still don't have one. If no one wants a low level waste dump in Australia how on earth are you going to sell a high level one when there isn’t one yet anywhere in the world? IAN MACFARLANE: The reality is, we will build a low to medium level nuclear waste repository facility in Australia. We have to. We have the situation where low and medium level waste is being stored in containers in car parks of public hospitals, in the basements of buildings and the only thing that has prevented this repository being built in Australia to date has been the politicking, particularly of state premiers. We have the geological sites to do it, we certainly understand the science and what is required to do it, and what has prevented us to date is the politics. The reality is, though, that people continue to use nuclear medicine and those nuclear wastes from that treatment continue to build up and we will have to build that repository and I'm confident that this Government will, in the next few years, begin work on that repository. KERRY O’BRIEN: The task force says, it paints a picture of 25 nuclear power stations up and running over the next 30 years; most of those nuclear stations would obviously be on the east coast, because that's where the population is. Do you really think Australians will easily embrace that concept, nuclear power stations built near population centres? IAN MACFARLANE: Well, nuclear power stations don't need to be built near population centres as we've seen with the siting of coal fired power stations. They tend to be away from densely populated areas. The modern technology with nuclear power stations will lower their requirements in terms of water and so some of the furphies that we've seen, for instance, from Peter Beattie about the impact that they will have on the Great Barrier Reef are just that modern nuclear power stations can be sited away from populations, just as coal fired power stations are. Where those power stations are sited will be decided on the commercial proposals that are put forward and in the end by the community agreeing that they pose no real risk. KERRY O’BRIEN: Isn't it true that nuclear power stations would be sited roughly similarly to where coal fired power stations now are, in which case, would you explain to the people of Newcastle that a nuclear power station on the shores of Lake Macquarie is not near their population centre in the event of a nuclear accident? IAN MACFARLANE: Nuclear power stations are far more flexible in the way they can be sited. They require water for cooling but they don't have to be sited on the coal seam itself. So the opportunities are to site these power stations away from populated centres and again, I think this is part of the debate where people want to move the debate forward from having a sensible debate about whether or not we consider nuclear power as to whether or not there's going to be one in their backyard. The reality is that until we explain to people all the facts relating to where you can site nuclear power stations, what the impact they have on or lack of impact they have on the surrounding communities are, then people will revert to the misinformation that is currently being peddled by those people opposed to any consideration of nuclear power. KERRY O’BRIEN: Sellafield in the United Kingdom in April last year, a nuclear power station, 20 metric tonnes of uranium, 160 kilograms of plutonium dissolved in acid and leaked from a cracked pipe for months before it was discovered. Another incident at the Forsmark nuclear plant in Sweden just a few months ago, in which a former nuclear plant construction chief says only pure luck prevented a meltdown like Chernobyl. IAN MACFARLANE: The reality is that whilst incidents occur, they are contained and the impact on the environment and on human life is far greater than what we know as traditional sources of energy from coal fired power stations or hydroelectricity. KERRY O’BRIEN: Both you and the Prime Minister have made plain your support for nuclear power in Australia. Is it any surprise, then, that the task force set up by the Prime Minister, including three nuclear physicists, chaired by a man who was a director of Ansto, whose own submission to this task force argued in favour of nuclear power, would come down in favour of the nuclear power itself? IAN MACFARLANE: You wouldn't form a committee made up of farmers or plumbers or electricians to look at nuclear energy. You'd form a committee of people who actually understood the issue in the detail that’s needed so they can assess the reports and submissions that are made to them. Those experts have done just that and they've put together a report which is a report of experts to the Prime Minister. KERRY O’BRIEN: I'd suggest to you again, is it really any surprise that the task force set up by this Government and the Prime Minister and you as Industry Minister have both publicly embraced nuclear power, that the findings of this report would not back up what you believe? IAN MACFARLANE: It's a report prepared by experts and those experiments were chosen across the field in Australia and we offered the opportunity for other people to be involved and they declined. But there's no doubting the qualities and the qualifications of those people who prepared the report. The report is a factual report, we did set out to produce a factual report about nuclear energy and the Prime Minister wanted a factual report so that he then had a document that the community could debate over the coming years as we consider whether or not nuclear energy will be part of our future low emissions energy mix. KERRY O’BRIEN: Thanks very much for talking with us. IAN MACFARLANE: Pleasure, Kerry. ***************************************************************** 42 AU ABC: Nuclear reactor sites flexible, Macfarlane says. 21/11/2006. ABC News Online [The nuclear power review says power stations need to be built near major centres and a water source.] The nuclear power review says power stations need to be built near major centres and a water source. [ border=] Nuclear reactor sites flexible, Macfarlane says The federal Industry Minister, Ian Macfarlane, says nuclear power stations do not have to be built near major population centres. The Government's nuclear power review has found nuclear energy is a practical option for Australia, even though it is more expensive than coal power. The report says nuclear power stations need to be built near major centres and a water source. Mr Macfarlane has told the ABC's 7:30 Report that nuclear reactors are safe and their locations are flexible. "Modern nuclear power stations can be sited away from populations just as coal-fired power stations are," he said. "Where those power stations are sited will be decided on the commercial proposals that are put forward and in the end by the community agreeing that they pose no real risk." Environment lobby groups have condemned the report. Alan Marr, from the Wilderness Society, says the Prime Minister "got the report he wanted". "Basically a public relations vehicle to push the whole nuclear disaster down Australia's throat," he said. While they acknowledge it is cleaner than coal, environmentalists say it will not supply enough power and will take too long to get off the ground. David Noonan, from the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), says the community will not support reactors being built relatively close to major population centres. "There's no way the Australian community will accept high-level nuclear reactor risks," he said. "There's no way we will accept being postcoded for a high-level nuclear waste dump." Scientist Barney Foran from the Australian National University (ANU) says that every reactor will produce 100 tonnes of radioactive waste a year. "Six-thousand tonnes of hot waste will need to be dealt with and dealt with effectively." Nevertheless, the chamber of commerce and the mining industry are supportive. Peter Hendy, of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), says they regard nuclear energy as a "genuinely viable option". Mitch Hooke from the Minerals Council of Australia says the uranium industry can look forward to a healthy future. "It lays a foundation to removing the restrictions on the expansion of the uranium industry in Australia," he said. In other developments: + The Western Australian Premier, Alan Carpenter, says if Australia turns to nuclear energy at least one nuclear power station will be built in the state. (Full Story) + The South Australian Government will consider banning nuclear power stations. (Full Story) + Environmentalists have attacked today's report on nuclear power and uranium mining. (Full Story) + The Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, says he will carefully study a new report into nuclear power in Australia, but he remains opposed to the concept. (Full Story) + The mining industry has welcomed the review of nuclear energy in Australia, saying the debate so far has been hijacked by misinformation. (Full Story) + Federal Environment Minister Senator Ian Campbell has accused opponents of scaremongering by claiming proposed new laws will allow Australia to import nuclear waste that is generated in other countries. (Full Story) + The Federal Government's review of uranium mining and nuclear power has found nuclear energy is a practical option for Australia. (Full Story) Related Links: + Nuclear power a practical option for AustraliaOpinion piece by Review head Ziggy Switkowski ***************************************************************** 43 AU ABC: States reject nuclear power report AM - Wednesday, 22 November , 2006 08:00:00 Reporter: Gillian Bradford TONY EASTLEY: If the States have anything to do with it, yesterday's report by the Prime Minister's Nuclear Taskforce will end up on a shelf or in a circular filing bin. The government panel, headed by Dr Ziggy Switkowski, found it would be possible to build 25 nuclear power stations around the country by the year 2050. But he's had a frosty response from the States who want no part in it. And it's not just Labor Premiers unhappy with the nuclear option; Liberal opposition leaders are also distancing themselves from the Prime Minister in ruling out nuclear power. From Canberra, Gillian Bradford reports. GILLIAN BRADFORD: The report's in the Federal Government's hands and it's now up to the Prime Minister John Howard to decide if he wants to pursue a nuclear future. His panel of experts, headed by Dr Ziggy Switkowski, has found there are no major barriers and nuclear power does become cost effective if you factor in the greenhouse costs of relying on coal-fired energy. But the report hasn't swayed the state Labor governments who have nothing good to say about the nuclear option. New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma. MORRIS IEMMA: While ever I'm Premier, there will not be nuclear power stations in New South Wales. We have legislation in place that bans them, and we're not changing that at all. GILLIAN BRADFORD: Now, you might have legislation, but how safe a constitutional ground are you really on? MORRIS IEMMA: Well, we've got our own legislation. Now, obviously if the Commonwealth wants to pick a fight with the States on this type of legislation, then we will stand up for the people of New South Wales. Our legislation is in place, our policy is in place, and I'm not changing it. While ever I'm Premier, and the State Labor Government is here, we are not embracing nuclear power. GILLIAN BRADFORD: Queensland's Premier Peter Beattie and Victoria's Steve Bracks also want nothing to do with nuclear power stations. And it's not just the Labor premiers who are unenthusiastic. While the conservative oppositions are less strident in their criticism of nuclear, none of them see any gain in championing the nuclear option. Queensland's Opposition leader, Jeff Seeney. JEFF SEENEY: We have got such a wonderful opportunity with the mouth of the mine coal-fired power stations that have been the base of Queensland's economy now for many years. There would have to be some sort of a huge subsidy for nuclear power for it to compete with that. GILLIAN BRADFORD: The nuclear issue has even made a late appearance in Victoria's election campaign. There's already legislation in that State prohibiting nuclear power stations, and the Liberals have now joined Labor in promising voters a nuclear-free future. The Liberals Energy spokesman is Philip Davis. PHILIP DAVIS: The Liberal Party in Victoria is certainly not interested in promoting nuclear power, because we have a better resource for Victoria. It is simply not an issue on our agenda. And why should it be? If you have the second largest deposit of brown coal in the world, why would you be interested in going nuclear at a significant cost and impact to the Victorian economy? TONY EASTLEY: Victoria's Opposition Energy spokesman, Philip Davis. ***************************************************************** 44 AU ABC: Nuclear reactors destined for major cities, experts say AM - Wednesday, 22 November , 2006 08:04:00 Reporter: Conor Duffy TONY EASTLEY: Could a nuclear power plant be coming to a town near you? The Federal Government's Energy Inquiry found that Australia could have a viable nuclear power industry producing more than one third of Australia's electricity by 2050. The Government is playing down the possibility that those reactors would need to be near a major city, but experts say a populated area may be the only place for them. AM's Conor Duffy has been looking into where the nuclear reactors could be built. CONOR DUFFY: If Australia does decide to go down the nuclear path, the next big hurdle will be deciding where to build the reactors. Given the current level of public opposition to nuclear power, convincing a community to accept one in their backyard is sure to be a tough sell. But while it may be politically desirable to locate reactors away from populated areas, Barney Foran from the Australian National University says it makes more sense to have them in capital cities. BARNEY FORAN: Well, I think they've got to be near a lot of water, generally. That means, probably, they've got to be on an estuary or close to the coast. And if you're thinking about that then you start to allocate them five each to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, and because there's a huge amount of waste heat with all of these processes you'd probably back them onto a desalinisation, a water desalinisation plant. And that means, you know, because of the difficulty in moving water around that you've got to have them pretty close in to the urban areas. CONOR DUFFY: He says the reactors don't need to be spread evenly across the cities, meaning a nuclear power station in Sydney could supply energy users in Melbourne. BARNEY FORAN: No, they don't have to, not from an electricity point of view, you know, we've got a national grid and electricity can be transported over long distances. But water's the key issue, because they do not a lot of water for their steam turbines and for cooling. CONOR DUFFY: Convincing a city to embrace nuclear power for their own needs may be hard enough. Convincing people in Sydney to take on a nuclear plant to supply another city may be even more difficult. BARNEY FORAN: This is the key point about nuclear, everyone's happy to talk about it in a hypothetical, but the Ziggy report is talking about 25 of them, and you're not going to put 'em at Bourke, 'cause there's no water there, so, you know, it's the coast and in the major urban areas. CONOR DUFFY: Dr Colin Keay, a retired Professor of Physics from Newcastle University, is a passionate nuclear advocate. He agrees capital cities are the best places for reactors. COLIN KEAY: I don't think this five plus five plus five business is necessarily the best way of going about, it's more like a lottery approach. CONOR DUFFY: How do you mean by a lottery? COLIN KEAY: Well, you just divvy out the prizes according to the number of tickets sold. The number of tickets sold being the number of people involved, and big cities of course have got millions of people, and so it would seem to be natural to put it there. TONY EASTLEY: Dr Colin Keay ending that report from Conor Duffy. ***************************************************************** 45 The Australian: Premier says no to nuclear power | | + NEWS.com.au | This story is from our news.com.aunetwork Source: The Australian November 21, 2006 QUEENSLAND Premier Peter Beattie says using nuclear power in Australia would be "crazy" because it would damage the environment and the economy. The State Government would fight any federal moves to introduce it, he said today. Mr Beattie was commenting on a review of Australia's uranium industry by former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski, which says nuclear energy is a practical option and the country could support 25 nuclear power plants. Mr Switkowski says nuclear power could be an option if the economics of production take into account its environmental benefits. But Mr Beattie said nuclear power used too much water. "My government does not support nuclear reactors in Queensland,'' he said today. "One of the most dishonest parts of this report is that (there's) no ... clear identification of where the sites will be, and the reality is that you need a lot of water. "We are now in our worst drought in 100 years, so that's crazy.'' Using sea water instead of fresh water to cool reactors would only raise sea temperatures in the coastal areas near nuclear power plants' discharge points and could damage the marine ecosystem, he said. Mr Beattie acknowledged the Federal Government would probably have the legal power to overrule the states on the issue but said his government would fight it. Clean coal technology was the energy source of the future, he said. "In a country that has 250 to 300 years supply of coal, this is a crazy proposal,'' Mr Beattie said. "Why would we give up the most efficient and cheap source of energy, that is coal, and replace it with nuclear when we haven't resolved the disposal issues? "We will fight this proposal by the Federal Government every step of the way. "It is not in the interests of the economy. It is not in the interests of jobs and it's not in the interests of the environment.'' Privacy Terms © The Australian ***************************************************************** 46 Guardian Unlimited: Ex-Russian spy may have radioactive poisoning Doctors narrow cause of spy's illness Staff and agencies Tuesday November 21, 2006 [Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko at the University College Hospital, in central London] Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko at the University College Hospital, in central London. Photo: Handout/Getty Doctors treating the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko said tonight they could not rule out the possibility that he was poisoned with radioactive thallium. After a period of confusion during which the University College hospital trust appeared to rule out thallium - contradicting the diagnosis of the clinical toxicologist called in to examine the dissident - the trust later clarified that it was unlikely Mr Litvinenko's illness was caused by thallium sulphate poisoning. "We cannot rule out the possibility that Mr Litvinenko's condition was caused by a radioactive material - including radioactive thallium - although not all of his signs and symptoms are consistent with radiation toxicity," the hospital said in a statement. "Further tests will be carried out to establish whether or not there is a single cause for Mr Litvinenko's condition." Amit Nathwani, who is treating Mr Litvinenko, appealed to media outside the hospital for restraint in reporting the illness of his patient, whose condition had not worsened in the past 24 hours, he said. "He has been transferred to the intensive care unit for careful observation on his heart. This is a precautionary measure." He said it might never be known what was used to poison his patient. Earlier today Professor John Henry, who saw Mr Litvinenko at the weekend, told media that the 43-year-old's condition was consistent with being poisoned by radioactive thallium. Prof Henry said the damage to the ex-security agent's bone marrow indicated that he had ingested the radioactive form of the poison. In its non-radioactive form, thallium is highly toxic and is used as an ant and rat poison. The radioactive variant is approved for medical use in very small doses, for example in imaging the heart. Unlike non-radioactive thallium, high doses cause damage to the blood cells. "The thallium is the least of it - the radioactivity seems more important," Prof Henry said. "He may need a bone marrow transplant to get him better." Yesterday, he had warned: "At the moment he's got liver damage and other problems - his white cell count is low. It is grim, but where there's life, there's hope." Martin Wilkins, a professor of clinical pharmacology at Imperial College in London, said the use of radioactive thallium would explain Mr Litvinenko's anaemia. However, he said the radioactive version of the poison would have been a difficult substance to transport and store. "To give someone a sufficient dose to cause toxicity to the bone marrow, there would be issues around how you would transport it in terms of shielding the carrier from harm and getting it there in sufficient time that the radiation didn't decay," he said. Family and friends of Mr Litvinenko yesterday released a photograph of him in his hospital bed as a graphic illustration of the effects of the poison. Propped up on pillows, the picture shows that the 43-year-old's grey hair has fallen out and his skin is pallid and waxy. He is surrounded by medical apparatus including a life support machine and two intravenous drips. Patches on his chest are for constant monitoring by doctors in the intensive care unit, where he was placed amid fears he could suffer a catastrophic organ failure. The poisoning of Mr Litvinenko, who defected to Britain in 2000, is being investigated by Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch. Yesteray, Oleg Gordievsky, the most senior KGB officer to defect to Britain, said he had no doubt who was responsible. "Only the KGB can do it," he said, referring to the Russian security service - the Federal Security Service, or FSB - by its Soviet title. "They have been planning it for months ... it was obviously sanctioned [by the Kremlin]." Mr Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin's Kremlin, accused the FSB of blowing up a block of flats in 1999 so they could blame Chechen separatists and justify a new war in Chechnya. The claim that Russia was responsible for the poisoning was dismissed in Moscow. "There is no need to comment on statements that are pure nonsense," Dmitry Petrov, a Kremlin spokesman, said. The Foreign Intelligence Service, another KGB successor, has also denied any role. Mr Litvinenko is an ally of Boris Berezovsky, the London based multi-millionaire and another critic of Mr Putin. A former FSB lieutenant colonel, Mr Litvinenko fled to Britain after alleging that he had been ordered to kill Mr Berezovsky, who was at his bedside yesterday. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 47 Las Vegas SUN: CDC to release genetic results in Fallon cancer cluster study Today: November 21, 2006 at 10:0:17 PST ASSOCIATED PRESS FALLON, Nev. (AP) - The results of genetic testing conducted as part of an investigation into a child leukemia cluster in Fallon will be released next week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced. Scientists with the CDC took DNA samples from study participants to try to determine if genetics contributed to the cancer outbreak. The CDC will release the results Nov. 29 at a public forum on the Fallon campus of Western Nevada Community College. "This is in fact the genetic testing results CDC said would be studied in 2003," said Rachel Powell, media officer for the CDC, told the Lahontan Valley News. Since 1997, 17 children with ties to Fallon have been diagnosed with leukemia. Three have died. The last addition to the cluster, a toddler, was reported in December 2004. It came two years after the 16th case was reported. According to the Nevada Division of Health, there must be a five-year span between cases in order for the cluster to be declared over. State health officials began an investigation in 2000 when a rise in childhood leukemia cases in Fallon came to its attention. After nine cases were diagnosed in one year, it became a topic of importance to the CDC and the investigation went back to subsequent years where more cases were found in the area. Several theories about the cause of the cluster have been explored, but none have been scientifically conclusive. Substantial testing of the water supply found arsenic levels higher than the recommended federal guidelines. Urine and blood samples were taken from 14 of the 17 leukemia case families and randomly selected comparison families in the community. Approximately 205 people gave samples to be studied. Environmental samples, including indoor air, play yard soil, household dust and tap water samples were taken from all participants' homes for the study. Although significant levels of arsenic were recorded, the CDC did not find a correlation between arsenic and the leukemia cases. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency came to the same conclusion in September 2005. High levels of tungsten also were found during the investigation. In October 2005, Arkansas cancer researcher Jill James said her preliminary data indicated children of Fallon's leukemia cluster may be genetically and metabolically predisposed to an increased risk of damage from environmental contaminants found in the area. Her research is ongoing. This spring, a group of scientists presented a study that suggests arsenic and tungsten could cause genetic changes related to the development of leukemia and brain cancer. --- Information from: Lahontan Valley News, http://www.lahontanvalleynews.com All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 48 Sydney Morning Herald: Industry to rely on overseas workers - www.smh.com.au Jessica Irvine November 22, 2006 AUSTRALIA lacks the skilled workers to staff one nuclear power plant, let alone 25, and will be heavily reliant on foreign workers and investors to build a domestic nuclear power industry. To establish a plant by 2020, significant investment in education and training, along with substantial skilled migration, would need to start immediately, the report says. As a first priority, 200 to 300 specialist lawyers and regulators would be needed to design and implement the necessary regulatory regime. These specialists would probably come from overseas. In the longer term, a workforce of about 12,500 would be needed to staff the 25 nuclear plants, including engineers, radiation specialists and safety monitors, based on overseas staffing. Enrichment facilities are even more labour intensive, with one facility in France employing 1500. The report predicted that at least 20 Australian nuclear graduates would be needed each year to staff nuclear plants. Training a generation of nuclear specialists will not be cheap. "The resources required for nuclear [research and development] are considerable," the report says. "If Australia moves beyond uranium mining, then public spending on nuclear energy-related R&D will need to increase significantly." At present Australia produces only a handful of nuclear studies graduates each year. Because of its nuclear-free past, Australia's spending on nuclear energy research and development is negligible compared with other developing economies. As a percentage of gross domestic product, Japan spends 300 times more than Australia, the US 17 times, and Britain 13.5 times. With no home-grown expertise in building nuclear reactors, foreign crews would be required to build at least the first five Australian reactors, the chairman of the taskforce, Ziggy Switkowski, predicted. Potential candidates included Toshiba of Japan, Framatome of France and GE Energy of the US. After those first five were successfully built, Australian electricity suppliers such as AGL, Origin and Alinta would jump on board and switch from producing coal-fired electricity to nuclear energy, Dr Switkowski predicted. Dr Switkowski, who is a PhD-qualified nuclear physicist, said he expected Australians would be attracted to employment in the nuclear industry. "I think that for the first nuclear reactor in Australia overwhelmingly they will be Australians," Dr Switkowski said. Martin Sevior, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne's school of physics who did his PhD under the same supervisor as Dr Switkowski, said enthusiasm for nuclear studies had waned after the Chernobyl disaster. Programs to train nuclear engineers would have to be designed from scratch. "We would need to develop new programs basically based on overseas programs," Dr Sevior said. The head of the department of nuclear physics at the Australian National University, Professor George Dracoulis, said increasing awareness of climate change would make it easier to attract students. "The environmental factor is very important, and that is where some of the students' interest comes from," said Dr Dracoulis, a member of the taskforce. The university hopes to attract between five and 10 students for a new master of science degree focusing on nuclear issues that starts next year. Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 49 Tucson Citizen: Local permit on toxic beryllium looser, not tighter www.tucsoncitizen.com Teen Columnist: ANDRES CANO Published: 11.21.2006 After seven years of negotiations, Pima County has issued a new air-quality permit to Brush Ceramic Products, a South Side plant blamed for the incurable lung disease afflicting at least 35 former employees. Brush uses beryllium in all its products. The metal, the fourth element in the atomic chart, is a critical component in nuclear bombs and ceramics manufacturing. Beryllium in its natural state is harmless. But, since 1979, the company has worked with beryllium oxide, which is toxic. For nearly two decades, residents have voiced concerns.  People question whether a building where a deadly toxin is used should be in an urban setting, surrounded by six schools and in front of a new housing development. Two former Brush workers, including my grandmother Rosa Maldonado, have died of chronic beryllium disease, which they contracted while working at the plant. Last week, Brush officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Their plant has a record of safe beryllium emissions, but two incidents have sparked concern. In 1994, an unquantified amount of beryllium leaked from a ventilation duct that was not tightly sealed. Inspectors for the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality were so nervous about toxicity at the plant that they would not take air samples, a county memo later revealed. The county's original report on this leak is missing. But officials say if signs of beryllium were noted, Brush - not county workers - would have been directed to take samples. When Brush inspectors did perform a check, they reported no evidence of toxic dust. Last year, an air duct swipe test in Sunnyside High School's auditorium found traces of beryllium - 0.00425 micrograms per square centimeter. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets emissions limits at 10 micrograms in a 24-hour period. County environmental officials say school officials did not use a valid testing method. Sunnyside officials say the beryllium likely had accumulated over 15 years. And because staff and student access to the auditorium is limited, they don't suspect a hazard was posed. The Arizona Department of Health Services also determined that Sunnyside students and employees were unlikely to have inhaled beryllium. During the controversy, Dr. Joseph DeNardi of Ohio was quoted as saying people allergic to beryllium could get chronic beryllium disease no matter how little they inhale. EPA officials say only a small percentage of people are allergic to beryllium, but how much of the metal is needed to trigger an allergic reaction is unclear. Yet inspection requirements for Brush have been reduced in the new county permit, which took effect two weeks ago. Beryllium stack tests now must be done only once a year rather than four times a year. Brush also is free to arrange its own testing with an independent company, on its preferred testing date. And the plant is allowed up to 72 hours to report a beryllium spill. The Environmental Justice Action Group had fought for a stricter permit or zero-emission beryllium policy. But the new permit instead allows the multimillion dollar company more leeway. Whether this permit ensures the public and employees' safety is the question that remains. Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her column runs Tuesdays and Fridays.Teen columnist Andres Cano is a sophomore at City High School. E-mail: ndrs_cano@yahoo.com. Copyright © 2006 Tucson Citizen ***************************************************************** 50 BP&SB: Radioactive material removed from BU Tuesday November 21, 2006 Binghamton University, working with a private company and the New York state Department of Health, is removing some radioactive material from the campus today. The material, which is in a sealed container, was used in a science lab in the Science I building on the campus, Gail Glover, a university spokeswoman, said. Workers are transferring the material to a transportation container for removal from the campus, she said. 2006 Binghamton Press &Sun-Bulletin ***************************************************************** 51 AFP: Former Russian spy may have been poisoned by radioactive thallium - Tue Nov 21, 7:12 AM ET LONDON (AFP) - Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko may have been poisoned with "radioactive thallium" which is even harder to treat than regular thallium, a toxic metal, the toxicologist treating him has said. "Mr. Litvinenko's got some symptoms consistent with thallium poisoning, and he's also got symptoms consistent with some other type of poisoning. So it's not 100 percent thallium," John Henry told reporters Tuesday outside the University College Hospital in central London where Litvinenko is being treated. When pressed if it may be a poison cocktail, he replied: "It could be radioactive thallium." However, he warned that if it was radioactive thallium with a short half life, traces may now be gone from his body and the exact poison may never be known. "Radioactive thallium adds a new dimension to this case. It means his bone marrow is at very high risk, and we have to see how his cells recover," he said. "It's very difficult to treat because you have to rely on the body's natural resilience. He may need a bone marrow transplant to get him better," Henry added. "Radioactivity damages cells, and so cells begin to die. The cells that are affected most are in the gut and in the blood. And that is why his (white) blood (cell) counts have gone down to zero," he said. Though he is able to talk and even make jokes, it may be a long time before doctors know if he is in the clear, he said. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 52 AFP: Thallium 'unlikely cause' of ex-Russian spy's poisoning mystery Tuesday November 21, 07:36 PM By Robin Millard [Dr Amit Nathwani addresses the media outside the hospital] LONDON (AFP) - Thallium poisoning is "unlikely" to be the cause of a former Russian spy's serious condition, the London hospital treating him said, as the mystery of how and why he was poisoned continued. Alexander Litvinenko, 43, remains in intensive care and under police guard while experts try to unravel what type of poisoning caused him to fall so ill and police detectives try to uncover who or what was behind it. Based on toxicology test results received Tuesday and Litvinenko's NPower Media Test Acquisition Nov 2006 MPU, advert_format=Flash MPU, advert_id=9241, site=yahoo_news -->[''] [ src=] clinical features, "thallium poisoning is an unlikely cause of his current condition", University College Hospital (UCH) in central London said in a statement. The fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin is suffering a disturbance in his heartbeat and is in intensive care receiving cardiac monitoring and specialist support in areas such as nutrition and pain relief. He can also be more effectively isolated there to protect him against infection following the damage to his immune system. Doctor Amit Nathwani, the consultant caring for Litvinenko, told reporters outside the hospital: "It is possible that he may not have been poisoned with thallium, although we cannot completely exclude this because of the timing of his presentation at our hospital," he said. He was admitted to Barnet Hospital in north London after taking ill on November 1. He was later sent to UCH. "His symptoms are slightly odd for thallium poisoning and the levels of thallium we are able to detect are not the kind of levels you would see in toxicity," Nathwani said. "We are exploring other possibilities and other avenues, but it is also quite possible that we may never find the ultimate cause." Asked about possible radioactive poisoning, he said: "That's been considered, it has not been excluded." Leading toxicologist Doctor John Henry earlier told reporters outside the hospital that radioactive thallium could have been the cause. "It could be radioactive thallium," he said, cautioning that all traces of the poison could disappear from the body three weeks after falling ill. Litvinenko told the BBC's Russian service on November 11 that he fell ill hours after receiving a document about the suspicious October murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, according to a transcript of the interview released Tuesday. Friends of Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the Soviet KGB, suspect that the FSB targeted the outspoken defector, now a British citizen. Controversial Russian business oligarch Boris Berezovsky, also in exile in Britain, told AFP: "I don't have any doubts. For sure, it's the Kremlin who is behind that. Litvinenko is sure it was a direct order from Putin." The Russian authorities have denied any involvement. British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Tuesday she had not discussed the case with Moscow. London's Metropolitan Police said Monday that Litvinenko's case has been transferred to the Counter-Terrorism Command, suggesting how seriously the case was being taken. Police have been interviewing possible witnesses, including the victim, examining his movements around the time of the apparent poisoning, and closed-circuit television footage. The ex-secret agent has lost his hair and despite his weak condition, is talking and occasionally making jokes. Pictures from the hospital showed him looking gaunt and weak, propped up on pillows wearing a green hospital robe, with his bald head tilted slightly and his eyes half open. He was surrounded by machines and tubes and patches were stuck on his chest. Alexander Goldfarb, a friend who helped Litvinenko defect to Britain in 2000, has said Litvinenko had confirmed to him that he had "briefly" met two Russian men for tea in a hotel in central London on November 1. He then met Italian academic Mario Scaramella, a consultant to an inquiry set up by the Italian parliament to investigate KGB activities in Italy, in a sushi restaurant. British newspapers said that Scaramella gave Litvinenko a document with information on the Politkovskaya murder. After meeting the Italian, he began to feel ill, though Litvinenko's friends have dismissed any suggestion that the Italian was involved. One of the two Russian men who met with Litvinenko was Andrei Lugovoy, a one-time head of security at a television station owned by Berezovsky, according to The Daily Telegraph. The newspaper reported that Litvinenko knew Lugovoy from Moscow but did not know the other man, identified only as Vladimir. Litvinenko said his contact at the restaurant, whom he did not name in the BBC interview, handed him papers in which a person "was named, who apparently might be connected to the murder of Anna Politkovskaya". He said he would hand the papers, which are in English, to her employer Novaya Gazeta and to the police when he recovers and wondered whether the poisoning and the meeting were "connected". He said he had not had enough time to study them properly because he soon fell sick. AFP ***************************************************************** 53 Guardian Unlimited: Report: Australia Should End Limits From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday November 21, 2006 4:31 AM By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press Writer CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - A government report on Tuesday recommended Australia lift its long-standing restrictions on the export and enrichment of uranium, which it imposed to ensure the mineral is not used to develop nuclear weapons and to allay concerns about radioactive waste disposal. Australia, which has the world's largest deposits of uranium, only allows three uranium mines to operate in the country, bringing in about $441 million a year. The report said Australia could add another $1.4 billion annually to its uranium mining industry if federal and state governments lifted restrictions on ore enrichment. ``Consultations revealed support for the expansion of Australian mining and export of uranium,'' the report said. ``Skill shortages and government policies restricting the growth of the industry should be urgently addressed.'' ``Current legal and regulatory impediments should be removed,'' the report said. Prime Minister John Howard commissioned the wide-ranging investigation of uranium in June in what observers said was a bid to soften public opposition to an expansion of the contentious uranium export trade. His center-right coalition, which will attempt to win a fifth three-year term in government next year, is also under fire for refusing to ratify the Kyoto agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental groups pre-empted the release of the report with Greenpeace declaring there was no environmental or economic justification for nuclear energy. Sales of uranium are expected to soar with a recent agreement to supply the mineral to China's burgeoning energy market. Australia is also considering selling uranium to India to meet its growing energy demands despite New Delhi's refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The report said expanding uranium mining would also lessen the country's dependence on coal, which it uses to generate most of its electricity, making it the world's worst greenhouse gas polluter per capita. Though generating nuclear power would be between 20 to 50 percent more expensive than coal- or gas-fired power, the report said costs would come down as the nuclear power industry became more competitive. Nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski, the head of the six-member investigation team that produced the report, said meeting Australia's rising energy demands while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be more expensive without nuclear power. Australia and the United States are the only industrialized nations to refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Howard has said that committing to carbon pollution reduction targets would unfairly disadvantage Australia because developing countries such as China and India have not been given targets under Kyoto. However, Howard has said Australia would join a global system of Kyoto-style carbon trading if China and India were also part of it. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 54 Sydney Morning Herald: Waste site a long way down the track - National - smh.com.au www.smh.com.au Stephanie Peatling November 22, 2006 THERE is no shortage of suitable areas to store the waste from nuclear reactors built in Australia, the Federal Government's nuclear report has found, but says they will not need to be selected for decades. The criteria for waste storage areas included that they be away from communities, and on geologically stable ground with no history of water movement through the earth, the report said. "The country structure is such that just about every regional part of the continent satisfies these criteria," said the taskforce's chairman, Ziggy Switkowski. Should the Federal Government choose to explore nuclear power the problem of waste storage could prove to be extremely difficult. It has not found a site to store the small amounts of low- to medium-level nuclear waste produced from research and medical institutions. It abandoned plans to store waste in South Australia after sustained public opposition. There are currently plans to name a site in the Northern Territory, possibly on land now managed by indigenous people. State Labor governments remain vehemently opposed to having nuclear waste dumps on their land, a situation that is unlikely to change. The report acknowledged that although many countries had plans for the storage of radioactive waste, "no country has yet implemented permanent underground disposal of high-level radioactive waste". Dr Switkowski also stressed the need for communities to be consulted on any plans for nuclear waste storage, citing the continuing battle by the United States Government to store waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. It has spent billions of dollars over 20 years, and no decision has been reached. Waste needs to be stored in two stages: as it is treated to make it safe for future storage, and again when it is permanently stored. Dr Switkowski said Australia could avoid discussion of the location of waste dump sites for several years even after plants began operating. "Once it comes out of the reactor it might need to be treated for tens of years before being stored for hundreds of years," Dr Switkowski said. Burying it more than one kilometre underground was the most likely system of storage, he said. The afterlife of a nuclear power plant is also a serious consideration. Other countries typically allocate between 15 and 20 per cent of the initial cost of a reactor to safely decommissioning it at the end of its life. The average plant is used for 40 to 60 years. The safety of nuclear plants is also a big concern, and the taskforce visited the sites of nuclear accidents at Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Three Mile Island in the US as part of its work. The report stressed that the kind of reactor that had been built at Chernobyl was never used in developed countries and had been superseded. The report suggested the risk to people's health from being exposed to the background radiation produced by a nuclear power plant was significantly lower than smoking 20 cigarettes a day, driving, owning firearms or a lightning strike, but higher than being bitten by a snake or shark. If Australia did build the 25 reactors suggested by one scenario set out in the report, the taskforce calculated there would be a risk of "one serious core-damaging incident per 4000 years of operations and a one in 40,000 years event that might see off-site release of radioactive material". Complying with a stricter international safety code would further reduce the risk, the report said. "Humans continually expose themselves to, or have imposed on them, the risk of injury or fatality," the report said. "Perceptions are important in determining whether risks for hazardous facilities are acceptable. Risks of greatest concern are ones borne involuntarily, especially human activities (rather than natural events) that could have potentially catastrophic consequences. Nuclear accidents are in this category." But the report stressed there was "every reason to be confident of Australia's health and safety systems and the continued good performance in an expanded uranium mining industry and the nuclear fuel cycle". | | Copyright © 2006. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 55 AU ABC: Nuclear energy debate sparks NT waste dump fears ABC Northern Territory Wednesday, 22 November 2006. 10:15 (AEDT)Wednesday, 22 November Environmentalists fear the Northern Territory could end up hosting a high level radioactive waste repository if a nuclear energy industry is established in Australia. A Government-commissioned review has found that with the appropriate tax and investment structures nuclear energy could be economically viable in 15 years. Last year, the Federal Government announced that one of three sites in the Territory would host a low to intermediate level nuclear waste repository. Tim Collins from the Arid Lands Environment Centre says that would likely be upgraded if nuclear energy became a reality. "Any talk of putting it in central Australia isn't based on scientific evidence, it's based on a principle of let's just put it out there because it's in the middle of nowhere and no-one lives out there, which is just basically untrue," he said. ***************************************************************** 56 Deseret News: What's in an arena's name? [deseretnews.com] Tuesday, November 21, 2006 Deseret Morning News editorial Let it roll off your tongue. EnergySolutions Arena. It rolls kind of like a marble on shag carpet, doesn't it? This is going to take awhile. By now, people understand the enormous financial outlay necessary to operate a major sports franchise. Tall guys who put basketballs through hoops do not come cheaply. Team owners have to find money any way they can, and that is their prerogative. The days of altruistic arena names honoring veterans or recognizing unique community aspects or notable locals — remember the Salt Palace Acord Arena? — have gone the way of the 50-cent drive-in movie. But after 15 years, the Delta Center has become a part of the culture. Not only do people casually refer to it as the venue for games and concerts, it adorns all northbound TRAX trains as the name of the route's terminus. It does, indeed, roll from the tongue. However, it is merely the name of a business, and businesses change. Delta Air Lines has its financial problems. It is trying to fend off a hostile takeover that would permanently change its own name. Delta's five-year contract with Larry H. Miller Arena Corp. has ended. It was time for something new. The Wasatch Front is hardly the only metropolitan area dealing with such a thing. Given the importance of sports and entertainment in the modern world, however, it has an unsettling effect — as if a community's landmarks were on roller skates. In the meantime, the choice of EnergySolutions does not come without hazards. Company President Steve Creamer has done a lot of work to counter the negative image the company had under its previous owner, when it was known as Envirocare. He has grand designs to grow the business into the leader in the nation's move to recycle nuclear waste, while still maintaining a low-level radioactive waste site in Utah. But EnergySolutions likely will never be without controversy. It comes with the territory. Just last week a legislative committee forwarded a recommendation to end a requirement that the company contribute to a perpetual care fund for the future of its waste dump, which drew criticism from environmentalists. Regardless of the merits of the criticism, the Jazz have just put a name on their arena that is tied to political issues. If you're keeping score, ZCMI no longer is a department store, the core of downtown Salt Lake City is about to change dramatically, and even Cougar Stadium is now LaVell Edwards Stadium. The only constant in life is change. No surprise there. But give people awhile to quit calling that big building on the west side of downtown the Delta Center. © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 57 Salt Lake Tribune: Glow of publicity: EnergySolutions belongs in the spotlight Editorial Article Last Updated:11/20/2006 08:25:05 PM MST From now on, if the Utah Jazz play well in the newly named EnergySolutions Arena, they'll be radioactive. Hot stuff. You can even see them glow. If they do badly, they'll be wasted. They'll have bombed. They'll be buried. Maybe they should start calling the team the Salt Lake Isotopes. But seriously, folks. EnergySolutions, the nuclear waste handling business, is paying a pretty penny to replace the bankrupt Delta Air Lines as the marquee sponsor of Larry H. Miller's arena for the next 10 years. No figures were released, but these things routinely go for millions of dollars. And it is unlikely that EnergySolutions boss Steve Creamer is doing this just to get himself Utah's biggest vanity license plate. This company wants its name out there. It not only wants to wash aside the bad taste left by the scandals of its previous incarnation - Envirocare - it wants to be seen as a pillar of the community, a sponsor of philanthropic works. And it benefits if Salt Lake City builds a global reputation as a major-league city so that the company's HQ can draw the best scientists and engineers. The best view of all this is that good press will actually help EnergySolutions achieve global respectability. If it really figures out how to reprocess and reuse high-level waste from nuclear power plants, much hotter than the debris it now houses in Utah, it will have removed the major barrier to a future of greenhouse gas-free energy production. And more than a basketball team will be proud to be associated with it. The more sinister spin, though, is that by putting its name on the building where Utah state legislators are already frequent guests of industrial lobbyists, EnergySolutions is seeking coziness and clout so as to escape the levels of regulatory scrutiny that any such business must have in order to be - and to be seen to be - trustworthy. If EnergySolutions can afford to spend this kind of money, and put itself this firmly in the public glare, then it can pay for a recommended perpetual care fund for its low-level disposal site in Tooele County, stop trying to read the rules in a way that allows the stacking of radioactive waste onto higher piles and be as transparent in its moves as a very tall man in short pants. With thousands of fans, and three referees, watching their every move. ***************************************************************** 58 Salt Lake Tribune: Delta Center's out, EnergySolutions Arena is in Last Updated:11/20/2006 05:40:13 PM MST Posted: 4:10 PM- The Utah Jazz is renaming its home the EnergySolutions Arena, ending its 15-year agreement with Delta Air Lines. Jazz President Dennis Haslam said Monday the Delta Center will be renamed for the national low-level nuclear waste company with headquarters in Salt Lake City. Formed in February from the merger of three companies, including Envirocare of Utah, which operated the nation's largest commercial waste facility in Tooele County, EnergySolutions later added a fourth company and now has more than 1,000 employees at facilities in 40 states and three countries (soon to be seven). Terms of the 10-year deal were not disclosed. It involves naming TribTalk Discussion What do you think of the Delta Center's new name? Comment in TribTalk. rights outside and inside the building, advertising and hospitality opportunities. "We believe we have found a partner that shares a lot in common with what our company is about," said Haslam, noting that the Jazz- owning Larry Miller Sports &Entertainment Group had talked to 15 to 25 companies, including bankruptcy plagued Delta, about naming rights for the arena. "We both have strong Utah leadership. We have two home- grown entrepreneurs. Having a Utah headquartered company is important to us. It sends a strong message about our community, our state and about our business affiliations." Haslam was referring to both Jazz owner Larry Miller and to EnergySolutions president and chief executive Steve Creamer, a former Utah Department of Transportation official who was active in developing a large landfill outside of East Carbon in east-central Utah before helping to form EnergySolutions. The company is owned by his firm, Creamer Investments; Lindsay Goldberg &Bessemer, a New York City-based private equity group; and Peterson Partners, a 10-year-old private equity firm based in Salt Lake City. "EnergySolutions is innovative and they're progressive ***************************************************************** 59 Salt Lake Tribune: Arena's namesake has a contentious history By Judy Fahys The Salt Lake TribuneArticle Last Updated:11/21/2006 02:35:03 AM + Culture Vulture: Renaming Delta Center opens door to 'The Dump'From a bribery-extortion scandal involving a state regulator to a loan guarantee for an oversight-board member and too-cozy relations with the state's political leaders - the nation's biggest commercial radioactive waste site always seems to have a black eye. Steve Creamer, EnergySolutions' equally controversial president and chief executive officer, recognized the image problems even before buying the company formerly known as Envirocare of Utah last year from founder Khosrow Semnani. "Khosrow built a successful business," Creamer told The Salt Lake Tribune, "but there was a lot of grief along the way." The saga - and some might say the trouble - began in the Rad Facts * So much radioactive waste has been dumped at the EnergySolutions landfill 80 miles west of Salt Lake City that it could fill the Jazz arena nearly 10 times over. * EnergySolutions disposed of nearly 4.2 million cubic feet of radioactive waste in the past year 98 percent of the radioactive waste disposed of in commercial sites, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. * Since the company also owns other radioactive waste disposal sites, EnergySolutions is actually responsible for disposing of more than 99 percent of the nation's commercial nuclear material. late 1980s when Semnani teamed up with then-Radiation Bureau director, Larry Anderson, to have school-trust lands transformed into a commercial radioactive waste dump. A legislative audit four years later said the three-way, no-bid deal had shortchanged schoolchildren by $1 million. Then, in 1996, Semnani admitted giving cash, gold coins and a Park City golf course condominium worth more than $600,000 to Anderson. A federal judge sentenced Anderson to more than a year in prison for tax violations arising from the case. And Semnani pleaded guilty to a minor tax charge, testified for the prosecution against Anderson and paid a $100,000 fine. Semnani's organization had a reputation for fighting critics aggressively, from suing a local environmental activist to spending $4 million to defeat a citizens initiative to raise taxes on radioactive waste. And he was generous to allies, guaranteeing personal loans to a member of the Radiation Control Board, former Gov. Norman Bangerter and a key senator, and pumping large sums into state political campaigns. In 2005, business boomed as the site took in more than 900,000 tons of waste and untold millions in profits that year. Some hoped that Envirocare could leave all that behind when Creamer and a New York investment group bought the company last year. Envirocare recast itself as EnergySolutions and set out to be the leader in its industry nationally and - if plans pan out - the world. But Creamer brought some baggage of his own to the venture. Among his most infamous exploits was the Syncrete debacle in 1989. The project involved an experimental concrete overlay on 4 miles of Interstate 15, the state's busiest highway. Material crumbled before the project was even complete, providing a boon to auto glass companies but costing taxpayers nearly $3 million to replace. fahys@sltrib.com * Since it opened in 1991, the Utah Jazz home court has been known as the Delta Center. Not any more. * EnergySolutions will have naming rights for the next decade. No dollar figures were revealed, but ESPN reports that, across the NBA, such deals range from $866,667 a year at America West Arena, home of the Phoenix Suns, to $9.3 million a year at Phillips Arena, home of the Atlanta Hawks. * While Delta won't reveal how much it paid for the deal, the airline was honored by the Legislature for paying $25 million for a 20-year deal, which ended up lasting only 15 years. * Monday's announcement links two businessmen with deep Utah roots: Larry H. Miller, who made his fortune selling cars, and Steve Creamer, who made his with a mammoth landfill in Carbon County. © Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 60 Deseret News: EnergySolutions Arena — Former Envirocare provides new name for Delta Center [deseretnews.com] Tuesday, November 21, 2006 By Dave Anderton Deseret Morning News Goodbye, Delta Center. Hello, EnergySolutions Arena. Michael Brandy, Deseret Morning NewsUtah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller speaks at the press conference where the new name for the Delta Center was announced. With an embattled Delta Air Lines struggling to emerge from bankruptcy and facing the prospect of a hostile takeover by US Airways, the Utah Jazz on Monday dropped the Delta Center name from its building, covering it with banners announcing the new name of EnergySolutions Arena. EnergySolutions is a Salt Lake-based company, formerly known as Envirocare, that disposes of low-level radioactive and hazardous waste in Tooele County. Financial terms of the 10-year naming rights deal were not disclosed, but such deals for professional sports stadiums typically involve millions of dollars annually. Delta Air Lines reportedly paid $20 million to $25 million total for the first 10 years of its contract. A small crowd of EnergySolutions and Jazz employees on Monday cheered the announcement as the new name was unveiled inside the arena. But on the street, public reaction was less enthusiastic. Olivia Egbert, a Salt Lake resident, said the name change was unfortunate. "From now on when people think about the Utah Jazz they will be thinking about nuclear waste," Egbert said. "EnergySolutions isn't something I really want to correlate with Jazz basketball." Brittney Erickson of North Salt Lake was bewildered at seeing the new name Monday on the outside of the building as she purchased Jazz tickets. "I think the Delta Center sounds better than 'EnergySolutions Arena,"' said Erickson, who added that she would continue to refer to the building as the Delta Center. "I think that most people still will." Dennis Haslam, president of Larry H. Miller Sports and Entertainment, said it was important for the team to have a naming-rights partner that was a Utah-based company. Haslam said several other companies were considered. EnergySolutions was not the first pick, but Haslam declined to say what other companies were contenders. Michael Brandy, Deseret Morning NewsLarry H. Miller appears pleased with the new moniker. Salt Lake-based EnergySolutions disposes of radioactive and hazardous waste. "This is a partnership we have been working on for some time," Haslam said. "EnergySolutions has the same kinds of ideals that we have. It's a very innovative company and progressive." The name change brought a quick response from environmental groups. Vanessa Pierce, director of HEAL Utah, a Salt Lake organization opposed to nuclear power and toxic waste, said the group has fought efforts by EnergySolutions to expand. "From a sports angle it's no score for Utah, it's a foul," Pierce said. "Branding our state's sports complex with the name of a massive nuclear waste dump isn't the PR that we want for Utah. "EnergySolutions' bottom line is tied to bringing in other states' nuclear waste and dumping it in our back yard. This isn't the type of business we should be promoting in Utah." The Utah Jazz have played under the Delta name since 1991, when the arena was completed. When Delta Air Lines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2005, the airline could have reneged on continuing to pay for its naming rights. Following a bankruptcy filing, money owed to creditors can go unpaid. But Larry Miller, owner of the Utah Jazz, told the Deseret Morning News that throughout Delta's bankruptcy the airline has kept its financial commitments with the Jazz and did not currently owe the franchise any money. "I think that the top levels within Delta would have liked to have continued the agreement," Miller said. "They had a pretty good deal as arena-naming rights go. It wasn't about the money. I really think that they were just focused on other things, which is natural when the company is fighting for its life in bankruptcy." August Miller, Deseret Morning NewsUtah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller helps clean up confetti on the EnergySolutions Arena sign after the announcement. EnergySolutions and Jazz employees greeted the name change with enthusiasm. Delta's original 10-year agreement carried a five-year option. The Delta contract expired on Sept. 30. Anthony L. Black, a spokesman with Delta, said the airline will continue to support the team. Delta has signed a five-year sponsorship agreement that involves a corporate suite and other marketing promotions. Michael Cooper, associate professor of finance at the University of Utah, has published several studies on corporate name changes. Cooper said name changes that evoke a glamorous image "attract a lot more attention than they should." During the late 1990s, companies that added "dot-com" to their name, even firms that were not Internet companies, saw their stock prices double, according to Cooper. "If the name change tends to be something that's popular, it tends to be accepted quicker," said Cooper, who added that most Utahns probably have no idea what kind of business EnergySolutions operates. "People are upset because tradition has been broken with the old name and there's this new name. It's obviously hard to change tradition." Stadium naming rights Average annual name branding rights paid by companies: • FedEx Forum (Memphis Grizzlies) — $4.5 million, Federal Express • Pepsi Center (Denver Nuggets) — $3.4 million, PepsiCo. • Conseco Fieldhouse (Indiana Pacers) — $2 million, Conseco • TD Waterhouse Centre (Orlando Magic) — $1.6 million, TD Waterhouse Group • Wachovia Center (Philadelphia 76ers) — $1.4 million, Wachovia Bank • KeyArena (Seattle Supersonics) — $1 million, Key Corp. • Arco Arena (Sacramento Kings) — $750,000, Atlantic Richfield Source: ESPN Contributing: Stephen Speckman E-mail: danderton@desnews.com © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 61 Lincoln County News: Nuclear Waste Plan Poses Wiscasset Site Impact 11/21/2006 A U.S. Senate proposal for 31 “interim” nuclear waste storage facilities like the one at Maine Yankee in Wiscasset has met opposition from Gov. John Baldacci, whose stand is in keeping with Maine Yankee’s goal. “This proposal takes away a state’s ability to reject a storage site within its borders,” Baldacci said. The measure particularly concerns Maine because of the potential designation of the current Maine Yankee nuclear waste storage installation as one of them. Baldacci considers it a step backward in the federal policy to establish a permanent national repository and joins 16 other governors in an effort to block the passage of the bill that would divert funds meant for that purpose. “Maine Yankee has not taken a stand on that piece of legislation, but we share a common goal,” said company spokesman Eric Howes. Howes and other company officials have been relentless in their criticism of the federal government for not fulfilling its promise to provide a permanent facility by 1998. The U.S. Court of Claims in September awarded Maine Yankee $76 million in its suit against the federal Dept. of Energy for its failure. Howes said that the company is a member of the Nuclear Waster Storage Coalition as well as the State of Maine, which is pursuing a permanent facility, such as the one the federal Dept. of Energy has proposed at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The big fear that Baldacci and the other governors have expressed is that the temporary site could well become, in effect, a permanent site and one permanent national facility would fall by the wayside. It is possible that Maine Yankee’s site could be designated as one of the federal regional sites. “Leaving high level nuclear waste in 31 states is not a viable option,” Baldacci said last Thursday. “Temporary nuclear waste storage facilities pose significant safety and security issues in Maine and other states that have or have had commercial nuclear power plants.” Baldacci said that ratepayers have been assessed payments for the federal Nuclear Waster Funds intended to fulfill the federal government’s mandate to safely remove spent nuclear fuel and other high level nuclear waste from current sites throughout the United States. He opposes the diverting of the funds intended for a national facility. In July, Baldacci wrote to Sen. Peter Dominici, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development stating his opposition to any such plan to temporarily store the waste at current and decommissioned facilities like Maine Yankee. Currently Maine Yankee has a storage site where there are 64 concrete canisters, 60 of them containing spent nuclear fuel and the rest containing greater than class C level nuclear waste from the decommissioned plant. “In today’s world, the security concerns of Americans are not well served by having thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste left in facilities in 31 states,” Baldacci wrote in his letter to Dominici. “Our best interests will be served by consolidating these materials in a facility selected for its remoteness and for its ability to be secured.” Baldacci was adamant about the necessity of the federal government to hold to its own mandate to move nuclear waste from Maine and other states to a permanent national repository. “The interim storage facility provision in the current U.S. Senate appropriations bill runs counter to that goal,” he said. Baldacci signed a letter with 16 other governors that voiced strong opposition to the appropriations measure as stated specifically in Section 313 of the U.S. Senate-reported version of the fiscal year 2007 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, which, they said, proposes use of ratepayer monies for the creation of new federal interim storage sites throughout the United States. The letter states, “…providing the Dept. of Energy with new, expansive authority to create numerous nuclear waste storage sites represents a stark retreat from the language and spirit of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and its establishment of a centralized repository.” The governors fear that it would harm disposal efforts irreparably and result in the so-called temporary facilities becoming de facto final resting places for nuclear waste. “Furthermore, Section 313 would direct the DOE to establish new state and regional waste storage sites without the consent and over the potential objections of governors,” the letter states. “This is wholly unacceptable to our constituents and us.” They also cite that Section 313 does not live up to the requirement for success of any federal proposal addressing nuclear waste for the states to be full and equal partners in the process. It also appears to violate the standard contract that the states’ utilities entered into with the federal government of permanent disposal of nuclear waste, they said. They point out that the use of the Nuclear Waste Fund is statutorily and contractually limited to paying for activities related to permanent disposal of nuclear waste. “By seeking to use the fund for interim storage activities that are authorized neither by statute nor contract, this Section 313 raises the prospect of substantial litigation by stakeholders concerned about the diversion of ratepayer monies for unauthorized purposes,” the governors said. The governors’ letter states their contention that the legislation represents a giant step backward for ratepayers and others who have contributed more than $14 million into the Nuclear Waste Fund. They also noted that the DOE itself, as well as the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission have stated their serious concern with the proposal. “They are rightly troubled with the safety, security, environmental, transportation, infrastructure, and cost challenges associated with developing and maintaining multiple federal nuclear waste storage sites across the nation will undermine already lagging efforts to establish a permanent repository,” they wrote. Vol. 131 - No. 47 Lincoln County News © 2002 ***************************************************************** 62 Deseret News: EnergySolutions Arena? It's a mouthful [deseretnews.com] Tuesday, November 21, 2006 By Marjorie Cortez Deseret Morning News This is going to take some getting used to. The Delta Center is no more. Monday afternoon, the 20,000-seat arena in downtown Salt Lake City that is home to the Utah Jazz was renamed EnergySolutions Arena. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue, does it? But nor do a lot of professional sports arenas and centers around the nation. With the advent of naming rights agreements, traditional arena names such as Madison Square Garden have become the exception. This should be no surprise considering we live in a time when people will tattoo — on their foreheads, no less — commercial advertisements, and towns will change their names to that of a commercial entity if the price is right. As much as some will balk at the EnergySolutions Arena moniker, there are less palatable names out there. Quicken Loans Arena, anyone? Some names are just a mouthful: Try The Palace of Auburn Hills, Continental Airlines Arena or American Airlines Arena. (Whew, I got tired just typing those names.) Then there are arenas named for soft drinks, office supply giants, automakers and various Wall Street and financial services industry corporations. With Delta Air Lines in difficult financial condition, it was widely thought that the name of Larry H. Miller's arena might be in for a change. By the time this column sees print, the Delta Center will be a goner, covered with temporary EnergySolutions signage. The new naming rights agreement is for 10 years, while "Delta Center" was a fixture for 15 years. The challenge comes in what Utahns will call the arena for short. Just guessing here, but a lot of Utahns will continue to call the arena the Delta Center. If they're like me, change comes hard. It's not that I have any issues with EnergySolutions. It's just that I have a hard enough time remembering where I've parked my car, let alone that the name of the downtown arena has changed. Human nature being what it is, we will resort to some sort of shorthand when referring to EnergySolutions Arena. Will it be ES Arena? ESA? Spent Rod Arena? (That would be for spent nuclear rods, not "Hot Rod" Hundley.) Atomic Arena? The Plutonium Center? The Creamer Center (after EnergySolutions president and chief executive officer Steve Creamer)? E-mail me your suggestions. Utah Jazz President Dennis Haslam, in meeting with the Deseret Morning News editorial board Monday morning, said EnergySolutions and the Utah Jazz are well suited because Miller and Creamer are both hometown boys who have become highly successful entrepreneurs. The Utah Jazz liked the idea of partnering with an international company that is headquartered in Utah. "We went to the Clive (Tooele County) facility and looked under a lot of rocks," Haslam said of the Jazz's due diligence. "We haven't found anything that bothers us." Creamer, meanwhile, acknowledges that his company is not in a consumer services industry, so the naming agreement serves a different purpose than it would for discount retailer Target or cell phone giant Verizon. In this case, the naming rights agreements gives EnergySolutions an international platform to better educate Utah, the nation and the world about its waste management solutions, which include the secure disposition of nuclear waste. Besides, the NBA and its star players are conversation starters worldwide, considering 20-25 percent of them are international players. We can all scoff at that notion, but how many of us, while traveling in this nation, or internationally, have done the same thing? Professional sports are part of business/travel vernacular because they are always a safe topic. They help us avoid the topics that can trip us up, such as politics and religion. What better ambassador for international business than a 10-year association with an NBA team? Marjorie Cortez, who will probably remember to refer to Salt Lake's downtown multi-use arena as the EnergySolutions Arena in about three years, is a Deseret Morning News editorial writer. E-mail her at marjorie@desnews.com. © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 63 AU ABC: Mining industry welcomes nuclear energy review. 21/11/2006. ABC News Online The mining sector says there needs to be a rational debate about nuclear energy. The mining industry has welcomed the review of nuclear energy in Australia, saying the debate so far has been hijacked by misinformation. Dr Ziggy Switkowski's report found nuclear energy is a practical option and could feed into the electricity grid in a decade. The Association of Mining and Exploration Companies says 450 reactors provide electricity worldwide and several hundred more will be built soon. Spokesman Ian Loftus says there needs to be a rational debate about the issue. "I read in the newspapers and in various other media fairly frequently about the three-eyed fish debates about nuclear power, nuclear power and nuclear waste in people's backyard," Mr Loftus said. Mr Loftus says the debate in Australia has been hijacked by misinformation. "Nuclear power always seems to be the classic NIMBY- not in my backyard issue," he said. "In Australia the debate hasn't really reached the level of maturity that [it] does have in places like Europe. "Places like France, as I said, have close to 80 per cent of their power generated through nuclear electricity." Debate The Australian Uranium Association's executive director, Michael Angwin, has welcomed the report and hopes it leads to more debate about the issue. "There are many aspects of nuclear fuel cycle about which Australians would like to know more," Mr Angwin said. "And to that extent the report which Dr Switkowski has released today will be a great contribution to the understanding of the nuclear fuel cycle." Dr Switkowski's review found uranium production would ease the problem of greenhouse gas emissions but will not meet the challenge on its own and the priority should continue to be on reducing carbon emissions from coal and gas. At between 20 to 50 per cent more expensive than conventional power, Dr Switkowski says nuclear energy would only be competitive in Australia if there were a recognised cost for greenhouse gas emissions. The review also found the domestic processing of uranium, including conversion and enrichment, would add a further $1.8 billion to the sector annually. 'Election strategy' The Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, says he will carefully study the report, but he remains opposed to nuclear power for Australia. Mr Beattie is suspicious about the Federal Government's motivation behind the report. "I think what happened is that the Federal Government has done some research which shows the biggest single issue in the next federal election campaign is climate change, and what they've been doing is conning everyone ever since," Mr Beattie said. "The whole strategy about this is designed to get re-elected, it's not about energy or climate change." In other developments: + Federal Environment Minister Senator Ian Campbell has accused opponents of scaremongering by claiming proposed new laws will allow Australia to import nuclear waste that is generated in other countries. (Full Story) + The Federal Government's review of uranium mining and nuclear power has found nuclear energy is a practical option for Australia. (Full Story) + The Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, says he will carefully study a new report into nuclear power in Australia, but he remains opposed to the concept. (Full Story) Related Links: + Nuclear power a practical option for AustraliaOpinion piece by Review head Ziggy Switkowski ***************************************************************** 64 The Australian: Abbott backs uranium enrichment | | + NEWS.com.au This story is from our news.com.aunetwork Source: AAP November 21, 2006 HEALTH Minister Tony Abbott has suggested that if the enrichment of uranium makes sense for Australia then it should go ahead. Former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski today released his review of uranium mining processing and nuclear energy, commissioned by Prime Minister John Howard earlier this year. Mr Abbott said the report should be considered soberly and any further action should be based on the right thing for the long-term future of Australia. "Certainly I don't think we should be theological about this. If it works for us then let's not put unreasonable obstacles in its way,'' he said. The inquiry is expected to find that nuclear power will not be viable in Australia for at least a decade and will be 20 to 50 per cent more expensive than coal-fired power if carbon dioxide emissions are not priced. But the inquiry also finds Australia could quadruple the value of its uranium exports by enriching Privacy Terms © The Australian ***************************************************************** 65 DOE: DOE Clears Way for Closure of Emptied Waste Tanks at Idaho National Laboratory November 20, 2006 Secretary Bodman Signs Idaho Waste Determination After Consultation with NRC WASHINGTON, DC  U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman yesterday signed a waste determination for the Idaho Tank Farm Facility clearing the way for the Department of Energy (DOE) to safely and permanently close the 15 waste storage tanks at the Idaho National Laboratory near Arco, Idaho. DOE will begin grouting the first 11 cleaned and emptied tanks at Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC) and plans to complete all 15 tanks by December 2012. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management James Rispoli also signed an amended Record of Decision (ROD) implementing the Secretary's Section 3116 Determination. These actions follow extensive environmental analysis, public review and comment, and consultation with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and State of Idaho over the past three years. The determination affirms that DOEs plans to fill and cap emptied tanks with a concrete grouting are protective of human health and the environment. We are committed to ensuring the protection of public health and the environment here in Idaho and across the DOE complex, Assistant Secretary Rispoli said. We have worked extensively with the State of Idaho and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and conducted comprehensive environmental and technical analysis to determine a path forward for the safe closure of these tanks. Section 3116 of the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005 authorizes the Secretary of Energy, in consultation with the NRC, to determine that highly radioactive waste in tanks has been removed to the maximum extent practical and the remaining residual material can be safely disposed of in place. Consistent with the Secretarys determination, the amended ROD outlines DOEs plans to safely close the tanks in accordance with the Idaho High-Level Waste and Facilities Disposition Final Environmental Impact Statement (DOE/EIS-0287) issued in October 2002. DOE will use a phased approach to close the 15 tanks at INTEC. DOE will close the first 11 cleaned and emptied tanks (seven 300,000-gallon and four 30,000-gallon tanks) by October 2008. In these tanks, many areas of the tank bottom are bare, while some areas have a thin film of material that is approximately 3/8 inch deep. Closure of the remaining four 300,000 gallon tanks, which still contain about 900,000 gallons of liquid waste, will begin once the tanks are emptied and cleaned. Closure is planned for completion by December 2012. Safe closure of the tanks includes cleaning the tank components, and then filling them with a grout material to encapsulate any remaining residual waste in place and put these tank farm structures in a condition which ensures long-term stability. The draft Section 3116 Determination for the Tank Farm Facility was prepared by DOE and submitted to NRC in September 2005. At that time, DOE posted the draft Determination for public review and comment. NRC completed their consultation and issued a Technical Evaluation Report to DOE on October 20, 2006 supporting the Section 3116 Determination. To read the Section 3116 Idaho Waste Determination and the amended ROD, access http://apps.em.doe.gov/idwd/. Media contact(s): Megan Barnett, (202) 586-4940 Alan Jines, (208) 526-7524 [ ] U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 ***************************************************************** 66 DOE: U.S. Signs International Fusion Energy Agreement November 21, 2006 Large-Scale, Clean Fusion Energy Project to Begin Construction PARIS, FRANCE  Representing the United States, Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Under Secretary for Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), today joined counterparts from China, the European Union, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation to sign an agreement to build the international fusion energy project known as ITER. The energy that powers the stars is moving closer to becoming a new source of energy for the Earth through the technology represented by ITER, U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said. The ITER Members represent over half of the worlds population. The U.S. is proud to be part of this partnership, and to join in the pursuit of nuclear fusion as a source of clean, safe, renewable and commercially deployable energy for the future. Fusion energy is an important component of President Bushs Advanced Energy Initiative (AEI), given fusions potential to become an attractive long-range option for the U.S. clean energy portfolio. In FY 2006, DOE allocated $25 million to ITER and the President, as part of the AEI, has requested $60 million for the project in FY 2007. Signing this agreement brings us one step closer to a viable source of fusion power, Dr. Orbach said. ITER also is the first stand alone, truly international, large-scale scientific research effort in the history of the world. It will surely serve as a model for future collaborative large scale science projects, he added. ITER will be constructed at Cadarache, France and is expected to be completed in 2015. The site is adjacent to the main research center of the French Atomic Energy Commission. The EU, as the host, will provide 45.46 percent of the construction phase funding. The U.S., as a non-host partner, will participate in the construction phase at the level of 9.09 percent. The U.S. contribution to ITER will consist of about 80 percent in-kind components, and about 20 percent in cash to a central fund and for personnel assigned to the project at the ITER site. DOE laboratories will subcontract with industry to build the components of ITER for which the U.S. is responsible. The total value of the U.S. contribution is $1.122 billion. Fusion energy, created when light atomic nuclei are fused together at temperatures greater than those of the interior of stars and far above the melting point of any solid container, could provide significant amounts of electricity and also generate hydrogen that could power fuel cell vehicles of the future. Fusion power has the following advantages: + Fusion is clean: It produces negligible atmospheric emissions and zero greenhouse gas emissions. + Fusion is safe: Reactors cannot melt down, and do not generate the high-level, long-lasting radioactive waste associated with nuclear fission. + Fusion is renewable: Commercial fusion reactors would use lithium and deuterium, both readily available natural resources. President Bush announced on January 30, 2003, that the U.S. was joining the negotiations for the construction and operation of this major international research project, whose mission is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of clean fusion energy. The Presidents initiative in joining ITER allows the United States to share the combined experience and knowledge that will result from the design, construction and operation of this vital project at a greatly reduced cost to the individual partners. The U.S. was one of the original participants in the early design and R&D for ITER, and U.S. participation in the ITER construction and operation phases capitalizes on the previous investment. Following the initialing of the Agreement in Brussels on May 24, 2006, which marked the conclusion of negotiations, DOE transmitted to Congress the final initialed text to begin the 120-day review required by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. DOE also briefed committees of jurisdiction in both the House and the Senate during the negotiations to facilitate the 120-day review. On September 29, 2006, House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert wrote to Secretary Bodman, I am satisfied that the Agreement on the Establishment of the ITER International Fusion Energy Organization for the Joint Implementation of the ITER Project has been negotiated in accordance with the requirements listed in paragraph 972(c)(3) [of the Energy Policy Act of 2005]. Under Secretary Orbach and his staff are to be congratulated for their hard work over the past several years in securing this agreement. President Bushs Advanced Energy Initiative represents a 22 percent increase in clean-energy research at the Department of Energy that will accelerate breakthroughs in the way our cars, homes and businesses are powered. For FY 07, the President requested more than $2.1 billion in AEI funding for research into cutting-edge technologies with a goal of reducing oil consumption by 5 million barrels a day by 2025 and producing clean electricity for millions of homes. DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the nation and helps ensure U.S. world leadership across a broad range of scientific disciplines. The Office of Science supports a diverse portfolio of research at more than 300 colleges and universities nationwide; manages 10 world-class national laboratories with unmatched capabilities for solving complex interdisciplinary scientific problems; and builds and operates the worlds finest suite of scientific facilities and instruments used annually by more than 19,000 researchers to extend the frontiers of all areas of science. For more information about ITER, please visit http://www.science.doe.gov/News_Information/News_Room/2006/ITER/i ndex.htm. Media contact(s): Jeff Sherwood, (202) 586-5806 [ ] U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 ***************************************************************** 67 Star News: Energy secretary: Princeton lab has key role on reactor pact StarNewsOnline.com | Star-News | Wilmington, NC Published November 21. 2006 6:06PM By LINDA A. JOHNSON Associated Press Writer PLAINSBORO, N.J. | Scientists at the Princeton University Plasma Physics Lab will be providing key components and technical expertise for an international research project that could change the world's energy supply, the top U.S. energy official said Tuesday. The United States and other nations representing half the planet's population signed an agreement earlier Tuesday to build an experimental fusion energy reactor in France. That could be the last step before building a demonstration power plant and then commercial fusion plants that could produce clean, plentiful energy. "It's going to be two or three decades out before we're in a position to do that," U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said Tuesday during a tour of the sprawling Princeton laboratory. Fusion, the process that powers the sun and stars, occurs when tiny atoms slam together at extremely high temperatures and release energy. When done under pressure inside a reactor, the atoms form a plasma, a hot mass of electrically charged gas similar to what's inside a fluorescent light bulb. Today's commercial fission nuclear reactors work the opposite way, releasing energy by splitting apart large, radioactive atoms. The United States will be contributing about $1.12 billion, or 9 percent, of the total $12.8 billion cost for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, Bodman said. About 20 percent of the U.S. contribution will be paid in cash over the years, with the rest coming from providing and constructing equipment, and work put in by scientists and technicians. "This will be the lead U.S. laboratory for work in fusion, in plasma physics, and will therefore be the most significant supporter" for the project among the 17 Department of Energy national laboratories, Bodman told lab officials, local dignitaries and journalists. "This is really the principal focus." Experiments on two reactors at the Princeton lab - one in use since 1999 and the other under construction and expected to come online in 2009 - will be crucial in helping scientists determine how to go from ITER to a commercial fusion reactor, he said. The existing reactor, called the National Spherical Torus Experiment, provides for higher energy density than other reactors, and the National Compact Stellarator Experiment now under construction will have a more advanced geometrical configuration considered better for actual power production, Bodman said. "They make this the most advanced center for fusion research in the United States," he said. The lab set world records for fusion energy production in a gymnasium-sized experimental reactor that operated from 1982 through 1997. The ITER project will support the work of about 100 scientists at three Department of Energy laboratories: 15 at Princeton, 15 at Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina and 70 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Net Sauthoff, director of the U.S. ITER Project Office, said in a phone interview from Paris. Oak Ridge is overseeing the U.S. work. Sauthoff said another 25 to 30 U.S. physicists and engineers will work at the construction site in Cadarache, France, and another 100 will prepare for experiments toward the end of construction. Most of the U.S. budget will go to industry for construction of equipment, generating roughly 700 jobs for professionals and support people starting in the project's second year. Rob Goldston, director of the Princeton lab, said his staff is responsible for helping to design superconducting magnets for the reactor, designing and building some of the tools for measuring conditions such as the strength of magnetic fields inside the reactor during experiments, and procuring most of the high-powered electrical equipment to run the reactor's auxiliary systems. Fusion reactors run on heavy forms of hydrogen, easily extracted from water, and cannot cause a nuclear meltdown. Fusion would offer a virtually limitless power supply that produces no greenhouse gases, does not cause acid rain or produce materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons, and results in small levels of radioactive waste. Activists opposed to nuclear power, though, have said developing fusion energy is too expensive and would shift resources from other strategies for fighting global warming. Besides the United States, the European Union, China, India, Russia, Japan and South Korea are participating in the project, with the European Union providing about 45 percent of funding for construction of the reactor, which is expected to take about a decade. The other nations each are putting in 9.1 percent. "Worldwide demand for energy is expected to double in the next 25 years and we need to diversify our energy supply," Bodman said. On the Net: http://www.pppl.gov ***************************************************************** 68 The Columbus Dispatch: Lawsuit fails to get federal support Columbus, Ohio | November 22, 2006 4 workers contend contractors defrauded government for work at Piketon plant Sunday, November 19, 2006 Kevin Mayhood THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Contractors hired to clean up a Cold War-era uranium-enrichment plant in Piketon were paid millions of dollars for work that was shoddy or not done, four workers say. Using a Civil War-era law designed to nab suppliers cheating the government, Philip Borris, Michael Eversole, Rodney Gossett and Thomas McDermott sued the contractors on behalf of the government. The four say Bechtel-Jacobs Co. and Safety and Ecology Corp. falsified work records, took shortcuts and failed to protect the health of workers at and neighbors of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The lawsuit, filed in 2002, was unsealed last month by U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. The Department of Justice kept the case secret while it investigated, but it recently decided not to join in. "The Department of Justice lawyers have made it clear to us they have found plenty wrong, but they are having a hard time getting the support of the Department of Energy to make their case," said Charles Fitzpatrick, an attorney for the workers. The U.S. attorney’s office found no criminal intent by the contractors to deceive the government — an element needed to pursue the case, said Fred Alverson, spokesman for the Columbus office. "That doesn’t mean one way or another that contractual obligations were kept or not kept, whether overpayments were made or not made." Asked to respond to Fitzpatrick’s statement, Alverson said, "One critical part of moving forward with a case like this is having the cooperation of the agency involved." The Department of Energy "works closely in all cases with the Department of Justice," said Megan Barnett, spokeswoman for the Energy Department in Washington, D.C. "We take every employee complaint seriously." Borris, a radiation-control worker, said otherwise. The four believed they had no alternative but to file the suit because the contractors and the Energy Department wouldn’t listen to their complaints, he said. What the four reported "is out-andout fraud." Spokesmen for the contractors said they had not been served with the lawsuit and would not comment. The companies no longer work at the plant. The lawsuit says a full investigation is needed to determine the total overpayments, but the men estimate the figure amounts to tens of millions of dollars. The four say contractors labeled large amounts of nonradioactive fencing they shipped off-site as scrap metal contaminated with radiation in order to collect a performance payment; charged the government for unnecessary work or work not performed; billed the government for nongovernment work; and ignored health and safety regulations, among other things. Three of the four workers were harassed for speaking out but won whistle-blower cases and continue to work at the plant, their attorneys said. McDermott left and works in Tennessee. In accordance with the False Claims Act, the lawsuit seeks three times the amount of actual loss to the government. If the workers win the case, they would receive 25 percent to 30 percent of the award. The suit also seeks a civil penalty of $5,000 to $10,000 per violation plus damages and attorneys’ fees. Gossett, a health and safety worker, and others in the business say problems slip by because the Department of Energy has fewer people monitoring contractors than in the past. Fitzpatrick said the Energy Department has an incentive not to help with the case. To recoup money, the agency would have to admit it failed to oversee the companies. kmayhood@dispatch.com  ©2006, The Columbus Dispatch, ***************************************************************** 69 KFDA: Safety Concerns at Pantex - NewsChannel 10 / Amarillo, TX: newschannel10.com - 11.21.06 Pantex officials received an anonymous letter from its employees citing safety concerns. Now officials at the plant is now looking at those issues. In a written statement, General Manager Dan Swaim says the letter is being taken seriously and the plant is currently comparing the specific concerns to its day to day procedures at the facility. The letter was sent two weeks ago to BWTX Technologies, parent company of Pantex. Details about the specific safety concerns were not released. .gif"> All content © Copyright 2000 - 2006 WorldNow and KFDA. 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: *****************************************************************