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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Guardian Unlimited: Britain Says U.N. Iran Resolution Coming
2 Guardian Unlimited: Olmert Warns Iran Over Nuclear Ambitions
3 washingtonpost.com: The Black Box of Tehran - 
4 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI to settle N-issue through talks 
5 AFP: US, China discuss draft resolution on Iran 
6 AFP: Not too late for Iran to avoid nuclear sanctions - French minis
7 IRNA: President: As IAEA member, Iran legally entitled to nuclear te
8 UPI: Iran determined to become nuclear
9 IRNA: Iran to go on with its peaceful nuclear activities - President
10 UPI: Ahmadinejad tells West to get along
11 AFP: Next UN chief to visit China over North Korean nuclear crisis -
12 AFP: China sees movement on NKorea, Rice pushes sanctions 
13 AFP: Kim Jong-Il expresses regret about nuclear test - report -     
14 AFP: North Korea leader Kim says no more atom bomb tests 
15 AFP: South Korea, Japan press North to scrap nukes 
16 AFP: US trade pact will mitigate NKorea nuclear test, minister says 
17 AFP: Nobel laureate condemns N.Korea -- and all nuclear nations -
18 US: Introducing Beyond Nuclear
19 US: washingtonpost.com: U.S. Plan for New Nuclear Weapons Advances -
20 US: UPI: New U.S. nuclear plan advances
21 [NYTr] How to Stay Out of Gitmo - Get a Nuke
22 Xinhua: Egyptian minister calls for nuclear bill draft   
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
23 US: Arizona Republic: Palo Verde shuts down Unit 3, problem not safe
24 US: Arizona Daily Star: 1 of 3 Palo Verde reactors shut down | 
25 US: AP Wire: Nuclear plants in Kentucky, Ohio must conduct random dr
26 AU ABC: MPs mull support for nuclear power stations
27 US: NRC: NRC Commissioner Merrifield Will Not Seek Third Term
28 BBC NEWS: Putin firm on EU energy charter
29 US: Platts: Areva and MHI will co-design 1,000-MW LWR
30 US: toledoblade.com: Report says Midwest power grid prepared for yea
31 US: Rutland Herald: Vt. Yankee evacuation plan under scrutiny
32 US: Charlotte Business Journal: N.C. opposes Duke on recovering nucl
33 US: Boston Globe: Seabrook plant one of six to take part in study - 
34 US: NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting Notice
35 US: NIRS: Beyond Nuclear
36 US: Portsmouth Herald: Seabrook nuke plant under microscope
37 US: Portsmouth Herald: Nuclear plant analysis must be taken seriousl
38 US: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Abraham: Energy disruption likely wit
39 US: UPI: Analysis: Democrats, greens nuclear fans?
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
40 U.S. Marines Vid of Ammo Dump - Tactical Nukes?
41 US: IHT: Radiation monitors make screening easier on U.S.-Mexico bor
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
42 US: Stop a blank check for radioactive waste storage in your state
43 globeandmail.com: Firm hoping sewage mix dilutes radioactive water
44 US: RR: STPNS: Higher-level radioactive waste to come through area o
 
                           PEACE
 
45 IPS-English POLITICS: What to Do With the World's Nuclear
46 UPI: Japan vows not to go nuclear
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
47 NRC: NRC Issues Technical Evaluation for the Idaho National Laborato
48 KnoxNews: Remembering Weinberg - Stories from friends and colleagues
49 reviewjournal.com: TONOPAH TEST RANGE : Proving ground's days number
50 Hanford News: Former recycling yard worker sues Fluor Hanford; 
51 Decatur Daily: Radioactive material work demands effective oversight
52 DHHS: Sandia Lab worker petition
53 Inside Bay Area: Arms plan will draw stockpiles together
54 Windsor Journal: DOE reactor site returns to 'Green Field' condition
55 lamonitor.com: Feds bid to transform weapons complex 
56 KRISTV.COM: Pantex looking for larger role in nuclear weapons work
57 Local News 8:  Virtual Nuclear Reality at INL + +
58 Knox News: Director who saved ORNL remembered
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 1 Guardian Unlimited: Britain Says U.N. Iran Resolution Coming
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Friday October 20, 2006 3:31 AM

By EDITH M. LEDERER 

Associated Press Writer 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Britain said Thursday it expects a draft
U.N. resolution on Iran to be introduced in the Security Council
early next week and diplomats said it will seek sanctions on
Tehran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment. 

France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere had said
Tuesday he hoped to circulate a draft by the end of the week.
But France, Britain and Germany, who have led negotiations with
Iran on its nuclear program, were still discussing the text with
the United States on Thursday, and had not yet shown it to
Russia and China. 

``My expectation is that sometime early next week we'll put a
resolution down,'' Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry
told reporters. 

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said ``we're consulting on it and I
expect within a day or two we'll have something to circulate
more broadly in the council.'' 

European Union foreign ministers said after a meeting in
Luxembourg on Tuesday that they have no choice but to back
diplomatic talks at the United Nations about sanctions on Iran. 

The ministers backed a decision by the U.N.'s five permanent
Security Council members - the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and
France - and Germany to pursue limited sanctions on Tehran while
keeping the door open to future talks. 

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said earlier this
month that they would seek measures under Article 41 of Chapter
7 of the U.N. Charter, which allows nonmilitary sanctions. 

The six countries offered Iran a package of economic incentives
and political rewards in June if it agreed to consider a
long-term moratorium on enrichment and commit to a freeze on
uranium enrichment before talks to discuss details of their
package. 

But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly and
defiantly said his country would continue enrichment, and is not
intimidated by the possibility of sanctions. 

The United States has called for broad sanctions, such as a
total ban on missile and nuclear technology sales, while the
Russians and Chinese back prohibitions of selected items as a
first step. 
                                   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 2 Guardian Unlimited: Olmert Warns Iran Over Nuclear Ambitions
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Friday October 20, 2006 11:01 AM

AP Photo MOSB108 

By AMY TEIBEL 

Associated Press Writer 

JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that Iran
would have ``a price to pay'' if it doesn't back down from its
nuclear ambitions, hinting broadly that Israel might be forced
to take action - his strongest words yet about the Iranian
threat. 

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday called Israel's
leaders a ``group of terrorists'' and threatened any country
that supports the Jewish state. 

``You imposed a group of terrorists ... on the region,''
Ahmadinejad said, addressing the U.S. and its allies. ``It is in
your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals ...
This is an ultimatum. Don't complain tomorrow.'' 

``Nations will take revenge,'' he told a crowd of thousands
gathered at a pro-Palestinian rally in the capital, Tehran. 

Ahmadinejad, who has a history of similarly fiery rhetoric, said
Israel no longer had any reason to exist and would soon
disappear. 

``This regime, thanks to God, has lost the reason for its
existence,'' he said. 

``Efforts to stabilize this fake (Israeli) regime, by the grace
of God, have completely failed ... You should believe that this
regime is disappearing,'' he said. 

Talking to reporters Thursday on his way home from a three-day
trip to Moscow, Olmert didn't specifically threaten to cripple
Iran's nuclear program in a military strike, as Israel did 25
years ago in Iraq when it sent combat planes to destroy an
unfinished nuclear reactor. But he repeated what he said a day
earlier after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in
Moscow - the Iranians ``have to be afraid'' of the consequences
of their intransigence. 

``They have to understand that if they object to every
compromise, there will be a price to pay,'' Olmert said. 

Israel rejects Tehran's claim that its nuclear program is
peaceful, designed solely to produce energy. In the past, Israel
has said it would not lead a campaign against Iran's nuclear
program, rather act in concert with world powers that are
similarly worried about Iran's intentions. 

But with Iran rejecting various compromise proposals and
insisting on enriching uranium - a process key to developing
nuclear weapons - Olmert has been raising the stakes with
increasingly defiant rhetoric. 

Israel cannot reconcile itself to a nuclear Iran, he said - and
``there comes a time when you have to do damage control.'' 

``A red line must be drawn that cannot be crossed,'' he said,
without specifying what that line was. 

``Time isn't standing still,'' he added, ``and perhaps there
will be a need to do something in the future.'' 

Though some Israeli officials have made specific threats to hit
Iran, military experts have questioned Israel's ability to
destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, which, unlike Iraq's in 1981,
are scattered among installations, with some of them hidden
underground. But they have said Israel could set the program
back years by striking several of the sites. 

Israel considers Iran to be the greatest threat to its survival.
Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for the Jewish state's
destruction, and Iran already has missiles capable of carrying
payloads to Israel. 

Russia is building Iran's first nuclear reactor and has impeded
U.N. sanctions against Tehran. It has also agreed to resume
shipment of fuel for the reactor, which experts say could be
diverted and used to build bombs. 

Ahmadinejad on Friday called the U.N. Security Council and its
decisions ``illegitimate.'' 

``What sort of Security Council is this? The whole world knows
that the U.S. and Britain are enemies of the Iranian nation,''
Ahmadinejad said. 

The United States and Britian - along with France, Russia and
China - have power to veto any Security Council measures. 

``You want to be the judge, the complainant and the enforcer.
But the time for such logic has passed. No one accepts this from
you,'' Ahmadinejad said, addressing the U.S. and Britain. 

After meeting for four hours with Putin and Russian defense
officials, Olmert said he was convinced they understood the
gravity of the situation and don't want to see a nuclear Iran.
But at a news conference with Olmert at the Kremlin on
Wednesday, Putin pointedly made no mention of the Iranian
nuclear standoff. 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 3 washingtonpost.com: The Black Box of Tehran - 

By David Ignatius

Friday, October 20, 2006; Page A21

Here's a real-life international mystery: What happened in Tehran 
in September that torpedoed the prospect of negotiations with the 
United States over Iran's nuclear program? Were Western hopes of 
Iranian pragmatism simply an illusion? Are there other channels 
open for discussion with Tehran if the nuclear route is blocked?

U.S. and European intelligence analysts are debating these 
questions, and for now they don't seem to have good answers. The 
process of decision making in Tehran remains a "black box." 
Analysts can see the decisions that emerge from the supreme 
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and they can hear the competing 
arguments of pragmatists and hard-liners. But how consensus is 
reached remains a puzzle. My fear is that at its core, the 
Islamic republic disdains compromise as a sign of weakness.

Hopes for a breakthrough on the nuclear issue were raised last
summer by discussions between Ali Larijani, Iran's national
security adviser, and Javier Solana, the European Union's
foreign policy chief. Both men are at the pragmatic, deal-making
ends of their respective political spectrums, and that may have
been part of the problem. But as the discussions continued, the
Iranians appeared ready to offer a two-month suspension of
uranium enrichment once talks with the Europeans resumed --
thereby meeting the U.S. precondition for joining the talks. It
looked like a classic bit of face-saving bargaining.

The background music seemed right as well. President Bush told
me in an interview on Sept. 13 that the United States respected
Iran's legitimate interests, including its right to a civilian
nuclear program. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while
taking a defiant line on many issues, told me and Lally Weymouth
of Newsweek on Sept. 19 that Iran would be willing to resume
diplomatic relations with the United States "under appropriate
conditions." And he said in other meetings that Iran might
accept suspension of enrichment as a byproduct of negotiations,
although not as a precondition. The sense that a deal was
possible was reinforced by a back-channel exchange in which a
European intermediary and an Iranian former official prepared a
joint paper outlining a compromise formula on the nuclear issue.

But by late September, State Department officials concluded that
the Iranians were backing away. Pessimistic private signals were
confirmed when Khamenei, the only Iranian who speaks
authoritatively on foreign policy, explained last week that Iran
had already tried suspension of enrichment, in its earlier
negotiations with the Europeans, and wouldn't do so again. "If
we had not experienced that path [a two-year suspension of
uranium enrichment], perhaps we would have criticized ourselves
today. But now we will pursue with a strong heart."

So what's next? Bush administration officials rightly argue that
Iran must pay some price for continuing its nuclear program in
defiance of warnings from the International Atomic Energy
Agency. Russia and China have promised to support some penalties
for Iran, and my sense is that maintaining their support -- and
international solidarity on Iran -- matters more than the
details of sanctions. Failure to penalize Tehran would, among
other things, undermine the Iranian pragmatists who favored
negotiations. It would show that Tehran can defy the West and
get away with it, which has been one of Ahmadinejad's implicit
themes.

While the Bush administration wants to draw a clear red line for
Tehran, it also appears ready to keep the door open for
dialogue. An important gesture was the announcement this month
that the United States will lift sanctions to allow an American
company to provide spare parts to repair Iranian civilian
aircraft. Another signal came from Undersecretary of State
Nicholas Burns, who said last week in an otherwise hard-line
speech that the U.S.-European package of incentives for Iran to
halt enrichment will remain on the table, despite Tehran's
refusal to join negotiations.

Burns called for "a dramatic increase in our exchanges with Iran
-- in business, in academia, in athletics, in the arts." That
amplified a comment Bush had made to me in our interview. (If
the administration is serious about exchanges, however, it ought
to quash an absurd investigation by the Treasury Department into
whether American basketball players playing for Iranian teams
are violating U.S. sanctions. Good grief!)

America, meanwhile, has a foreign policy mystery of its own --
rivaling that black box of decision making in Tehran. Just what
was former secretary of state James A. Baker III up to, in his
contacts last month with Iranian and Syrian diplomats about how
to stabilize Iraq? Is Baker opening a back channel for the Bush
administration? Is America quietly seeking Iranian help as Iraq
spins out of control? We'll leave that puzzle to pundits in
Tehran.

The writer co-hosts, with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, PostGlobal,
an online discussion of international issues
athttp://www.washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address
isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

; Copyright 1996- The Washington Post Company |
*****************************************************************
 4 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI to settle N-issue through talks 

  2006/10/20   

Friday Prayers leader of Tehran Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani said on Friday that Islamic Republic of Iran makes
its utmost to settle the nuclear issue through negotiations.
 
"The system will not withdraw from the Iranian nation's right
for peaceful use of nuclear energy and strives to resolve the
issue through talks," Rafsanjani said in his Friday prayers
sermon to large groups of worshipers at Tehran University campus.
 
He advised the United Nations Security Council "not to welcome
danger with respect to IRI's nuclear dossier".
 
Chairman of the System's Interest Council added, "The
negotiating side with IRI is apparently determined to raise the
country's nuclear issue at the Security Council.
 
"In that case, the negotiating side, the region and the Islamic
Republic of Iran will sustain damage."
 
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     
*****************************************************************
 5 AFP: US, China discuss draft resolution on Iran 

 Fri Oct 20, 11:00 AM ET 		 	 

BEIJING (AFP) - China told visiting US Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice" /> Condoleezza Ricethat it would play a 
constructive role on the Iranian nuclear issue, but did not 
reveal the extent to which it would support sanctions on Tehran. 

 "China is ready to continue with its constructive role in the
process of peacefully resolving the Iran" /> Irannuclear issue
through negotiations," Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told
journalists after his talks with Rice. 

Rice said the two sides discussed ongoing efforts in the UN
Security Council to draft a resolution on Iran that is likely to
invoke sanctions over Tehran's refusal to halt its uranium
enrichment. 

"We also talked about Iran, where we are in (a) six-party
framework to try to deal with the Iranian nuclear program," Rice
said. 

"There is work under way as we speak at the UN Security Council
concerning the Iranian nuclear file." 

Envoys from France, Britain and Germany in consultation with the
United States put finishing touches Thursday to a draft
resolution on UN sanctions against Iran. The three European
countries have have spearheaded failed talks to persuade Iran to
scale back its nuclear ambitions. 

Officials in Washington said a first set of punitive measures
was likely to focus on banning the supply of material and
funding for Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Other
steps could include asset freezes and travel bans on nuclear and
weapons scientists. 

Last week senior diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany,
Russia and the US finalized a preliminary list of possible
sanctions and directed their UN envoys to begin drawing up a
sanctions draft. 

While the six powers agreed on the need for sanctions against
Tehran, Russia and China are likely to oppose biting sanctions.
Both have important economic ties to Iran and have traditionally
been reluctant to use sanctions as a diplomatic tool. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 6 AFP: Not too late for Iran to avoid nuclear sanctions - French minister - 

 Fri Oct 20, 5:24 PM ET 		 	 

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - French Defense Minister Michele 
Alliot-Marie suggested it was not too late for Iran" /> Iranto 
make concessions to avoid UN Security Council sanctions over its 
nuclear program. 

 "If Iran really shows goodwill, France and its partners are 
prepared to suspend the (sanctions) procedure in the Security 
Council," Alliot-Marie told reporters. "But the condition is that 
there be real progress." 

She made the remarks after holding talks here with UN chief Kofi 
Annan" /> Kofi Annan. 

France, Britain and Germany, with the support of the United 
States, are preparing to discuss with Russia and China the three 
European powers' proposed Security Council sanctions resolution 
against Tehran. 

The resolution is expected to be submitted to the full 15-member
council early next week. 

Envoys of the three European powers, which spearheaded the
abortive talks to convince Iran to stop uranium enrichment,
would not discuss the details of the gradual sanctions being
considered. 

But officials in Washington said they were first likely to focus
on banning the supply of material and funding for Iran's
ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Other steps could
include asset freezes and travel bans on nuclear and weapons
scientists. 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Friday reaffirmed Iran's
refusal to back down over its nuclear program despite the threat
of sanctions, saying it would not "tolerate the slightest
pressure." 

Iran ignored an August 31 deadline set by the Security Council
to freeze uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to
produce nuclear reactor fuel but also for bomb-making. 

Tehran rejects US-led charges that it is seeking a covert
nuclear weapons capability, insisting that its atomic program is
entirely peaceful and aims to generate electricity. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 7 IRNA: President: As IAEA member, Iran legally entitled to nuclear technology (2)

Tehran, Oct 20, IRNA

Iran-Qods Day-Ahmadinejad 

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here Friday said that as a member 
of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran is legally 
entitled to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

 Speaking to hundreds of thousands of people taking part in the 
International Qods Day rallies on the last Friday of the holy 
fasting month of Ramadan, he underlined that the IAEA and its 
member states are bound to assist other agency members to access 
peaceful nuclear technology.

 "While the Iranian nation attempted to secure such a right, none 
of the countries possessing nuclear technology took any measure 
to this end.

 "The IAEA neither supported our legal right to nuclear energy 
nor did it provide any technological and technical assistance. 
The nation rather developed nuclear technology by relying on its 
own knowledge," he added.

 The president said that Iran is one of the few countries fully 
complying with the relevant laws, adding that its nuclear 
activities have always been transparent.

 "The highest level of transparency has been displayed by Iran
in its nuclear activities with peaceful purposes. This is while,
the countries having claims in this respect, have only been
slightly transparent.

 "The countries which have not fulfilled their legal tasks, but
produce and experiment bombs of the second, third and fourth
generations, claim that Iran has diverted from peaceful nuclear
path," he said.

 Dismissing such claims, he denied any violation and said that
Iran has been quite transparent in its nuclear activities, which
has been proved by the reports issued by the agency inspectors.

 "Those claiming to be against proliferation of nuclear weapons
themselves use them and have even equipped some regional
countries with them to secure their interests in the region," he
said.

 He underlined that the enemies intend to monopolize nuclear
technology to sell it to other nations at a high price.

 The president said that they are against advancement and
development of the Iranian nation and worried over Iran's access
to nuclear technology without relying on them.

 "We were told not to produce such a technology and that they
will sell it to us. But the question is whether they complied
with their commitments in the past. They did not even agree to
sell us our required aircraft parts. Thus is there any guarantee
that they will supply nuclear fuel cycle?
 "We rather propose them to stop their own fuel cycle. We will
produce and supply nuclear fuel to them with a 50 percent
discount," he added.

 Addressing the enemies, he asked whether they know what message
their approach conveys to a country which has complied with all
laws and has allowed inspection of its nuclear facilities.

 "This means that no country will ever be willing to become a
member of IAEA and NPT, given that they will be deprived of
their rights.

 "If nuclear technology is good, all world countries should have
access to it. Otherwise, it should not be used by any country.
Such an approach makes the world countries to conduct their
nuclear activities in secrecy," said the president.

 Turning to the US and Britain as the enemies of Iranian nation,
he said that by making instrumental use of the United Nations
Security Council and their illegal right in the council they
intend to pressurize Iranians, but that with God Almighty's
mercy, they will never achieve such a goal.

 "Such decisions taken at UNSC are illegitimate, given that
those filing complaints cannot make decisions and implement them.

 "We offered our views and way of cooperation in a rational and
clear package of proposal. It will be to their interest to
cooperate with Iran, which is a powerful and justice seeking
country," he said.

 President Ahmadinejad underlined that today the Iranian nation
and the ruling system resist the enemies and will continue such
resistance to restore their rights.
*****************************************************************
 8 UPI: Iran determined to become nuclear
     
United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 

10/20/2006 12:11:00 PM -0400

TEHRAN, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Iran is determined to develop its
nuclear program and has offered to sell nuclear fuel to the rest
of the world at discounted prices. 

During a rally Friday marking "International Jerusalem Day,"
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad underscored his country's adamant
ambition to acquire alleged peaceful nuclear technology. 

"Jerusalem Day" is an annual occasion introduced by Iran's late
Ayatollah Khomeini to reiterate Muslims' pledge to recapture
Jerusalem from Israel and is celebrated on the last Friday of
the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. 

Ahmadinejad scorned Security Council resolutions which he
described as "ridiculous and unjust," stressing that the "phase
of injustice and bias is foregone." 

The official Iranian News Agency said he called on European
countries to stand by the Iranian people in its bid to develop a
peaceful nuclear program, arguing that "such a stance will serve
their interests and safeguard their respect." 

He said the West "asks us not to produce nuclear fuel and offers
to sell it to us... Why should they supply us? We will produce
our own nuclear fuel over the next five years, and sell it to
them at a 50-percent discount." 

Ahmadinejad also charged that Israel is "a fabricated entity"
which was created "to constantly threaten the peoples of the
region, attack them and terrorize them. 

"It (Israel) is also being used by the arrogant and colonialist
powers to impose their hegemony on countries of the region," he
added. 

He said Israel has been defeated by the resistance of the
Palestinian people and that of Lebanon's Hezbollah "and will
wither away inevitably, even if it is being supplied with the
most modern weapons."

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 9 IRNA: Iran to go on with its peaceful nuclear activities - President -

, Oct 20, IRNA

-- 
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Friday Iran is resolved
to continue its peaceful nuclear program and regards it as its
legal right.

 Ahmadinejad made the remark while addressing hundreds of
thousands of people taking part in the International Qods Day
rallies on the last Friday of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

 He assessed as "ridiculous" allegations made by the West
against Iran's peaceful nuclear program, saying even the old
illiterate women in the Himalayan mountains would not accept
them.

 It would be very ridiculous that certain states would gather
together, act both as claimant and complainant and at the same
time the judge as well, discuss various issues and make
decisions.

 "This is a logic of pharaohs which lacks legitimacy. The era of
pharaohs has ceased to exist centuries back," Ahmadinejad said.


*****************************************************************
 10 UPI: Ahmadinejad tells West to get along
     
 United Press International - NewsTrack - 

10/20/2006 9:14:00 AM -0400

TEHRAN, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
says the West should get along with Iran in its own interest,
reports the official Islamic Republic News Agency. 

The report said Ahmadinejad, addressing "hundreds of thousands
of people" on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan,
said, "Getting along with the powerful and freedom-seeking Iran
will be to the interest of Western states. Your prestige lies in
getting along with and not opposing the Iranian nation. 

Repeating his earlier stand on proceeding with Iran's nuclear
program despite threats of U.N. sanctions, Ahmadinejad said, his
country "has presented its proposals to the West in a specific
package and clarified ways of cooperation. The Iranian nation
advocates negotiations and peace but will never give in to
pressure one iota," IRNA reported.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 11 AFP: Next UN chief to visit China over North Korean nuclear crisis -
    
October 20, 06:50 PM 

SEOUL (AFP) - South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon, who is
also the next UN chief, has said he will visit China in the
coming week for talks on ending the North Korean nuclear crisis. 

Ban, in an interview with Yonhap news agency, also said he would
do his utmost to improve human rights in the communist state
after he takes over as secretary-general on January 1. 

"I plan to visit China late next week to discuss issues
concerning the United Nations and the North Korean nuclear
issue," Ban was quoted as saying. 

He said he plans the China trip in his capacity as the world
body's next leader, rather than as foreign minister. 

After he takes over, "I'll play an active role to contribute to
resolving the North Korea issue by appointing a UN
secretary-general's special envoy or visiting Pyongyang," Ban
added. 

A foreign ministry official confirmed Ban would visit China late
next week on the North Korean nuclear issue, and also hopes to
visit other countries. 

In the interview on Yonhap's Korean-language and English wires,
Ban also promised "utmost efforts" to improve rights in North
Korea "by taking advantage of the UN secretary-general's
authority and the UN's functions to the full." 

"North Korea's human-rights record shows no signs of improvement
and it has even deteriorated in some aspects," he said. 

"As the next UN secretary-general, I have seriously concerns
over this situation." 

The 62-year-old veteran diplomat said he will stay politically
neutral in handling the nuclear crisis and other issues. 

"I am a Korean secretary-general, not Korea's
secretary-general," he said. "The post requires strict political
neutrality." 

North Korea has been hit with UN condemnation and sanctions for
its first nuclear weapons test on October 9. It calls the
sanctions a "declaration of war" and has hinted it plans a
second test. 

China is the North's only remaining major ally and the nation
with most influence over it. 

Copyright © 2006 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
*****************************************************************
 12 AFP: China sees movement on NKorea, Rice pushes sanctions 

 Friday October 20, 09:01 AM 

By David Millikin 

  [Tang Jiaxuan (front row L) sits next to Kim Jong-Il]   
    
BEIJING (AFP) - A senior Chinese envoy who held face-to-face
talks with reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has said
that they had produced some positive results in the crisis over
Pyongyang's atom bomb test.

"Fortunately my visit this time has not been in vain," Tang
Jiaxuan told visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
here, a day after meeting Kim in the North Korean capital.

Rice, in Beijing on the third leg of a four-stop diplomatic
mission to turn the screw on Kim's (Advertisement)
[Click Here] [ src=]  Stalinist regime, urged China to implement
in full the UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after its shock
October 9 nuclear test.

Tang did not elaborate on what the talks had produced, but
Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said the meeting had
"increased mutual understanding" and covered how to restart
stalled negotiations on the North's weapons program.

Questioned about the outcome, Li said: "Everyone discussed how
to restart progress in the six-party talks as quickly as
possible."

China -- by far North Korea's closest ally and biggest trading
partner and aid donor -- is seen as critical to ensuring the
sanctions are enforced.

After her own talks with Li, Rice urged China to help enforce
the measures to stop the North trafficking its newly proven
nuclear weapons know-how.

She held a flurry of meetings with China's top leaders after
arriving here from Seoul on the most delicate phase of her tour,
which earlier took her to Tokyo and ends with a visit to Moscow.

Rice said she told Li about the "importance of full
implementation" of the UN sanctions resolution "so that we can
make certain there is not a transited trade in dangerous illegal
materials" linked to Pyongyang's weapons program.

Western press reports Friday from China said a number of Chinese
banks had stopped moving funds in or out of North Korea and that
Chinese officials were considering phased reductions in oil
shipments.

Beijing is reluctant to put too much pressure on its unstable
and isolated neighbor, fearing its collapse and reunification
with South Korea would put a major US ally on its doorstep.

A South Korean news report Friday quoted an unidentified
diplomatic source in China as saying Kim had expressed regret to
Tang over the nuclear test and indicated willingness to return
to the talks if the United States "makes some concessions", but
this was not confirmed.

US officials had earlier said China appeared to be carrying out
inspections of cargo entering and leaving North Korea along the
two countries' long land border.

But it was not clear if the measures were just short-term acts
designed to dissuade Pyongyang from any more nuclear tests and
improve the atmosphere for Rice's visit.

Despite any clear signs China had overcome its long-held
reluctance to use sanctions, Washington has been impressed by
what one senior Rice aide called a "sea change" in Beijing's
attitude to North Korea since the October 9 nuclear test.

Li said after meeting Rice that China intended to implement its
"relevant international obligations" under the UN sanctions
resolution, but he did not elaborate.

He called for calm in dealing with the crisis, a message that
could have been targetted at Washington and its drive for harsh
sanctions or Kim's threat to test more devices and retaliate
against those who impose sanctions.

"We hope that all the relevant parties will maintain
cool-headedness, adopt a prudent and responsible approach and
adhere to dialogue and the peaceful resolution as the general
direction of our efforts," Li said.

The talks involving China, Japan, Russia, North Korea and the
United States reached a deal in September 2005 under which
Pyongyang agreed to give up its nuclear arms in exchange for
security guarantees and aid.

But North Korea walked away from the negotiations after
Washington imposed sanctions on a bank suspected of laundering
money for the regime.

While Washington supports a return to talks, a senior US
official said the starting point had to be the September 2005
agreement.

The official ruled out providing new incentives to Kim, who may
try to use North Korea's new atomic capabilities as a bargaining
chip to demand a higher price for returning to negotiations.

"We are not interested in making any more concessions to coax
North Korea out of their tree," he said. 

AFP
*****************************************************************
 13 AFP: Kim Jong-Il expresses regret about nuclear test - report -                         News
 
 Fri Oct 20, 1:10 AM ET 		 	 

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has expressed 
regret about his country's nuclear test and willingness to return 
to disarmament talks if the US eases the pressure, a South Korean 
newspaper has reported. 

 Chosun Ilbo, quoting an unidentified diplomatic source in
China, said Kim made the remarks to a high-level Chinese
delegation visiting Pyongyang this week. 

"Chairman Kim conveyed his sorry feelings about the nuclear
test," Chosun, the largest-circulation paper in South Korea" />
South Korea, quoted the source as saying. 

"If the United States makes concessions to some degree, so will
we, be it either at the bilateral level or the six-party talks,"
Kim was quoted as saying when he met the delegation led by State
Councilor Tang Jiaxuan on Thursday. 

China said Tang, President Hu Jintao" /> Hu Jintao's special
envoy, had delivered an important message from Hu to Kim during
a "significant" mission. 

It was the first time Kim is known to have met any foreigner
since the October 9 nuclear test, which sparked international
condemnation and sanctions against the impoverished communist
state. 

The United States and other nations have been pushing China, the
North's only remaining major ally, to use its influence to
curtail Kim's nuclear ambitions. 

According to a South Korean official, the North gave China only
about 20 minutes' advance notice of the test. 

Beijing -- which had invested much diplomatic capital hosting
six-nation disarmament talks involving the two Koreas, China,
Japan, Russia and the United States -- reacted angrily and
denounced the test as "brazen." 

North Korea" /> North Koreaagreed at the six-nation forum in
September 2005 to scrap its nuclear programmes in exchange for
energy aid and security benefits. 

But it boycotted the forum two months later in protest at US
attempts to curb its access to overseas banks. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 14 AFP: North Korea leader Kim says no more atom bomb tests 

 Fri Oct 20, 7:28 AM ET 		 	 

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has told Chinese 
envoy Tang Jiaxuan that the communist country would not conduct a 
second nuclear test. 

 Yonhap news agency quoted an unidentified diplomatic source in
Beijing as saying: "Kim was known to have clarified his stance
that there will be no additional nuclear test." 

Kim's remarks came during talks with the Chinese envoy, it said
Friday. 

Kim told the envoy Thursday that North Korea" /> has "no plan
for an additional nuclear test," the source told Yonhap. 

In Beijing, Tang said his trip to Pyongyang had not been in
vain. He was the first foreign official to meet the reclusive
Kim since North Korea conducted its atomic test on October 9. 

"Fortunately my visit this time has not been in vain," Tang told
visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" /> . 

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing also reported some positive
elements from the meeting, saying the prospect of quickly
resuming stalled six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program
had been discussed. 

"At least it increased mutual understanding," Li told reporters
when asked about the meeting. 

"Everyone discussed how to restart progress in the six-party
talks as quickly as possible." 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 15 AFP: South Korea, Japan press North to scrap nukes 

 by Harumi Ozawa Thu Oct 19, 11:42 PM ET 		 	 

SEOUL (AFP) - The Japanese and South Korean foreign ministers 
have agreed to work together to press North Korea" /> to scrap 
its nuclear weapons, as Tokyo played down differences with Seoul 
over UN sanctions and expressed hope for better relations. 

 A day after Japan's Taro Aso and South Korea" /> 's Ban Ki-Moon
held a rare trilateral meeting with US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice" /> , Aso and Ban -- whose countries have a
history of strained relations -- met again in apparent harmony. 

"As to the North Korean nuclear issue, we've agreed that the two
countries should cooperate closely in the course of implementing
UN Security Council Resolution 1718," Ban told journalists after
the hour-long meeting. 

"In the course of carrying out the UN resolution, each country
faces its own unique situation," said Ban, who will be the next
UN secretary general. 

He said he explained to Aso that Seoul would review two
inter-Korean economic projects, which have earned the North
almost a billion dollars since 1998, to bring them in line with
the resolution. 

As Rice had done during her visit -- part of a four-nation tour
to press for strict enforcement of the sanctions -- Aso went out
of his way to express understanding of Seoul's position. 

He said the greatest achievement of his visit was to "confirm
that we will make efforts to have closer ties on this momentum
created by (Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe's earlier
visit." 

Abe touched down in Seoul on October 9 at almost the same time
North Korea shocked the world by announcing its first nuclear
test, prompting unanimous UN Security Council condemnation and
sanctions. 

South Korea has pledged to uphold the sanctions but refuses to
shut down the Kaesong industrial estate and the Mount Kumgang
tourist resort in the North, both funded by Seoul. 

"In the case of South Korea, it shares the border (with North
Korea) and they are compatriots," Aso told reporters after
meeting Ban and President Roh Moo-Hyun" /> . 

"In many senses, each country has its own situation which means
they deal with issues differently. Neither the United States or
Japan has the intention to put pressure." 

Aso also reassured Roh that Japan has no intention of obtaining
nuclear arms in response to the North Korean move, according to
a Japanese official. 

Such a prospect causes shudders in South Korea, which was
harshly colonised by Japan from 1910-45 and still has disputes
with Tokyo over history and an island chain. 

"Foreign Minister Aso assured the president Japan does not have
any debate to change its non-nuclear policy and that Japan will
abide by the policy," the official said. 

Japan imposed its own tough bilateral sanctions on the North
after the test. Seoul has not come up with its own measures but
pledged to abide by the UN resolution. 

But officials say the UN sanctions do not cover Kaesong and
Kumgang, seen by domestic and foreign critics as a potential
source of funds for the North's atom bomb and other weapons. 

"Now South Korea has such issues as Mount Kumgang and Kaesong
but both Japan and the United States understand the situation,"
Aso told the president. 

"You can start where you can. We won't force you to do anything.
I expect you to take (measures) on your own initiative." 

After Thursday night's trilateral meeting, Aso said the three
foreign ministers had "agreed to demand North Korea take
specific actions towards abandoning nuclear arms and return to
the six-way talks." 

He added: "Of course we demand North Korea return to the talks
not as a nuclear power, we don't approve of that. This is the
important point." 

North Korea agreed at a six-nation forum in September 2005 to
scrap its nuclear programmes in exchange for energy aid and
security benefits. 

But it boycotted the talks two months later in protest at US
attempts to curb its access to overseas banks. 

The six-way negotiations group the two Koreas, China, Japan,
Russia and the United States. 	 		 			

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 16 AFP: US trade pact will mitigate NKorea nuclear test, minister says -

 Fri Oct 20, 3:58 AM ET 		 	 

SEOUL (AFP) - South Korea" /> South Korea's finance minister has 
called for an early free trade agreement with the United States 
to lessen the economic impact of North Korea" /> North Korea's 
nuclear test, as negotiators prepared for another round of talks. 

 "A free trade agreement can lead to improvements in production,
but it has taken on more importance because it could act as an
effective counterbalance to uncertainties deriving from the
North Korean nuclear issue," said Kwon O-Kyu. 

The government is closely monitoring downside risks to the
economy following the October 9 test, he said. 

The fourth round of five-day talks starts Monday on the southern
holiday island of Jeju, after relatively little progress in the
first three sessions. 

The South's desire to protect its farmers from cheap imports is
one of the main obstacles to reaching a deal before President
George W. Bush" /> President George W. Bush's Trade Promotion
Authority -- allowing him to fast-track accords through Congress
-- expires next June. 

Kwon has warned that the government may have to cut its growth
target for next year, partly due to the test which sparked
worldwide shock. 

Meeting local business people Friday, the finance minister said
the government may need to front-load its budget spending next
year since economic conditions are likely to worsen. 

He said the economy probably grew 4.6 percent in the third
quarter, and the growth rate is expected to slow to four percent
in October-December. 

"It will likely be necessary to advance budget spending next
year since the South Korean economy is likely to face a more
difficult situation early next year," Yonhap news agency quoted
him as saying. 

The minister said more state funds could be used for public
construction, with government-run pension funds investing more
in constructing rental housing projects. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 17 AFP: Nobel laureate condemns N.Korea -- and all nuclear nations -
     
 Fri Oct 20, 6:40 AM ET 		 	 

SEOUL (AFP) - Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has 
condemned North Korea" /> North Korea's nuclear weapons drive, 
along with other nuclear-armed states, and urged the world to 
raise its voice against the weapons. 

 "The whole world condemns North Korea, we all do," he told a
press conference in South Korea" /> South Korea, where he
arrived Wednesday to receive the Seoul Peace Prize for his
pioneering work in fighting poverty. 

Bangladesh's "banker to the poor" was awarded the Seoul prize
just six days after winning the world's most prestigious peace
award. 

"If any new nation acquires a new weapon, anybody should join
hands and raise their voice to stop it," the founder of Grameen
Bank said. 

"At the same time we should not forgive the people who already
have (nuclear weapons). I'm against all nuclear stockpiles
anywhere in the world." 

Yunus said making nuclear weapons and maintaining them was
"equally as condemnable as acquiring new capacity". 

"So we should raise our voice globally. This is one weapon we
don't want to see anywhere in the world." 

Yunus also said he was ready to bring his microcredit banking
concept to the impoverished people of North Korea, in
co-operation with one of its banks. 

"If their banking people (would) like to talk to me, I would
like to do that," he said. 

Yunus said the Nobel Peace Prize had made an "amazing
difference" to him, with his bank gaining greater international
attention. 

"It's a total change of life," he said, adding the prize would
help him step up his campaign to help the poor in Bangladesh and
other countries. 

The success of Grameen Bank in offering microcredit without
collateral to the poor people has been emulated in 23 countries,
according to the Grameen Foundation. 

Seeing how rural Bangladeshis struggled to borrow sums as small
as 27 dollars in the early 1970s, Yunus decided to offer himself
as a guarantor to help them receive bank loans. 

"Microcredit for me is a social business enterprise, an
enterprise to help people get out of poverty," he has said. 

Grameen Bank focused mainly on women and was "an inclusive bank.
We never reject anybody," he said. 

The biennial Seoul Peace Prize, established in 1990, marks the
achievements of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games" /> Olympic Games. 

Other recipients have included UN Secretary General Kofi Annan"
/> Kofi Annan, former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel, and
international relief organizations such as Doctors Without
Borders" /> Doctors Without Bordersand Oxfam. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 18 Introducing Beyond Nuclear
 
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:42:37 -0700

X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (borg.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61]
X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61
X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net
X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST

<x-flowed>

Introducing Beyond Nuclear!



NIRS has launched a new project, Beyond Nuclear. Please visit the temporary 
Web site at <http://www.beyondnuclear.org/>www.beyondnuclear.org. (The 
permanent Web site will be up soon at the same address.)



Beyond Nuclear is a new NIRS initiative that aims to educate wider 
audiences about the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons 
and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear 
promotes positive, solutions-focused messages and will provide guides to 
safer alternatives to these dangerous and obsolete technologies.



Beyond Nuclear plans to focus its efforts on creating a consistent media 
presence for these issues using high-profile campaigns and its stable of 
expert spokespeople. It will also serve as a resource with which to build 
and expand the movement for a world beyond nuclear.



NIRS is launching Beyond Nuclear at an auspicious moment. As we follow the 
ominous developments in North Korea and Iran, the deadly connection between 
civilian and military nuclear technology is ever more apparent. And at 
home, nuclear utilities are lining up to pocket fat handouts paid by us, 
the taxpayers, to build more nuclear reactors.



Please take a moment to read the preliminary information at 
<http://www.beyond.nuclear.org/>www.beyond.nuclear.org. To help NIRS launch 
the permanent site, initiate this important new outreach and expand its 
visibility in communities around the country, please consider making a 
donation today by clicking the Donate Here icon on the Beyond Nuclear Web site.



And as always, thank you for your continued support of NIRS and our 
essential work!



Linda Gunter

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

<mailto:lindag@nirs.org>lindag@nirs.org



</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 19 washingtonpost.com: U.S. Plan for New Nuclear Weapons Advances - 

By Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, October 20, 2006; Page A11

The United States took another step yesterday toward building a 
new stockpile of up to 2,200 deployed nuclear weapons that would 
last well into the 21st century, announcing the start of a 
multiyear process to repair and replace facilities where they 
would be developed and assembled and where older warheads could 
be more rapidly dismantled.

Thomas P. D'Agostino, head of defense programs for the National 
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), told reporters that the 
"Complex 2030" program would repair or replace "inefficient, old 
and expensive [to maintain]" facilities at eight sites, including 
some buildings going back to the 1940s Manhattan Project that 
built the first atomic bombs. He said the sites -- primarily in 
California, New Mexico, Texas and Tennessee -- "are not 
sustainable for the long term."

Yesterday's announcement comes as the Bush administration is
pressing its allies to take harsh steps to halt nuclear weapons
programs in both North Korea and Iran that it says are
violations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That same
treaty calls for the United States and other members of the
nuclear club to eliminate their own stockpiles, but it gives no
deadline by which that should take place.

The Bush administration plan would replace the aging Cold War
stockpile of about 6,000 warheads with a smaller, more reliable
arsenal that would last for decades. It would also consolidate
the handling of plutonium, the most dangerous of the nuclear
materials, in one center that would be built at a site that
already houses similar special materials. Another part of the
plan would be to remove all highly enriched uranium from the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, D'Agostino
said.

Key to the Bush plan is an expected decision in December by the
NNSA on a design for the new "Reliable Replacement Warhead"
(RRW). The nation's two nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos
and Lawrence Livermore, are competing for the new warhead
design. Before going ahead with any new warhead, however, the
NNSA would have to get Congress's approval to move into actual
engineering development.

A requirement of the new design is that it must be based on
nuclear packages tested in the past so that it will not require
the United States to break the moratorium on underground tests
to make certain the RRW will work.

The process initiated yesterday will provide the public the
first chance to give its views on the Bush nuclear program. To
carry out the rebuilding of the complex, the agency must prepare
updated environmental-impact statements for the eight sites,
including public comments, and hold hearings at each location.

Although the administration has decided to go ahead with the
Complex 2030 plan and sees the RRW as a way to have a more
reliable weapon, the public will also get a chance to comment on
two alternative plans for handling the nuclear stockpile --
plans that the administration has rejected.

The Bush option, titled "Transform to a More Modern,
Cost-Effective Nuclear Weapons Complex (Complex 2030)," would
call for stepped-up dismantling of older warheads, a process
that has been slowed by the aging of some facilities and by
efforts to refurbish other deployed warheads.

The second option to be placed before the public is called the
"No Action Alternative," which is described as "the status quo
as it exists today and is presently planned," according to
yesterday's notice in the Federal Register about the upcoming
environmental-impact hearings. That approach would keep the
current programs going and defer decisions on the future of the
nuclear stockpile.

The third option, titled "Reduced Operations and
Capability-Based Complex Alternative," could draw support from
arms control and anti-nuclear activists.

Under this approach, the NNSA would keep its current
technologies for manufacturing weapons and its production
facilities would not be upgraded. The production of plutonium
triggers for current weapons, called pits, would remain limited
at about 50 per year. Under the Bush plan, the new plutonium
center could produce 125 pits a year, a number D'Agostino said
would satisfy current planning for the 2,200 RRW stockpile of
the future.

1996- The Washington Post Company | |   [ border=] 
*****************************************************************
 20 UPI: New U.S. nuclear plan advances
     
 United Press International - NewsTrack - 

10/20/2006 8:45:00 AM -0400

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- The United States plans to build a
stockpile of 2,200 deployed nuclear weapons in place of its
aging store of about 6,000 warheads, says a report. 

The new plan called "Complex 2030" is designed to last for
decades and will use a smaller but more reliable system, while
rapidly dismantling older warheads, reports The Washington Post. 

Thomas P. D'Agostino, head of the defense programs at the
National Nuclear Security Administration, told reporters
Thursday the program will repair or replace inefficient and
costly-to-maintain facilities at eight sites mostly in
California, New Mexico, Texas and Tennessee, the report said. 

The design for the new "Reliable Replacement Warhead" is
expected to be announced in December. The Post said the Los
Alamos and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons laboratories are
competing for the new warhead design.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 21 [NYTr] How to Stay Out of Gitmo - Get a Nuke
 
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:41:11 -0500 (CDT)

X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu
X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Counterpunch - Oct 20, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/day10202006.html

How to Stay Out of Gitmo: Get a Nuke

By SUSIE DAY

In case you've been too stunned by other newsworthy disasters to pay proper
attention, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was just signed into law.
This law gives the U.S. government legal permission to do things they've
been doing sub-legally for years, such as: designate people as "unlawful
enemy combatants"; deny these people the right of habeas corpus; detain them
for years without charges; and obtain evidence through "coercion."

If it only affected immigrants and foreigners captured in battle, this law
would be bad enough--but when we learn that it also permits U.S. citizens to
be deemed "enemy combatants," it's time to ACT! Here, then, are some tips on
proving to the feds that you are not the enemy:

1. BECOME A FAMOUS MOVIE STAR. Hollywood celebrities rarely, if ever, spend
years in Guantanamo without charges, surrounded by barbed wire and vicious
dogs. Their movies may bomb, but they never do, thanks to the virulent Red
Scares that purged the motion picture industry of all terrorists, with the
possible exception of Mel Gibson.

When you become a famous movie star, you will receive: a dazzling smile,
affordable health insurance, and a rock-hard sense of self-esteem that comes
from millions of government-indoctrinated nobodies knowing who you are. Push
comes to shove and you are sent to a detention camp, guards will treat you
better.  "Hey, isn't that Julia Roberts on that gurney? I loved her in Erin
Brockovich. Maybe I'll let her call her attorney..."

2. EMIT NOXIOUS FUMES. No one will ever accuse you of Islamofascism as you
proudly stand in solidarity with our great multinational corporations and
spew harmful chemical, radioactive, and industrial waste into our ecosystem.
By polluting rivers, the air, and low-income neighborhoods, you'll garner
lots of government perks, too, including military contracts and tax-breaks
you could only dream of as an ordinary, "save-the-whales" citizen. Best of
all, your carcinogenic emissions will increase chances that, among the
thousands of Americans who die each year from environmentally caused cancer,
one or two will be terrorists.

3. SCAPEGOAT SECULAR HUMANISTS. Stuck-up, egghead Secular Humanists like
Frank Rich, Molly Ivins, and Noam Chomsky say that Islamic extremists are
not the real problem. They're right! The real problem is stuck-up, egghead
Secular Humanists!

Secular Humanists have caused terrorism, global warming, and every major
disaster for the last 5,000 years--and it's our duty to stop them before
they TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

FACT: these intellectual malcontents have turned from God and home-schooling
to the golden calf of "Humanities"! FACT: since the Crusades, Secular
Humanists have stood at the center of a vast, satanic plot to STOP
God-ordained conquest and unite humankind through Logic, Science, and
Enlightenment! FACT: Much of our U.S.  Constitution was written by these
depraved, happiness-pursuing "Enlightenati"! Would you want one of these
"created equal" degenerates to marry your sister?

Why are we waiting? Let's show them God's logic. Let's show them the only
way to prevent another Third Reich is with another Inquisition.

4. ACQUIRE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. If you are not an Arab, Communist, or person of
color, announcing that you have a nuclear weapon capable of mass destruction
will make you an instant ally of the United States! A small NB about the
WMD, however: Do NOT make the mistake of that silly Iranian President, who
followed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, inquired through proper channels
about legally obtaining nuclear technology for "peaceful" purposes, and was
called "Hitler" for his efforts. Please show that you are thoughtful enough
to handle your ability to create perpetual nuclear winter by obtaining your
WMD before you inform the U.S. government. To make absolutely certain you're
in good standing, insist that the U.S. government call you "France."

5. DEVELOP AGORAPHOBIC CATATONIA. "All that is necessary for evil to triumph
is for good men to do nothing." A wise man said that in the 18th Century--a
wise, stupid man. This man never looked ahead to the 21st Century, to see
that doing nothing would become the apogee of cutting-edge activism!

Remember the Afghanistan invasion? The Iraq invasion? All those meetings and
lectures you went to, where you became "informed" and had "doubts" about WMD
and al Qaeda connections? All that peace marching--once, with 10,000,000
people all over the world, so the destruction of millennia-old cultures and
the slaughter of innocents wouldn't happen? It happened anyway.

It happened because you left the house.

To prevent further mayhem, it is necessary to effect social change at home,
by nonviolently reading your email. Uh-oh: look at all those listserves on
murder and torture and indefinite detention. They force you to devise a new
activist strategy: You must play "Minesweeper" and "Pac-Man" for the next
four hours.

Now, for direct action! Using psychological skills honed at your computer,
it is time to emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually "shut down." This
allows you to do radical civil disobedience while lying on your couch. As
you remain in staunch protest, allow crises such as Darfur, AIDS, and our
war on Iran to roll over you.

While they are rolling, turn on TV. Look, there's a Sex and the City rerun.
Enter the world of beautiful people with no real problems, lots of sex, and
million-dollar hygiene. Why does New York City suddenly have so few Black
people?  Isn't that gay person being treated like a pet?  Doesn't matter.
All good. Now, try to picture somebody water-boarding Sarah Jessica Parker.
You can't. Ah, finally--you have effected social change.

Susie Day can be reached at: sday@skadden.com

(c) Susie Day, 2006
       
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*****************************************************************
 22 Xinhua: Egyptian minister calls for nuclear bill draft   
    
  www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-21 00:28:13   

    CAIRO, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian Minister of Electricity
Hassan Younis has called on the parliament to draft a bill to
regulate peaceful nuclear affairs in the country, the official
news agency MENA reported Friday. 

    At a meeting with officials of the Egyptian Atomic Energy
Authority, Younis said he expected the draft law to be finalized
soon and referred to the parliament. 

    Younis also touched upon the role the National Center for
Nuclear Safety and Radiation Control could play at the coming
stage, saying the Center should be independent enough to monitor
nuclear stations with high efficiency. 

    Younis also called for upgrading quality control measures at
the Center and for finding a new class of nuclear scientists
capable of coping with the Egyptian peaceful nuclear program,
according to MENA. 

    Egypt started very limited nuclear technological research in
1957, but its nuclear program was frozen in 1986 in the
aftermath of the accident at the Soviet Chernobyl nuclear plant
in the same year. 

    Also in 1968, Egypt signed the international nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and officially supports the elimination
of nuclear weapons in the region. 

    Both Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his son Gamal
Mubarak said during a three-day conference of the ruling
National Democratic Party, which began on Sept. 19, that Egypt
would continue developing nuclear energy program.   

  Editor: Mu Xuequan   

*****************************************************************
 23 Arizona Republic: Palo Verde shuts down Unit 3, problem not safety issue
 
October 20, 2006

Mark Shaffer The Arizona Republic

Workers at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station shut down Unit 3 
Thursday night after an undetermined problem surfaced at the 
plant.

 "It doesn't appear to be a safety issue, and it happened on the 
non-nuclear side of the plant," said Jim McDonald, a spokesman 
for Arizona Public Service Co., which operates Palo Verde. "We'll 
know more tomorrow (Friday), but this should be a relatively 
quick turnaround."

 Unit 1 at the nation's largest nuclear generation plant reopened 
Monday after nearly a month on the shelf after a recurring 
problem with pressurizer heaters. During that repair operation, 
workers also found a small leak in the valve of the reactor that 
delayed its restart by about two weeks. 

Inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also conducted 
a weeklong investigation of the plant's emergency diesel 
generators in early October after a generator in Unit 3 did not 
activate during plant inspections in July and September.

 Unit 2 also has been inactive since late September for refueling 
and maintenance and is expected to be back in operation by 
mid-November.

 Palo Verde has been under increased scrutiny by federal 
regulators because of problems with oversight issues the past two 
years. 

Copyright © 2006, azcentral.com. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 24 Arizona Daily Star: 1 of 3 Palo Verde reactors shut down | 

www.azstarnet.com Â®
 
Associated Press Tucson, Arizona | 

Published: 10.20.2006

WINTERSBURG - Officials have shut down one
of three reactors at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station
west of Phoenix. Unit 3 at Palo Verde had to be shut down early
Thursday afternoon after "some sort of issue" occurred, said Jim
McDonald, a spokesman for Arizona Public Service Co. He said he
did not know what problem prompted the shutdown. "What I do know
is it's not safety-related," he said. He said the problem
occurred on the non-nuclear side of the plant, the nation's
largest nuclear power plant. Engineers were working Thursday
night to figure out the cause of the problem. McDonald said Unit
3 likely would be restarted in a short period of time. "It looks
like the turnaround is going to be short," he said. "I can't
give you a timetable because anything I give you is a guess."

The power plant has been plagued by outages and equipment
problems for the past two years. Earlier this month, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission ordered a special inspection of the plant
after Unit 3 did not activate during plant inspections July 25
and Sept. 22. Results of the inspection are due next month.
Thursday's shutdown came just two days after the plant restarted
Unit 1. That unit was shut down for a month following repeated
problems with five of its 36 pressurization heaters. McDonald
said it's a good thing Thursday's shutdown came at a time when
the power demand is low, rather than in the peak time during
summer. Palo Verde, located in Wintersburg about 50 miles west
of downtown Phoenix, supplies electricity to about 4 million
customers in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California. APS owns
29.5 percent of the plant and operates it for a consortium of
utility companies in the four states.       

*****************************************************************
 25 AP Wire: Nuclear plants in Kentucky, Ohio must conduct random drug tests

10/20/2006 | 

 BRETT BARROUQUERE Associated Press 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A nuclear plant in Paducah must put random
drug testing programs in place for some employees to comply with
its Department of Energy contracts, the agency's Inspector
General said Friday. 

The inspector general's office, in a two-page memorandum, said
the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the Portsmouth Gaseous
Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, need to begin randomly drug
testing selected employees. 

The report comes five months after an employee at the Paducah
plant tested positive for methamphetamine and five months after
a bag of methamphetamine and pipes were found outside a building
in a limited security area of the compound. Two dozen employees
were tested and one was barred from the plant after testing
positive. 

Investigators looked at the drug testing policies at both plants
and whether either had a random drug testing policy for
employees, according to the memorandum. 

"The inspectors determined they didn't have one," said Denise
Smith, a spokeswoman for the Inspector General's Office said. 

Federal regulations require any company with a contract valued
at $25,000 or more with the Department of Energy, operating
under the authority of the Atomic Energy Act and involving
access or handling of classified information or special nuclear
materials, to have a random drug testing policy for employees. 

The random drug testing policy applies to a variety of
employees, including protective force personnel who carry
firearms and may have contact with the public, the Inspector
General said. 

Workers entering through both plants' security fences are
screened for weapons and explosives with a metal detector and a
sniffing device but are not routinely searched for drugs. 

Smith said the plants didn't intentionally violate the federal
regulations. 

"When they got into the review, management was unsure they were
subject to the random drug testing requirement," Smith said. 

Georgann Lookofsky, spokeswoman for the Paducah plant, said the
United States Enrichment Corporation, which runs the plant for
the Department of Energy, is in discussions with the government
about starting a random drug testing policy, but hasn't done so
yet. 

"They have started talking with our security leadership,"
Lookofsky said. "At this point, nothing has been formalized." 

A message left at the Portsmouth plant in Ohio was not
immediately returned Friday. 

Both plants agreed to start random drug tests by the end of the
year, the Inspector General's memorandum said. 

The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is the only operating
uranium enrichment facility in the United States. It is owned by
the U.S. Department of Energy, but leased and operated by the
United States Enrichment Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary
of USEC Inc. 

The plant employs about 1,400 people and produces low-enriched
uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants in the United
States and around the world. In May 2001, USEC completed a plan
to consolidate its uranium enrichment operations at Paducah. In
June 2002, transfer and shipping operations at the Piketon plant
were also consolidated at Paducah. 

*****************************************************************
 26 AU ABC: MPs mull support for nuclear power stations
 
ABC Riverland SA | Local News | Story 

 Friday, 20 October 2006. 11:28 (AEDT)Friday, 20 October 2006.

Mrs Kelly says it is not up to politicians to decide where a
nuclear plant might be built.ABC 

Federal National Party MP De-Anne Kelly says she would only
support a nuclear power station in her north Queensland
electorate of Dawson if the community want it. 

Mrs Kelly's Liberal counterpart, Warren Entsch, says he would be
happy to have a nuclear power plant in his Cairns-based
electorate of Leichhardt. 

But Mrs Kelly says it is not up to politicians to decide where a
nuclear plant might be built. 

"If any of the regions within Dawson were to put their hand up,
having been fully briefed, and say 'look, De-Anne - we want you
to carry our case forward', I will always do that regardless of
what the project might be," she said. 

"But it's a decision for the local community. It's not to be
driven by anyone else, particularly me." 

Meanwhile, the federal MP whose electorate covers the north and
west of South Australia says he would welcome a nuclear power
plant in his area if it is financially and environmentally
sound. 

More than 40 per cent of the world's known uranium deposits are
found in the electorate of Grey. 

However, retiring MP Barry Wakelin says it is unlikely a site in
the electorate would be chosen for a plant. 

But he says if the research shows a plant in his electorate of
Grey is the right option, it must be considered. 

"The really important thing about this debate is to take all of
that emotion out of it that's been there out of circumstances
for the last 50 years," he said. 

"Look at the science, remind ourselves that the radioactivity we
are talking about is naturally occurring and the really positive
purposes for radioactive substances saves a lot of lives. 

"Certainly if Grey had a need for additional power sources it
would have to be an option." 

*****************************************************************
 27 NRC: NRC Commissioner Merrifield Will Not Seek Third Term
 
News Release - 2006-13 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office 
of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 
20555-0001     E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 06-131     October 20, 
2006   

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, notified White
House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten on Friday that he would not
be seeking a third term at the NRC. Commissioner Merrifield, a
Republican, was first appointed by President Clinton to the NRC
in October of 1998, and subsequently reappointed by President
Bush in August of 2002. 

Merrifield, whose term ends on June 30, 2007, informed Bolten
that it was his intention to serve out the remainder of his
term, but was notifying the President well in advance of his
plans to leave the Commission to allow the Administration to
have sufficient time to find a suitable replacement. 

It has been an honor to serve the nation as a Commissioner,
Merrifield commented. NRC is an outstanding agency and I am
proud to have served for over 8 years. He also stated that it
was a very difficult decision not to seek a third term but
believes that the agency is strong and well prepared for the
future. Commissioner Merrifield has made extraordinary
contributions to the work of the NRC and rendered exceptional
service to the American people, said NRC Chairman Dale Klein. 

Merrifield has served with five NRC Chairmen -- Shirley Jackson,
Greta Dicus, Richard Meserve, Nils Diaz and the current Chairman
Klein -- and has been with the agency at a time of significant
change in the outlook of the nuclear industry. Having served on
the Commission during and after the events of September 11,
2001, Merrifield has been very involved in efforts to improve
the agencys security and emergency preparedness capabilities.
These preparations served him well when he was Acting Chairman
during the August 14, 2003, blackout when nine nuclear units
shut down as part of the major grid disturbance that darkened
the homes of 50 million people in North America. 

Merrifield has toured all 103 operating nuclear power plants in
the United States as well as over 120 nuclear plants outside of
the U.S. in visits to 29 of the 31 countries that operate
civilian nuclear generating facilities. 

A New Hampshire native and an attorney by training, Merrifield
previously served as a legislative assistant to two United
States Senators from his home state - Gordon Humphrey and Bob
Smith. Immediately before joining the Commission, Merrifield was
the Majority Staff Director of the Senate Environment and Public
Works Subcommittee on Superfund, Waste Control and Risk
Assessment. 

While he stated that he has no specific plans for what he will
do when he leaves the Commission, Merrifield pledged, I will be
as active a Commissioner during my last eight months on the
Commission as I was during my first eight months. 

www.nrc.gov/who-we-are/organization/commission/merrifield.html   
  
-----------------------------------------------------------------


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 Friday, October 20, 2006 	   
*****************************************************************
 28 BBC NEWS: Putin firm on EU energy charter
 
Last Updated: Saturday, 21 October 2006, 02:22 GMT 03:22

[Vladimir Putin (photo: EU Presidency website)] 

Mr Putin said Russia had not started the tensions with
Georgia

Russian President Vladimir Putin has resisted calls from
EU leaders to agree to binding rules on energy relations at a
summit in Finland. 

Mr Putin said he was confident Europe and Russia would find a
common approach on trade and investment in oil and gas. 

But he said a charter opening up Russia's energy sector to more
foreign investment needed further work. 

Mr Putin also hit out at Georgian leaders, accusing them of
building up forces near two breakaway regions. 

Russia supplies a quarter of the oil and gas consumed in the EU,
and the proportion is set to rise sharply in coming decades. 

I am quite confident that we will be in a position to develop 
common approaches

Vladimir Putin          

EU leaders have long been trying to persuade Russia to sign up
to the 1991 Energy Charter Treaty, without success. 

But Mr Putin suggested that Russia could agree to most of the
charter's principles when negotiations began in the next few
weeks on a new strategic partnership with the EU. 

"We are not against the principles that are included in the
charter, but we believe that that certain provisions of the
charter should be defined better," he said. 

"I am quite confident that we will be in a position to develop
common approaches." 

Mr Putin echoed European leaders by saying that energy
co-operation needed to be rooted in the principles of
predictability of energy markets and the mutual interdependence
of suppliers and consumers. 

'Reciprocity' 

The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Lahti says Mr Putin was on a charm
offensive, but there was no sign of progress on any of the
really difficult issues. 

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the two
sides needed to develop mutual trust. 

"That requires transparency, the rule of law, reciprocity,
non-discrimination, market opening and market access," he said. 

[EU energy graphic]

The EU wants European investors to have the same access to the
Russian energy market as Russian companies have to Europe's
market, and the ability to use Russian pipelines to export any
gas and oil they produce in Russia. 

European governments have recently raised concerns about the
treatment of some European energy investors attempting to
develop oil and gas resources in Russia. 

Energy security became a major priority for the EU after Russia
briefly cut off gas to Ukraine in January, in a dispute over
payment. 

A paper prepared for the summit by the European Commission
stressed the importance of increasing energy imports from the
Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caspian, Middle East and Gulf regions. 

'Bloodshed' 

The EU leaders said before the summit that they would make clear
their hopes that Russia would be able to find the killer of the
murdered journalist, Anna Politkovskaya. 

On Georgia, Mr Putin said that Russia had not started the latest
round of tensions between the two countries. 

"The issue does not lie between Russia and Georgia, the issue is
between Georgia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia," he said,
referring to Georgia's two Russian-backed breakaway territories. 

He accused Georgian leaders of seeking to take control of the
regions by military force, and said a Georgian military build-up
was the cause of the latest trouble. 

The Georgian government reacted angrily to Mr Putin's comments,
calling an immediate press conference. 

Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili told journalists in Tbilisi
that Georgia had no plans to use force against its citizens. 

"This is pure fiction and the Russian president knows this, but
chooses to presume that the international community is
ignorant," he said. 

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told journalists he had
been talking to Russia and Georgia "practically daily", trying
to cool down the situation and persuade their leaders to talk to
each other, without success. 		 	 		 	 	 

*****************************************************************
 29 Platts: Areva and MHI will co-design 1,000-MW LWR
 
Paris (Platts)--19Oct2006
 
Areva and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, MHI, will co-design a 
third-generation 1,000-MW LWR as the first step of a broad 
cooperation agreement initialed October 19 in Tokyo. 

The firms' announcement did not specify whether the reactor will 
be a PWR or a BWR, but MHI has no BWR technology and an Areva 
source said the new reactor would likely combine the two 
companies' PWR expertise. 

The reactor is aimed at emerging markets in Asia such as Thailand 
or Vietnam, as well as at the US market where some potential 
customers balk at the 1,600- to 1,700-MW PWRs offered currently 
by Areva and MHI.

The companies expect to sign a specific agreement on development 
of the 1,000-MW plant within a few weeks and expect design work 
to last three to four years, an Areva spokesman said. 

The memorandum of understanding also foresees cooperation in 
equipment procurement, services, fuel cycle (essentially the back 
end), and future reactors (essentially high-temperature reactors 
and fast reactors). Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of Areva, and Kazuo 
Tsukuda, president of MHI, signed the MOU two days after the 
announcement that MHI's domestic rival Toshiba Corp. had 
successfully closed its purchase of Areva's rival Westinghouse 
Electric Co.
 
Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved
 [The McGraw-Hill Companies]       
*****************************************************************
 30 toledoblade.com: Report says Midwest power grid prepared for years of demand

Article published Friday, October 20, 2006
 
 
The report said the region's amount of power is sufficient
through 2012. 

By BLADE BUSINESS WRITER

The electricity grid in the Midwest is stronger than in many
parts of the country and should be able to handle power demand
for years, a new national study found.

 
"It is an interesting picture across the country. Some parts of
the country look pretty good, others look bad, while others are
merely OK," said Stan Johnson, a spokesman for the North
American Electric Reliability Council.

 The council issued a long-term grid assessment this week that
found some parts of the country with imminent problems. Problems
with Ohio's transmission grid contributed in part to the August,
2003, blackout in several states and part of Canada.

 The federal Energy Policy Act in 2005 gave the reliability
council new requirements for assuring power distribution. The
group's report found that the 13-state territory that includes
Ohio is generally in good shape. It projected that by 2015
demand for power could reach 220,400 megawatts, up from the
current 191,600 megawatts.

 Generation capacity for the territory will hit about 241,000
megawatts by the end of this year, giving the region a healthy
reserve margin in case of peak demand.

 The report said the amount of power is sufficient through 2012,
but afterward new sources may be needed to maintain an adequate
reserve. An additional 8,400 megawatts would be needed by 2015,
it said. That is significant because FirstEnergy Corp.'s
Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Oak Harbor generates just 940
megawatts.

 About 47 percent of the territory's power comes from coal-fired
plants, 14 percent is nuclear, and 28 percent is from plants
that run on natural gas. Heavier reliance on gas, however, could
pose problems.

 Supplies of the fuel used primarily by small, standby plants
are subject to delivery disruptions in major storms or
hurricanes.

 The Midwest region has added or will add 600 miles of extra
high voltage lines and six substations in the next five years.
FirstEnergy, which largely was credited with problems that began
the 2003 blackout, has spent $450 million upgrading its
transmission system and has budgeted up to $600 million more
mission system and has budgeted up to $600 million more through
2011.

 A grid operator, International Transmission Co., of Novi,
Mich., has spent more than $400 million in upgrades since 2003
and plans up to $1.6 billion more through 2011. The firm
controls most transmission lines in Michigan's Lower Peninsula.

 The North American Reliability Council report said power grids
could reach "unhealthy levels" in Texas and some other areas as
early as next year, given the expected increase in demand and
limited generation for those areas.

 Projected to be adequate and reliable are the Southeast and
Florida, but in regions such as Texas, the mid-Atlantic, the
Rocky Mountain states, and New England, the capacity versus
demands differences will be at "unhealthy levels" in the next
two or three years, the report said.

 Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.

 The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 
, (419) 724-6000 
*****************************************************************
 31 Rutland Herald: Vt. Yankee evacuation plan under scrutiny

Rutland Vermont News & Information
 	 	 	 	 	 
October 20, 2006 

The Associated Press   
  
BRATTLEBORO — With a comment period about to close on the town's 
plan for responding to an emergency at the Vermont Yankee nuclear 
plant, new questions are being raised about whether infants and 
toddlers could be moved from child care centers in a hurry.

The Select Board opened a public comment period on the plan last 
month, as part of the town's effort to prepare for signing off on 
a plan that is developed in conjunction with the state Division 
of Emergency Management.

Dummerston, Halifax, Marlboro, Guilford and Marlboro also have 
local radiological emergency plans, as they are within or 
partially within an evacuation zone that extends out from Vermont 
Yankee for a 10-mile radius.

The zone also extends into Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The town and the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union have been
working to smooth out wrinkles in the schools' evacuation plan
since a 2004 drill in which nearly 1,000 students couldn't be
evacuated from schools because of a shortage of buses. The
mishap was attributed to a miscommunication between New
Hampshire and Vermont officials.

Transportation is a big issue for the pre-schoolers as well,
roughly 1,000 of whom are believed to be attending child care
centers within the Vermont towns in the nuclear plant's
evacuation zone.

"We have been trying to get the town of Brattleboro to do an
evacuation drill of child care programs for a long time," said
Elizabeth Christie, executive director of the Windham Childcare
Association.

"They are a vulnerable population and the town has a
responsibility to the well being of these children," she said.

Christie said child care centers often lack vehicles sufficient
to transport their children away from their sites in an
emergency.

"The schools have their buses, but where would the vehicles come
from?" Christie asked.

Town Manager Jerry Remillard said he'd met with Christie
recently and agreed that the town should ask the state for
$10,000 extra to incorporate child care centers into its
emergency plan.

"We've listened to their concerns and we are trying to address
them," he said. "We've got work to do."

Ed Anthes, of the group Nuclear Free Vermont, said the public
needs to demand more certainty that evacuation plans will work.

"The line is that (the plan) is a work in progress," said Anthes
of Dummerston. "But I don't think there's been any demonstration
that it will work. People aren't confident in the plan."
   
© 2006 Rutland Herald
*****************************************************************
 32 Charlotte Business Journal: N.C. opposes Duke on recovering nuclear plant costs - 

friday

by John DowneySenior Staff Writer
 
The N.C. Utilities Commission's Public Staff finds itself 
confused by Duke Energy Carolinas' request for authority to 
recover costs for a proposed nuclear plant before it is 
completed. But it thinks it's generally a bad idea. 

"Duke's application tilts the balance too far in its direction to 
the prejudice of its ratepayers," the staff stated in a filing 
this week. 

And the N.C. Attorney General's Office says Duke's request is
unsupported by the facts and contrary to state law. 

The Carolina Utility Customers Association, an industrial group,
doesn't like the proposal either, and it suggests the Utilities
Commission either deny the request or delay action on it until
Duke's expected rate case next year. 

A joint filing by seven public advocacy groups accuses Duke of
trying to pass "unnecessary rate hikes to North Carolina
consumers without first determining if the generating units are
... necessary and in the public interest." 

Duke plans to file its response next week. 

In a Sept. 20 filing, Duke asked the commission to allow it to
recover $125 million in development costs it expects this year
as it considers whether to build a $6 billion nuclear plant in
Cherokee County, S.C., with The Southern Co. of Georgia. 

That would mark a significant change in rate making in North
Carolina. By state statute, the commission can generally allow
utilities to charge ratepayers only for equipment that is "used
and useful." That has meant companies cannot charge the costs of
construction to customers until a plant is operating. 

The company contends it cannot afford to commit large amounts of
money to the nuclear-power project unless it can recover some of
those costs as they are incurred. 

For now, Duke is seeking to recover only its development costs.
But its filing says it will ask the commission for authority to
recover construction costs in the same manner if it goes through
with the plant. 

The commission asked for comments from interested parties, and
so far they are all critical of Duke's request. 

The Public Staff, which represents the interests of ratepayers
on utilities issues, says it is not even clear what Duke is
asking for. The staff says the company appears to want the
commission to say it can recover its costs without any kind of
hearing. 

The attorney general and CUCA say the commission has no
authority to grant the request. And the public-advocacy groups
contend Duke is trying to get customers to pay the routine costs
of its application for a nuclear plant. 

Duke has said it will go to the N.C. General Assembly with the
request if necessary. 

Reach John Downey at (704) 973-1130 or jdowney@bizjournals.com. 
Contact the Editor Need Assistance? More Latest News 
Subscribe or renew online 

© 2006 American City Business Journals, Inc. and its licensors.
*****************************************************************
 33 Boston Globe: Seabrook plant one of six to take part in study - 

Boston.com

Associated Press 

October 20, 2006 

SEABROOK, N.H. --Seabrook Station has been chosen as one of six
nuclear power plants nationwide to be part of a study of the
consequences of an accident that would release radioactivity
into the atmosphere.

The other nuclear plants being reviewed are Diablo Canyon in
California; Duane Arnold in Iowa; Fermi in Michigan; Peach
Bottom in Pennsylvania; and Salem in New Jersey. The study is
expected to take three years.

"The sites were picked based on the demographics of the
surrounding communities and the type of containment used," said
Scott Brunnell of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The study will bring together information about how accidents
could occur within containment buildings; how containment could
be breached; how radioactive plumes could travel; and how
effective emergency planning would be, Brunnell said.

Ultimately, the criteria developed as a result of this study
would be applied to all U.S. nuclear power plants, Brunnell said.

Seabrook Station spokesman Alan Griffith said that all nuclear
plants would eventually be reviewed. He said this is an effort
on the part of the NRC to update its methodology.

"It will be beneficial to the community because the NRC will be
taking a look at emergency planning," Griffith said.
"Ultimately, it will be good for all of us."

------

Information from: Portsmouth Herald,
*****************************************************************
 34 NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting Notice
 
                         FR Doc 06-8822 
[Federal Register: October 20, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 203)] 
[Notices] [Page 62020-62021] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr20oc06-96]                         
 
AGENCY HOLDING THE MEETINGS: Nuclear Regulatory Commission DATE: 
Week of October 23, 2006.
 
PLACE: Commissioners' Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, 
Rockville, Maryland.
 
STATUS: Public and Closed.
 
ADDITIONAL MATTERS TO BE CONSIDERED: Week of October 23, 2006: 
Wednesday, October 25, 2006 1:25 p.m. Affirmation Session (Public 
Meeting) (Tentative) a. Final Rule: National Source Tracking of 
Sealed Sources (RIN 3150-AH48) (tentative) * * * * * *The 
schedule for Commission meetings is subject to change on short 
notice. To verify the status of meetings call (recording)--(301) 
415- 1292. Contact person for more information: Michelle Schroll, 
(301) 415- 1662.
 
* * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the 
Internet
 
[[Page 62021]] at: 
http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-making/schedule.html* * * * 
* The NRC provides reasonable accommodation to individuals with 
disabilities where appropriate. If you need a reasonable 
accommodation to participate in these public meetings, or need 
this meeting notice or the transcript or other information from 
the public meetings in another format (e.g. braille, large 
print), please notify the NRC's Disability Program Coordinator, 
Deborah Chan, at 301-415-7041, TDD: 301-415-2100, or by e-mail at 
DLC@nrc.gov. Determinations on requests for reasonable 
accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis.
 
* * * * * This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred 
subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like 
to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the 
Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301-415-1969). In addition, 
distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is 
available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission 
meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic 
message to dkw@nrc.gov. Dated: October 17, 2006.
 
R. Michelle Schroll, Office of the Secretary.
 
[FR Doc. 06-8822 Filed 10-18-06; 9:56 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M

 
*****************************************************************
 35 NIRS: Beyond Nuclear

Welcome to Beyond Nuclear.org. The site is currently under 
construction but you can help us launch it! Please consider 
joining our pioneer supporters shown here by making a donation 
today. Simply click the Donate Now button at left or contact 
Linda Gunter, project director, for more details at 301.270.6477.   

Beyond Nuclear was created because the world is moving ever more
rapidly toward an increased build-up and use of nuclear reactors
and nuclear weapons. These twin nuclear threats have been
separated in the minds of the public for too long. The goal of
Beyond Nuclear is to change this dangerous misconception, to
dispel nuclear myths, and to lay out pathways to a world without
nuclear reactors and without nuclear weapons. 

Reactors are inviting terrorist targets. If successfully
attacked, they can release enormous amounts of deadly radiation
into our air and water. Thousands of nuclear weapons remain on
hair-trigger alert, able to launch accidentally or
deliberately in minutes. Meanwhile, the nuclear power industry
is deceptively positioning itself as a solution to climate
change. 

Beyond Nuclear aims to educate new audiences about the
connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The
project will promote positive, solutions-focused messages and
provide guides to safer alternatives to these dangerous and
obsolete technologies. Through concerted media campaigns,
high-profile press work and using its stable of expert
spokespeople, Beyond Nuclear will work to create a consistent,
national media presence for these issues. 

Beyond Nuclear is a project of Nuclear Information and Resource
Service. For more about Beyond Nuclear, please click the button
at left. For more about nuclear power, visit <font
color="#FFFFFF">www.nirs.org</font>. For more about nuclear
weapons, visit the nuclear abolition project created by the late
Reverend William Sloane Coffin at <font
color="#FFFFFF">www.faithfulsecurity.org</font>. And check out
the Beyond Nuclear Blog at <font
color="#FFFFFF">http://beyondnuclear.blogspot.com/</font>  
                

Honorary Chairman, actor and activist I am delighted to serve as 
the Honorary Chairman for Beyond Nuclear. It represents a 
wonderful and timely opportunity to shatter the myth of the 
peaceful atom forever. Never in our lifetimes has the deadly 
connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons been more 
obvious or more dangerous. Yet, never in our lifetimes have we 
been presented such an opportunity to make our planet a safer, 
kinder place. We have the technology for a sustainable future. We 
have the intelligence to reject nuclear warfare. We just need to 
take action! Beyond Nuclear is an excellent idea at the 
absolutely correct time. I urge you to support it in any way that 
you can. 

*****************************************************************
 36 Portsmouth Herald: Seabrook nuke plant under microscope
 
October 20, 2006

By Shir Haberman shaberman@seacoastonline.com 

SEABROOK -- Seabrook Station has been chosen as one of six
nuclear power plants around the country to be part of a study of
the consequences of an accident that would release radioactivity
into the atmosphere. 

"The sites were picked based on the demographics of the
surrounding communities and the type of containment used," said
Scott Brunnell of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

The study will bring together information previously gathered
about how accidents could occur within containment buildings,
how containment could be breached, how radioactive plumes could
travel and how effective emergency planning would be, Brunnell
said. Ultimately, the criteria developed as a result of this
study would be applied to all U.S. nuclear power plants, he
said. 

Seabrook Station spokesman Alan Griffith noted that all nuclear
plants will eventually be reviewed. 

"There is nothing to be read into who goes first," Griffith
said. 

He said this is an effort on the part of the NRC to update its
methodology, and that is a good thing. 

"It will be beneficial to the community because the NRC will be
taking a look at emergency planning," Griffith said.
"Ultimately, it will be good for all of us." 

Brunnell said the entire process, called the State of the Art
Reactor Consequence Analysis, is expected to take three years to
complete. He said there will be periodic public information
sessions held while the study is under way and that a full
report will be made public following the completion of the
project. 

The other nuclear plants being reviewed are Diablo Canyon in
California, Duane Arnold in Iowa, Fermi in Michigan, Peach
Bottom in Pennsylvania and Salem in New Jersey. 

Portsmouth Herald 

 Copyright © 2006 Seacoast Online. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 37 Portsmouth Herald: Nuclear plant analysis must be taken seriously

October 20, 2006

The decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to include
Seabrook Station in the first group of six nuclear power plants
to undergo what is being called the State of the Art Reactor
Consequence Analysis offers the residents of the New Hampshire
and northern Massachusetts seacoasts a unique opportunity. 

The three-year project will bring together new and previously
completed research on how accidents can develop within
containment domes at nuclear plants, how those accidents can
escalate into a breach of those domes, how the plumes of
radioactivity could travel and impact surrounding communities,
and if and how current emergency preparedness procedures could
work to protect the residents of the towns and cities that
surround those plants. 

That last piece is of interest to most people here on the
Seacoast. The question remains: "Can the current emergency
preparedness procedures really protect us in the event of a
radioactive release from Seabrook Station?" 

Certainly, Seabrook Station officials and most of our emergency
responders -- police and fire -- would answer "yes" to that
question. That response is based on the simulated drills held
periodically to determine the level of preparedness. 

But those drills are only simulations. A scenario is developed
by the testing agency -- FEMA or the NRC -- and emergency
responders tell those agencies what they would do if that
situation were to really happen. 

Not a piece of equipment is moved, not a roadway barrier is put
out, not a person leaves the firehouse or police station. 

Emergency planning has devolved into little more than a chess
game, despite the fact that experiencing a checkmate in
emergency planning could equate to massive health consequences
for thousands of people. 

Any opportunity to revisit the emergency plan established almost
two decades ago when the plant first went online is a plus for
Seacoast residents, but only if the NRC analysts act as
investigators rather than advocates for the nuclear industry, if
every bit of information is looked at critically and not
accepted at face value, and if testing emergency preparedness is
taken out of the emergency response centers and out into the
streets of our cities and towns. 

-- Portsmouth Herald 

 Copyright © 2006 Seacoast Online. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 38 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Abraham: Energy disruption likely within five years - 

By Rick Stouffer TRIBUNE-REVIEW

 Friday, October 20, 2006 

The likelihood of a major disruptive event -- something that
would make 2005's $3.20-a-gallon gasoline seem like a minor bump
in the energy road -- within five years is extremely likely,
former Energy Department Secretary Spencer Abraham said Friday. 

Whether a natural event, such as 2005's Hurricane Katrina, the
use of energy as a political tool, ala Venezuela or Russia, or a
terrorist attack, an event will occur, with the impact on the
nation's economy he called "tremendous." 

"Energy is the most daunting, long-term problem for this
country," Abraham said, speaking to attendees at "Energy Summit
2006: Generating ideas for Southwestern Pennsylvania," a event
sponsored by U. S. Steel Corp. and law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP
at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. 

Looking at energy projections for the next two decades, Abraham,
now head of the consulting firm that bears his name, said
America must take action soon to insure a calamity's impact is
minimized as much as possible. 

Among his six proposals: build more nuclear power plants.
"Nuclear today provides about 21 percent of the country's
electricity needs, but by 2020, that figure will be down to 14
percent," Abraham said. 

He believes the environment to construct the first new nuclear
facilities in the U.S. since 1976 are better than they have been
in a long time. For example, many environmentalists when faced
with building new nuclear reactors or global warming caused by
burning fossil fuels, will choose nuclear. 

"Also, the financial situation, comparing nuclear to natural gas
is better today, but we still have to figure out what to do with
nuclear waste," Abraham said. 

Rick Stouffer can be reached at rstouffer@tribweb.com. 

Tribune-Review Publishing Co.   
*****************************************************************
 39 UPI: Analysis: Democrats, greens nuclear fans?
     
United Press International - Energy - 

10/20/2006 5:40:00 PM -0400

 By BEN LANDO UPI Energy Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Democrats from Iowa to powerful
members of Congress are endorsing more nuclear power in the
United States, often to combat climate change or dependence on
oil, but critics say it's a shortsighted venture. 

There are 103 reactors online, churning out 20 percent of U.S.
energy consumption, but the wave of nuclear support that began
mid-20th century died after the disaster in Chernobyl and the
incident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. 

Or, nearly died. 

Increasing U.S. -- and worldwide -- energy demand and the
growing cost of fossil fuels, coupled with tax incentives in
last year's federal energy bill, has breathed life into an
industry that last attained federal approval for a plant in
1978. 

Nearly 789 billion kilowatt hours of electricity was generated
by U.S. nuclear power in 2004, the most ever for the country and
the fifth record set since 1998 despite no new nuclear plants
coming online since 1996, according to the World Nuclear
Association. 

Earlier this month, state lawmakers, the Hawkeye Labor Council
and the mayor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, rallied at the state's only
nuclear plant for a reversal of a decades-long drought in
civilian nuclear growth in the country. 

The plant's owner, FPL Energy, is part of the Clean and Safe
Energy Coalition, which organized the rally and relies on most
of its funding from the nuclear industry's lobby, the Nuclear
Energy Institute, The Gazette in Cedar Rapids reported. 

The Progressive Policy Institute, a nonprofit policy branch of
the Democratic Leadership Council -- a coalition of "New
Democrat" politicians -- released a report Oct. 16 that included
new nuclear plants as part of the formula to cut "an addiction
to carbon-based fuels that endangers America's national
security, economic vitality, and environmental health." 

Michelle Boyd, legislative director of Public Citizen's Energy
Program, called nuclear-friendly Democrats "unfortunate." 

"It's a political platform that guarantees they get money from
the Nuclear Energy Institute," Boyd said. 

She warned committing resources to nuclear power will take away
from the very renewable energy sources looked to as an
alternative to polluting fossil fuels. 

"I certainly wouldn't put all my eggs in the nuclear basket,"
said Judith Greenwald, director of innovative solutions at the
Pew Center on Global Climate Change, but those looking at
environmental issues see nuclear power as a part of a diverse,
pollution-free portfolio. 

"That conversation is happening." 

The Sierra Club said it isn't at the pro-nuclear power
discussion table, however. 

"There are some left-leaning groups that are recalculating their
beliefs but that does not include the environmental community,"
said Josh Dorner, spokesman for Sierra Club, adding the
organization is "squarely opposed to nuclear energy." 

The Natural Resources Defense Council's stance isn't
anti-nuclear outright, but says without government subsidies,
nuclear power isn't competitive on the open market. 

And, "NRDC will continue to seek redress for serious waste,
security and proliferation concerns associated with both
domestic and international nuclear power applications," wrote
NRDC spokesman Ralph Cavanagh, in an e-mail to United Press
International. 

Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information
and Resource Service, like other nuclear opponents, attributed
the perceived pro-nuke environmentalist movement to Patrick
Moore, co-founder of radical environmental group Greenpeace.
Moore left the group in 1986 and is now a nuclear proponent. 

Moore, along with Christine Todd Whitman, President Bush's first
Environmental Protection Agency administrator, leads the Clean
and Safe Energy Coalition. 

Mariotte said Democrats as an entire party don't back nuclear
energy. 

The Democratic Leadership Council, a strong influence in the
party now and parent organization to the Progressive Policy
Institute, is "the center-right of the Democratic Party," he
said. 

"The Progressive Policy Institute has never been progressive,"
said Public Citizen's Boyd, when asked about PPI's nuclear
advocacy in its recent report. 

"Historically we're seeing a shift in support" from Democrats,
said Jerry Slominski, senior legislative director for the
Nuclear Energy Institute, adding all but four of the party's
U.S. Senators voted for recent climate change legislation that
included a nuclear provision. (Mariotte, however, countered that
the senators initially supported the climate bill but voted no
after the nuclear provision was inserted.) 

Slominski said the Democrats' umbrella always included
environmentalists, which nuclear critics are a part of. And with
the climate change issue gaining traction while the anti-nuclear
movement that effectively, possibly temporarily, closed the
industry's shop decades ago being "rather old," he said support
is growing. 

That can be seen in the breakdown of the more than $289,500 in
campaign contributions the NEI doled out since Jan. 1, 2005.
Thirty-nine percent went to Democrats, a growing share, which
Slominski said is a "mirror" for their support of the nuclear
industry. 

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 40 U.S. Marines Vid of Ammo Dump - Tactical Nukes?
 
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:37:04 -0500 (CDT)

X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu
X-Spam-Class: HAM

In this video, we can see that stuff is going off all over the place
but when the big ones go off (creating mushroom clouds), the ones
that bathe the entire landscape in LIGHT, so do the sirens. Listen
as the AMERICAN soldiers describe just how powerful a shockwave
they FELT. These guys are concerned about fallout as well, either
chemical or nuclear, because they voice audible concern over the
direction of the wind.

U.S. Marines Vid of Ammo Dump - Tactical Nukes?

http://justanotherblowback.blogspot.com/2006/10/us-marines-vid-of-ammo-dump-tactical.html

* General Limnitzer in 1962: "We could blow up a drone...Casualty
lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national
indignation...We could develop a Communist Cuba terror campaign in
the Miami area, in other Flordia cities and even in Washington...aircraft
at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate
for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary
organization in the Miami area..."

-- http://www.fastmail.fm - Send your email first class
*****************************************************************
 41 IHT: Radiation monitors make screening easier on U.S.-Mexico border -

International Herald Tribune
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
The Associated Press
 						
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2006
 							 						 					   				 				
TUCSON, Arizona
Officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection have been using
a new tool to prevent radioactive materials from being smuggled
into the country from Mexico.  Radiation portal monitors have
been screening vehicles for radioactive materials at the ports
of entry in Nogales since Oct. 11.  The 8-feet- (2.5-meter-)
tall machines are stationed at each side of eight vehicle lanes
at the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry in downtown Nogales, near
the booths where officers conduct interviews.  

The machines don't create images like an X-ray machine, but 
instread detect energy emitted by radioactive sources coming from 
nuclear devices, dirty bombs, special nuclear materials, natural 
sources and isotopes used in medicine and industry.  So far, the 
machines have only gone off for legitimate reasons, including 
detecting someone who has recently undergone radiation treatment.  
When the machine is activated, it sends a signal to officers who 
then use a hand-held device to verify the source.

If it appears to be medical, officers can send the reading to a 
computer at a laboratory in Virginia and get a response in about 
10 minutes, said Brian Levin, spokesman for Customs and Border 
Protection.  The machines are an improvement on the hand-held 
radiation detectors officers have used since 1996, Levin said. 
Customs and Border Protection is installing the machines at land 
border ports, seaports and airports nationwide.                                                          
							 							 						 												 						 						 					   				
Herald Tribune All rights reserved   [IHT]    
	 					   				 			
*****************************************************************
 42 Stop a blank check for radioactive waste storage in your state
 
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:42:39 -0700

Stop a blank check for high-level radioactive waste transport & 
storage in your state!

* Urge your elected officials to stop H.R. 5427 the U.S. Senate 
version of the Fiscal Year 2007 Energy and Water Appropriations 
Bill dead in its tracks!

U.S. Senator Pete Domenici wants to give the U.S. Department of 
Energy (DOE) the authority to open one or more interimstorage 
sites for high-level radioactive waste in the 31 states with 
operating reactors and the 3 states with shut down reactors. DOEs 
authority could arbitrarily override the wishes of state 
officials. The opening of such dumps would not improve the safety 
or security of the waste, and would initiate unprecedented 
numbers of waste shipments on the roads, rails, and waterways 
that would be vulnerable to accidents or attacks. This dangerous 
scheme must be stopped.

Domenicis bill could be taken up during the Congressional 
lame-duck session scheduled for after this Falls elections. Thus, 
newly-elected Congressmembers wont have the opportunity to vote 
on it. While you should also contact candidates and try to inject 
this issue into the campaigns, its important to contact your 
current elected officials as well.

Contact information for elected officials:

Find your State Governors contact information at:

<http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.dc47d9cab98a90f68a278110501010a0/?vgnextoid=1af5c274eee62010VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD>http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.dc47d9cab98a90f68a278110501010a0/?vgnextoid=1af5c274eee62010VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD 

Find your State Attorney Generals contact information at:

<http://www.naag.org/ag/full_ag_table.php>http://www.naag.org/ag/full_ag_table.php 

Contact your U.S. Senators and Representative via the U.S. Capitol 
Switchboard: 202-224-3121, or find additional contact information at 
<http://www.house.gov/>http://www.house.gov/

and 
<http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm>http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm. 

Urge them to contact Sen. Domenici, the sponsor of this bill. The 
Governors of CT, ME, NH, and VT, as well as the Northeast 
Coalition of Governors, already have. So have: 10 State Attorneys 
General (CA, CT, IL, ME, MN, NH, NJ, NY, VT, WI), ILs U.S. 
Senators; the National Conference of State Legislatures; the 
National Association of Counties; the National League of Cities; 
and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

If your elected official has already expressed their opposition 
to Sen. Domenici, thank them! If not, urge them to do all they 
can to oppose H.R. 5427 and its undermining of statesauthority to 
protect the health, safety, and environment of their citizens 
against the risks of high-level radioactive waste. Urge them to 
act quickly, as final decisions on this bill will likely be made, 
behind closed doors, as early as mid November.

[To send a message via the internet to your elected officials on 
this issue, also see Public Citizens web-form at: 
<http://action.citizen.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5324>http://action.citizen.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5324
 
2. As an alternative to this dangerous proposal, consider adding 
your group to the national coalition calling for safety and 
security upgrades for radioactive waste stored on-site at nuclear 
power plants.

See the Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactorsat 
<http://www.citizen.org/documents/PrinciplesSafeguardingIrradiatedFuel.pdf>http://www.citizen.org/documents/PrinciplesSafeguardingIrradiatedFuel.pdf
 
and send your name, title, group name, and full contact 
information to <mailto:mboyd@citizen.org>mboyd@citizen.org in 
order to sign onto the letter. Note that over 100 diverse 
national (including NIRS), regional, and local grassroots groups 
have already signed onto these Principles.

Background:

U.S. Senator Pete Domenici (Republican, New Mexico), powerful 
chairman of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee, as well as chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee 
for Energy and Water Development, has proposed creating 
consolidation and preparation(CAP) facilities centralized 
interimstorage sites for commercial high-level radioactive waste 
in every state with nuclear reactors.

Despite the agencys abysmal radioactive waste management record, 
Sen. Domenici would grant the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 
final say over the location of such interimstorage sites thus the 
ability to override Governors, State Legislatures, State 
Attorneys General, as well as county and local governments. And 
if a state refuses to name one or more CAP facilities, Sen. 
Domenicis bill would allow DOE to build a regional parking 
lotdump for high-level radioactive wastes from multiple states in 
that un-cooperativestate.

The opening of CAP facilities would happen in a frighteningly 
short three and a half year long streamlinedperiod. The license 
would be for 25 years of interimstorage (if 25 years can be 
called temporary!), although waste could and almost certainly 
would -- remain at CAP facilities for significantly longer than 
that. DOE has admitted its proposed national repository for 
high-level waste targeted at Yucca Mountain, Nevada -- wont open 
for another 11 years, till 2017, at the earliest. Sen. Domenici 
himself has admitted it would take an additional 30 years, or 
more, to transport wastes to Yucca.

Even after those 41+ years, Yucca would not be able to 
accommodate all the waste generated by that point in the U.S., 
meaning that the excess waste would remain stuck back at the 
reactor sites. In fact, any waste generated after 2010 just three 
years from now will be excess to Yuccas legal capacity limit.

This half-baked scheme could very well result in helter-skelter 
Mobile Chernobylwaste shipments through numerous states, for no 
good reason whatsoever. High-level radioactive waste could be 
rushed onto the roads, rails, and waterways across America, bound 
for hastily built overflow parking lot dumpsfrom which it would 
have to be moved again someday, doubling transport risks. 
Transporting radioactive waste is the stage in the nuclear fuel 
chain that is most vulnerable to accidents and attacks. Each 
shipping container would hold 40 to 240 times the long-lasting 
radioactivity released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. This is 
nothing to rush into!

To see how close such road and rail shipment routes could come to 
you, go to 
<http://www.ewg.org/reports/nuclearwaste/find_address.php>http://www.ewg.org/reports/nuclearwaste/find_address.php
and type in your address to find out.

Proposed barge shipment routes on the bays, rivers, lakes, and 
coastlines of America can be viewed at: 
<http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/hlwtransport/mobilechernobyl.htm>http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/hlwtransport/mobilechernobyl.htm
 
(look for the links under the year 2004 listing).

Sen. Domenicis dangerous scheme, just like the scientifically 
indefensible Yucca Mountain dump proposal, is merely an attempt 
to create the illusion of a solution(as Michael Keegan of 
Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes has put it) to the 
radioactive waste problem, in order to justify license extensions 
at old reactors and to build new reactors for the first time in 
over 30 years.

For a detailed analysis of H.R. 5427 prepared by Michele Boyd at 
Public Citizen, go to 
<http://www.citizen.org/documents/SummaryNuclearWasteStorageProvisions.pdf>http://www.citizen.org/documents/SummaryNuclearWasteStorageProvisions.pdf.
 
Public Citizen also has an easy way to write your elected 
officials on these issues at: 
<http://action.citizen.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5324>http://action.citizen.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5324.
 
For copies of the letters from elected officials that have already been 
sent to Sen. Domenici in opposition to this proposal, contact me and Id be 
happy to email it to you.

Weve stopped similar dangerous proposals time and time again for 
many years, and we can do it again now! For example, the Private 
Fuel Storagedump targeted at the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian 
Reservation in Utah another supposedly interimstorage site 
proposal was likely killed after a bitter ten year struggle in 
early September. This was a tremendous environmental justice 
victory. Read more about it at 
<http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/scullvalley/svnews090706.htm>http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/scullvalley/svnews090706.htm.
 
Of course, weve also successfully stopped interimstorage near Yucca 
Mountain at the Nevada Test Site for over a decade another battle that is 
heating back up again&

Thanks!

---Kevin Kamps

Nuclear Waste Specialist
Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS)
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340
Takoma Park, Maryland 20912
301.270.6477x14

<mailto:kevin@nirs.org>kevin@nirs.org
www.nirs.org

*****************************************************************
 43 globeandmail.com: Firm hoping sewage mix dilutes radioactive water
 	
POSTED ON 20/10/06 	 		 			
 
Proposal to clean up tritium pollution calls for flushing into
Ottawa River
 	 	 	 	 			 			 			 		 			 			 			 		 			 			
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT ENVIRONMENT REPORTER                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

A company in Eastern Ontario is hoping to find that the solution 
to pollution is dilution.

The company, SRB Technologies Canada Inc. of Pembroke, Ont., has 
contaminated the groundwater around its factory with radioactive 
tritium, raising the ire of nuclear regulators. So it is 
proposing to clean up the problem by dumping some of the 
pollutant into the city's sewers. 

From there, the radioactivity would be mixed with sewage flushed 
by the city's 13,000 residents and ultimately poured into the 
nearby Ottawa River. 

In the plan, filed with regulators at the Canadian Nuclear Safety 
Commission, the company says its proposal is safe for people and 
the environment because the radioactivity would be diluted with 
all the city's sewage and then have a further "immediate and 
substantial dilution upon discharge to the environment [the 
Ottawa River]."                                                                                                                                                                                        
	 	 	 	 	 		 				 			 			 	 	 	 						 		 	 	 	 	 	 		 	 	 		 		
The commission's staff issued a report yesterday saying they
approve of the cleanup idea, but are refusing to comment because
the proposal is the subject of a hearing scheduled next week on
the renewal of SRB's operating licence. 

SRB makes glow-in-the-dark signs, such as emergency exit lights,
that don't need electricity to run. They are made with tritium,
a radioactive form of hydrogen produced as a waste product from
Canada's nuclear power plants. 

Some residents object to the proposal, saying it doesn't make
sense to take contaminants from the factory site and place them
in the river, which is a drinking water source for downstream
communities, including Ottawa. 

"It's just moving pollution from one place to another. It's a
bit of a shell game," said Ole Hendrickson, a researcher with
Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, a local environment group,
who worries that the plan, if approved, could make the city's
sewage plant radioactive. 

SRB could not be reached for comment. 

The company has released small amounts of radioactive waste into
the sewers, but the plan proposes increasing it by up to
fourfold. 

SRB has been in hot water with nuclear regulators because
groundwater around its factory, located in a strip mall in the
Ottawa River valley community, is contaminated with tritium. One
well has radioactivity levels about eight times the Ontario
drinking water standard, but there are pockets of even higher
contamination in the soil. 

In August, the commission ordered the company to shut its
operations because of the contamination, but it has since
resumed production after agreeing not to operate when it rains
-- the company and regulators are concerned that tritium going
up the factory's smokestack is washing back down onto the site
in wet weather. 

To stop a further buildup in radiation, the company is proposing
to divert the contaminated rain falling around the factory and
its smokestack into a holding tank, from which it would be
periodically released to the sewer system. 

"Although no significant risk to the public would exist as a
result of releases of the diverted rainfall, in an attempt to
allay any possible public concern, we will be performing monthly
[radiation] measurements at the water sewage treatment plant to
ensure that concentrations are as expected," the company said. 

The most contaminated water the company expects to collect will
have tritium levels about 300 times Ontario's drinking water
standards. But by the time this water is mixed in with the 4.5
million tonnes of sewage Pembroke produces every year, it will
have radioactivity of less than 1 per cent of the standard. 

The company has investigated what other businesses handling
tritium do with their radioactive water, and said "it is a known
and accepted practice" to dispose of it down drains, provided
the amounts are within the effluent limits in their operating
licences. 

There is debate over what constitutes safe exposure. Both the
federal and Ontario governments have tritium drinking water
standards of 7,000 becquerels per litre, about 10 times the U.S.
level and 70 times the European one. A becquerel is a measure of
radioactive decay. 

The City of Toronto recently concluded that the standard is too
lax and asked the province to reduce it to 20 becquerels per
litre, a level recommended by an Ontario government advisory
committee in the 1990s but never adopted. 

SRB said Pembroke's sewage would be about 44 becquerels per
litre if it is allowed to add its water.

 © Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights 
Reserved. globeandmail.com and The Globe and Mail are divisions 
of Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc., 444 Front St. W., Toronto, 
Canada M5V 2S9 Phillip Crawley, Publisher
*****************************************************************
 44 RR: STPNS: Higher-level radioactive waste to come through area on I-25
, Raton, New Mexico
 
The Raton Range  / STPNS October 20, 2006 ENVIRONMENT 
 	 
By Todd Wildermuth
for The Raton Range 

RATON, New Mexico (STPNS) -- Shipments of a higher radioactive
level of nuclear waste will begin rolling through Colfax County
on Interstate 25 in the future, destined for the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant in southeast New Mexico.

The New Mexico Environment Department on Oct. 16 approved a
change in WIPP’s permit that will allow it to store the waste
that is referred to as “remote-handled” because it must be
handled by remote-control robotic arms within rooms with thick
concrete walls and a special shielding. The current waste being
shipped to WIPP is of a lower level of radioactivity that allows
closer human handling of it during packing.

The higher-level radioactive material will be sealed in
specially “shielded” containers, however, designed to contain
radioactivity within the container in a way to make the
shipments safe for transport along the highway. Each WIPP truck
will carry three 55-gallon drums of waste material, similar to
what the trucks carry now.

The higher-level waste is currently at sites in Washington
state, Idaho and South Carolina. The waste from the U.S.
Department of Energy’s Hanford site in Washington and the Idaho
National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory would be
shipped through Raton, Maxwell and Springer south on I-25, later
passing through Wagon Mound in Mora County as well. 

Low-level waste approved for WIPP has been shipped through
Colfax County from those two federal labs and storage facilities
since WIPP shipments began coming into New Mexico from the north
in 2000. Shipments from Rocky Flats in Colorado also have made
their way into New Mexico at the Colorado border north of Raton.
All WIPP shipments are inspected at the Raton Port of Entry.

“They all get inspected every time,” said Motor Transportation
Division Sgt. Larry Moore, the supervisor at the Raton port. He
said there is always a qualified inspector at the port 24 hours
a day and the WIPP-truck inspections happen regardless of the
time of day or night, the weather conditions or any other
factors. Each inspection takes 45 minutes to an hour and a half
on average, he said.

Moore said his officers will receive additional training if
necessary to inspect the higher-level waste. He said an average
of three WIPP trucks enter New Mexico from Colorado at the Raton
port daily, all three usually within 45 minutes to an hour of
each other. The port is given a two-hour notice — received from
state police — when a WIPP truck is approaching.

Anne deLin Clark, coordinator of the state’s Radioactive Waste
Consultation Task Force, said the transportation system
currently used to move WIPP-bound waste was originally designed
for the higher-level waste, so no changes will need to be made
in the way the new waste is shipped other than the different
type of containers — designed for the higher radioactivity — in
which it will be sent.

Since opening in 1999, WIPP has been allowed to accept only
low-level transuranic waste. The waste going to WIPP is
essentially toxic sludge left from decades of weapons
production. Specifically, the sludge is a byproduct produced
when nuclear reactor fuel was dissolved in acid to extract
plutonium used in nuclear bombs. Other material taken to WIPP
includes things like clothes and tools used by workers at
radioactive sites.

The transport and storage of the higher-level waste — called
“hot waste” — has always been part of WIPP’s management plan.
This week’s issuance of the revised permit signifies that WIPP
has demonstrated it can handle the lower-level waste safely and
can be allowed to handle the higher-level waste. 

The state environment department “spent a huge amount of time
making sure that the health of New Mexico’s residents and our
state’s environment is protected under the modified permit,”
Department Secretary Ron Curry said. © 2006 Raton, New Mexico.
All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may
not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated,
published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express,
written consent from . 	 	 	   


Contact STPNS    
  Copyright © 2006 SmallTownPapers, Inc. Source content
*****************************************************************
 45 IPS-English POLITICS: What to Do With the World's Nuclear
 
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:26:28 -0700

X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (borg.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61]
X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61
X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net
X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST

<x-flowed>
ROMAIPS AP WD IP NU=20
POLITICS: What to Do With the World's Nuclear Arsenal
Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20 (IPS) - While widely deplored by the world communi=
ty, North Korea's recent nuclear test has also prompted fresh calls for t=
he major powers to get serious about dismantling their own weapons of mas=
s destruction.

Amid fears of a renewed arms race in response to Pyongyang's nuclear adve=
nture, diplomats and independent analysts say it is time for the nuclear-=
armed nations to fulfill their obligations toward disarmament.

=94A lack of implementation by nuclear-weapon states of their commitment =
to work toward disarmament has undermined their moral authority,=94 Hans =
Blix, former U.N. chief weapons inspector, told diplomats at a meeting he=
re last week.

Blix observed that a number of non-nuclear weapons states felt extremely =
=94frustrated=94 and, in some cases, even =94cheated=94 because no action=
  has been taken toward disarmament by the nuclear powers.

The five declared nuclear-weapons states -- the United States, Russia, Br=
itain, France and China, which can reject any international decision by u=
sing their veto power as permanent members of the Security Council -- con=
tinue to possess thousands of nuclear weapons.

These nations are obligated to take disarmament initiatives under the Nuc=
lear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but so far they have failed to show =
any sign of determination to tread that path.

In 2000, delegates at the NPT Review Conference called on the United Stat=
es and other nuclear powers to eliminate their arsenals, and put forward =
a raft of practical disarmament measures. Governments pledged to do so, b=
ut never matched their words with deeds.

Those steps included entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treat=
y (CTBT) and negotiations on an international and verifiable treaty banni=
ng the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.

Last week, members of the U.N. General Assembly disarmament committee ass=
ailed the exclusive focus on North Korea and said Pyongyang's test unders=
cored the =94urgent need=94 for nuclear powers to get behind the CTBT.

The delegates noted that, despite taking a tough stance on nonproliferati=
on, Washington had failed to indicate its willingness to endorse the CTBT=
. The U.S. has imposed a unilateral moratorium on testing, but refuses to=
  negotiate a fissile material cutoff.

Thus, some analysts as well as diplomats have come to regard Washington's=
  own nuclear behaviour as partly responsible for North Korea's nuclear te=
st.

=94North Koreans are correct when they say they are facing nuclear threat=
s,=94 John Burroughs, director of the New York-based Lawyers' Committee o=
n Nuclear Policy, told IPS.

In condemning North Korea's test, U.S. President George W. Bush told Japa=
n and North Korea that the U.S. =94will meet the full range of our deterr=
ent and security commitments=94.
Burroughs, a longtime observer of international negotiations on nuclear i=
ssues, criticised Pyongyang's decision to test a nuclear device, but adde=
d that =94nobody should be surprised=94 to learn that this was in reactio=
n to the Bush's 2001 nuclear review policy.

That policy justifies the use of nuclear weapons in what the Bush adminis=
tration calls a =94preventive war=94. The U.S. had deployed nuclear weapo=
ns in South Korea for 43 years before it decided to withdraw them back in=
  1991, according to the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-b=
ased independent nuclear watchdog.

Last week, a North Korean diplomat said at a meeting that the response to=
  his country's weapon test from the United States and other nuclear power=
s evinced a =94gangster-like logic that only big countries could possess =
weapons and attack and threaten small countries with them=94.

For their part, the Iranians have continued to defend their nuclear progr=
amme in strong terms -- they also claim it is meant for peaceful purposes=
  -- by pointing to the fact the U.S. and other four members of the Securi=
ty Council had failed to act on disarmament, which they see as an act of =
=94hypocrisy and double standards=94.

Blix seems to have understood the Korean and Iranian anger against the es=
tablished members of the nuclear club.

=94Had those commitments (on NPT) been kept,=94 he said, =94negotiation w=
ith North Korea and Iran would have been less difficult.=94

Concerned over the situation in the Korean Peninsula, the 116-member Non-=
Aligned Movement (NAM), the largest bloc of developing nations in the Gen=
eral Assembly, said this week it would like to see a change in the behavi=
our of the Big Five on the Security Council.

In a statement, the organisation stressed that efforts towards nonprolife=
ration must be =94parallel to simultaneous efforts aiming at nuclear disa=
rmament=94.

It described the continued existence of nuclear weapons and their possibl=
e use as a =94threat to humanity=94, and said it was deeply concerned ove=
r the =94slow pace=94 of progress towards nuclear disarmament.

Seeking immediate resumption of talks on disarmament, NAM delegates said =
it was time the nuclear-weapons states start taking concrete steps to ens=
ure the =94total elimination=94 of nuclear weapons.

To achieve that end, Blix suggested that the United States and Russia tak=
e the lead by reducing their strategic arsenals first.

=94All nuclear-weapons states commit themselves to a policy of no first-u=
se,=94 he said, urging Washington and Moscow to take their weapons off ha=
ir-trigger alert.
*****
+Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (http://www.un.org/Depts/dda/WMD/treaty=
/)
+Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy (http://www.lcnp.org/)
+CHINA: Moves to Contain N. Korea Sanctions Crisis (http://ipsnews.net/ne=
ws.asp?idnews=3D35172)
+POLITICS: US, China Head for Showdown Over N. Korea Sanctions (http://ip=
snews.net/news.asp?idnews=3D35127)

(END/IPS/WD/AP/IP/NU/HR/KS/06)



=20
=3D 10210050 ORP002
NNNN

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 46 UPI: Japan vows not to go nuclear
     
United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 

10/20/2006 5:09:00 AM -0400

SEOUL, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Japan's diplomatic chief Friday said his
country would not use North Korea's nuclear crisis to arm itself
with atomic weapons, a Seoul official said. 

Meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in Seoul,
Foreign Minister Taro Aso said Japan has no intention of
developing nuclear arms in response to North Korea's nuclear
armament, a Foreign Ministry official said. 

"Foreign Minister Aso assured that Japan will fully abide by its
non-nuclear policy," the official said. 

South Korean officials have expressed concerns that North
Korea's nuclear test last week could give Japan a pretext to go
nuclear, which would cause China to boost its defenses, raising
military tensions in Northeast Asian region. 

Aso traveled to Seoul for a trilateral meeting with his South
Korean and U.S. counterparts to discuss how to use sanctions to
force defiant North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. 

At the meeting, Aso said, the three ministers "agreed to demand
North Korea take specific actions toward abandoning nuclear
arms."

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 47 NRC: NRC Issues Technical Evaluation for the Idaho National Laboratory Tank Farm Facility
 
News Release - 2006-13 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office 
of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 
20555-0001     E-mail: No. 06-130     October 20, 2006   
  

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its Technical
Evaluation Report (TER) for the Idaho Nuclear Technology and
Engineering Center Tank Farm Facility at the Idaho National
Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Idaho, that concludes the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) has met appropriate criteria for
determining that the residual waste in the tanks is not
high-level waste and clears the way for DOE to clean and
stabilize the tanks. 

The Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for
Fiscal Year 2005 (NDAA) requires DOE to consult with the NRC
when determining that certain wastes associated with spent
nuclear fuel reprocessing are not high-level wastes. The NDAA
has three criteria for making that determination: 

1) The waste does not require permanent isolation in a deep
geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel or high-level waste;
 2) The waste has had highly radioactive radionuclides removed
to the maximum extent practical; and 
3) The waste will be disposed of in compliance with NRC
regulations for land disposal of waste. 

In September 2005, DOE submitted its waste Determination for the
Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center Tank Farm
Facility for NRC review as required by the NDAA. Based on this
information, NRC staff has concluded in that there is reasonable
assurance that the applicable criteria of the NDAA can be met
for residual waste associated with the Tank Farm Facility. NRCs
Technical Evaluation Report includes DOEs disposal strategy,
applicable review criteria, and the NRC staffs review, analysis
and conclusions. 

This TER marks the successful completion of the consultation
under Section 3116 of the NDAA. This is the second TER prepared
by the NRC under the NDAA. The first was for the disposal of
salt waste at the Savannah River Site. 

	A copy of the TER is available in the NRCs Agencywide Documents
Access and Management Systems (ADAMS) under accession number
ML062490108. ADAMS is accessible via the agencys web site at:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html.   
  
-----------------------------------------------------------------


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 Friday, October 20, 2006 	   
*****************************************************************
 48 KnoxNews: Remembering Weinberg - Stories from friends and colleagues

By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com 

October 20, 2006

OAK RIDGE -- About five years ago, Fran Silver accompanied Alvin 
Weinberg to Gatlinburg, where he was giving a speech at an 
American Nuclear Society conference. 

"At the conclusion of his talk, I suggested we go downstairs for 
a nightcap," Silver said. "Before I knew it, he was surrounded by 
young people who were very eager to hear what he said." 

After a while, Silver could see that Weinberg, then in his 
mid-80s, was getting tired, and it was time to call it a night. 

"As we got in the elevator, there was young man coming up and he 
did a double-take. He said, 'Whoa, you're Alvin Weinberg, aren't 
you? I just want to ride up to your floor with you.' " 

Silver and her late husband, Ernest, were close friends of the 
Weinbergs for many years. 

"Young people were very attracted to Alvin," she said. "There 
were a lot of young people who shared his dream and who were 
interested in his philosophy about a second nuclear coming." 



* * * 


Bill Madia, who's directed two national labs and briefed kings
and queens on science issues, said he was absolutely in awe of
Weinberg. 

Even after Madia settled in as director of Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, he always got the shakes when the venerable
scientist took his accustomed place on the front row of ORNL's
main auditorium. 

"I've never been more nervous in my life," Madia said. "You knew
he was going to ask that first question, and you knew you were
going to get skewered." 

Madia said he keeps three photographs of Weinberg on shelves in
his office at Battelle headquarters in Ohio. "He was truly one
of my personal heroes." 

When Madia came to Oak Ridge to head UT-Battelle's bid on the
management of ORNL, he requested an audience with Weinberg. 

Much to his surprise, the 85-year-old Weinberg showed up about
40 minutes late, and he was dressed in his tennis togs, still
sweating from a heated match that went longer than expected. 

After their talk, Weinberg had to hurry home to practice for a
piano concert he was giving. 

"All I thought was, 'I'm so inadequate,'" Madia said. 


* * * 


Murray Rosenthal remembers when Weinberg's reputation for
sitting on the front row at ORNL seminars took a funny turn. 

In the lab's large auditorium, people sitting in the back often
couldn't hear the questions from the audience, especially when
it was Weinberg in the front row speaking without the benefit of
a microphone. 

Someone apparently decided to help out and, sure enough, at the
conclusion of the seminar when it was opened up for questions,
Weinberg followed his tradition and started to ask for more
details about the results of a scientific experiment. 

About that time, people in the auditorium started to laugh, and
Weinberg -- and just about everybody else -- looked up to see a
microphone on a cord being lowered from the ceiling to where it
could pick up his voice. 

Weinberg must not have appreciated the gesture, because
Rosenthal said he never saw that happen again. 

"When he was there, the meetings were completely different than
when he wasn't," Rosenthal said. 



* * * 



Weinberg was a celebrity, especially in Oak Ridge, but he had a
common touch. 

Silver said he was always a hospitable host, whether it was for
family, friends, Nobel Prize winners or a neighbor dropping by. 

He was feted at fancy dinners around the world, but around town
Weinberg had a taste for the ordinary. 

"He loved the spaghetti at Shoney's," Silver said. 

Weinberg was shy by nature, and he presented a modest front,
always extending his hand and introducing himself, "Hi. I'm
Alvin Weinberg" -- even to those who obviously knew who he was. 

He was not too shy to play his piano in public or before his
friends. 

"His Christmas Eve parties were wonderful," Silver said. "There
were usually neighbors, friends, whoever was in town, whoever
was homeless at the time. He would play Christmas carols (on the
piano). He was wonderful at it." 

Silver said Weinberg played his piano up until the final days of
his life. 



* * * 



Weinberg came to ORNL in 1945, when it was still called Clinton
Laboratories, and he headed the physics division, served as
research director and then was lab director for 18 years --
longer than anyone else. There was a unique quality about his
leadership. 

Zucker said he witnessed something truly unusual. 

When ORNL employees would fill out forms that asked them to
write down their supervisors, the traditional response would be
to list a research group leader, a section head or maybe a
division director. 

During Weinberg's time at the helm, however, it was common for
lab employees to name him as their supervisor, Zucker said. 

"A lot of people felt that their boss, the person they were
working for, was Alvin," he said. "I've never seen that before
or since."

© 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel
*****************************************************************
 49 reviewjournal.com: TONOPAH TEST RANGE : Proving ground's days numbered
 
  Oct. 20, 2006

Facility has conducted weapons experiments       

WASHINGTON -- A vestige of the Cold War may fade into history as 
government moves forward with plans to close the Tonopah Test 
Range, a central Nevada proving ground for ballistics and bombing 
experiments performed for the military and nuclear weapons 
managers. 

Since the mid-1950s, the site about 30 miles south of Tonopah has 
been a test facility for weapons components developed by the 
Department of Energy and its predecessors, and artillery 
experiments conducted for the Pentagon. 

What some experts consider the final U.S. atmospheric weapons
tests were detonated there in 1962. A crash program tested
"bunker busters" for Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s. 

But the federal agency that manages the nation's nuclear weapons
complex is pursuing a reorganization and downsizing that
includes ceasing operations at the highly instrumented
280-square-mile site adjacent to the Nellis Test and Training
Range, according to officials and government documents. 

"Just like the Nevada Test Site, it is a part of Cold War
history, smaller but no less a part," said Troy Wade of Las
Vegas, a former head of defense programs for the Department of
Energy. 

A shutdown "is significant, but there are other places where one
can do the kinds of things that we have done at Tonopah for so
many years," Wade said. 

National Nuclear Security Administration officials cited budget
costs. Figures were not available Thursday. 

Thomas D'Agostino, deputy administrator for defense programs for
the agency, said much data has been compiled from bomb drops and
other Tonopah experiments. 

Now, he said, "We don't believe it is necessary to fund a
special range for that activity." 

The NNSA will study whether the flight testing mission can be
transferred to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico or to the
test site. 

The plan surprised Nye County leaders. 

"This is pretty dismaying to me," County Commissioner Joni
Eastley said. "It could have a profound impact on the Tonopah
community. There are quite a number of people from Tonopah who
work there." 

NNSA officials Thursday announced scoping meetings as the agency
begins environmental studies for a sprawling reorganization also
affecting weapons labs and factories in Tennessee, New Mexico,
California, Texas, Missouri and South Carolina. 

The reorganization could have other ramifications for Nevada.
Over time, more plutonium and enriched uranium likely will be
shipped for safekeeping at the Device Assembly Facility, the
secured bunker in the interior of the test site. 

The NNSA earlier this year completed the movement of roughly 2
tons of special nuclear materials to the test site bunker from
the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. 

Studies also will examine the possible expansion of large scale
non-nuclear hydrodynamic and high explosives testing, according
to testimony D'Agostino gave to Congress earlier this year. 

"We are going to be bringing new mission work there," D'Agostino
said Thursday, although officials said details remain to be
determined. 

Officials haven't said whether that might mean more projects
like the Divine Strake non-nuclear explosion that was shelved
earlier this year in the wake of pressure from Nevada and Utah
leaders and environmental groups. 

A meeting on the NNSA reorganization will be held from 11 a.m.
to 3 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Nov. 28 at the Cashman
Center in Las Vegas. 

A meeting also is set for 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Nov. 29 at the
Tonopah Convention Center. 

Peggy Maze Johnson, director of the Citizen Alert nuclear
watchdog group, said the National Nuclear Security
Administration has revealed few details of its intentions in
Nevada. 

"We want to see what they have in mind," Johnson said. "There
has been very little except it seems that they want to close
down Tonopah." 

Under the NNSA's preferred plan, the Tonopah site would close by
the end of September 2010. 

While the preferred option is to cease operations, NNSA also
will look into keeping it open and boosting its resources, said
Susan Lacy, environmental compliance officer for the NNSA's
Sandia site office in New Mexico. 	 

Lacy said the workforce at Tonopah was 150 to 154 people as of
the most recent available count of September 2005. Some commute
from Las Vegas. 

The government conducted Operation Roller Coaster at the range,
the last atmospheric weapons tests before the signing of the
Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty in August 1963, said Bill Johnson,
director of the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas. 

The joint U.S.- United Kingdom undertaking consisted of four
detonations in May and June of 1962 that gathered safety data in
the event of an accidental explosion. 

The high explosive tests were designed to scatter plutonium but
not to produce a nuclear reaction, and so were not officially
counted as "nuclear tests." 

Darwin Morgan, an NNSA spokesman, said cleanup of environmental
damage from the test was completed. 

According to Sandia National Laboratories, which manages the
site, a typical test at Tonopah might involve dropping a bomb
body from a plane to check its aerodynamics or the operation of
its parachute. 

Lacy said the National Nuclear Security Administration would
work with the Nevada historic preservation office, "whether it
be preserving facilities or photos and drawings. Just what we
need to do to preserve the Cold War history." 	   

Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006
*****************************************************************
 50 Hanford News: Former recycling yard worker sues Fluor Hanford; 

Man claims he was sickened on the job by chemicals that spilled 
from transformer
 
This story was published Friday, October 20th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

A former worker at a metal recycling yard sued Fluor Hanford on
Thursday, claiming he was poisoned by hazardous chemicals from
the Hanford nuclear reservation. 

Fluor Hanford failed to empty oil contaminated with hazardous
chemicals from at least one of 60 electrical transformers that
were sent from Hanford for recycling in June, according to the
suit filed by Keith Judd in Benton County Superior Court. 

After about 50 gallons of oil from the transformer spilled onto
the ground at the Twin City Metals yard in Kennewick, Judd
repeatedly came into contact with the oil over 12 days, said his
attorney, Jack Sheridan of Seattle. 

Judd's job was to sort and cut up the scrap metal with a torch.
That included cutting up scrap metal that had been dumped onto
the contaminated soil after the transformers were removed,
Sheridan said. 

No one told Judd the spilled oil could be dangerous, Sheridan
said. 

Tests commissioned by Sheridan showed that the oil, which was
used to keep the transformers from overheating, was contaminated
with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and dioxin and furans
created when the PCBs were heated, Sheridan said. 

Judd developed an acnelike rash characteristic of contamination
from PCBs or other chemicals and has been too sick to work more
than occasionally since he left work at the recycling yard June
12, Sheridan said. 

"We're seeking substantial damages because his daily life is
really bad," Sheridan said. The amount sought was not included
in documents filed Thursday. 

In August, Judd was hospitalized after vomiting blood, Sheridan
said. Symptoms have included nausea, stomach cramps, difficulty
swallowing, difficulty sleeping, fatigue and weight loss,
Sheridan said. 

Sheridan said the symptoms are characteristic of poisoning from
dioxin and furans, which collect in the body's fat reserves,
then are released into the body as weight is lost. Exposure also
can increase the risk of eventually developing cancer, Sheridan
said. 

"Fluor Hanford is sympathetic to any medical issues that Mr.
Judd is reporting," the company said in a statement. "However,
it is premature to assume that those medical issues are related
to the transformer sent to Twin City Metals." 

Because Judd tracked the oil into his car and home, Fluor
provided housing, transportation, new furniture and living
expenses to Judd and his family, even though there was no
evidence of a health risk, the company said. Fluor also replaced
carpeting and appliances in the rental where he had been
staying. 

Judd's baby and the baby's mother have shown no symptoms of
poisoning, Sheridan said, but added that they could take months
to develop. 

Fluor said earlier the concentration of PCBs in the oil was
below Environmental Protection Agency standards for
environmental reporting. 

One issue that may come up in court is whether the PCB samples
taken from Judd's belongings matched the type that spilled from
the Hanford transformer. The issue has been discussed in letters
between Fluor's attorney and Sheridan. 

Sheridan said he would know more after he sees Fluor's
laboratory data. 

In addition, an industrial hygienist assigned to the case by
Fluor has filed a complaint with the Washington Department of
Labor and Industries alleging retaliation for supporting Judd,
according to court documents. 

Scott Somers pressed Fluor management for help for Judd and
discussed the contamination of Judd's home with the
Environmental Protection Agency, according to documents filed on
Judd's behalf. Somers was told to take time off on June 16 and a
week later was fired, according to court documents. 

However, Fluor said Somers was taken off the case after he said
he was becoming personally involved. He was not fired and has
been offered four other assignments at Hanford, said Fluor
spokeswoman Judy Connell. 

Twin City Metals also was named in the lawsuit. 

"We did everything for our workers that needed to be done," said
Jim London, one of the owners of the family-owned business.
Other employees who worked in and around the area were tested
and they were fine, he said. 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 51 Decatur Daily: Radioactive material work demands effective oversight

RADE Magazine

    FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2006   
  
  EDITORIAL

Several employees of a subcontractor working for Bechtel Jacobs
Co., the Department of Energy’s cleanup manager, lost their jobs
last week after a spot visit to a break trailer outside a
shuttered nuclear reactor found them sleeping, playing cards,
smoking marijuana and watching television. 

The workers were preparing to remove tons of highly radioactive
fuel salts from the Molten Salt Reactor at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Tennessee. 

Police drug dogs subsequently found marijuana in a vehicle in
the parking lot. As a result, Bechtel Jacobs said it
administered drug tests to more than 50 people working on the
project. It fired one worker who refused testing. 

Obviously it is unwise to smoke pot when handling radioactive
material. John Shewairy of the DOE’s Oak Ridge office said the
department has a “zero-tolerance” policy for drug use. 

That’s all well and good. But how does the department, and
Bechtel Jacobs, in particular, ensure compliance? Is there no
on-site supervision? Are subcontractors’ employees drug tested
prior to beginning work? 

DOE Manager Gerald Boyd called the fired workers’ behavior
“unacceptable” and said the handling of the incident “shows that
we’re serious.” 

But the incident should never have occurred and DOE must hold
someone accountable. If Bechtel Jacobs can’t assure DOE that its
folks handling radioactive materials are sober at the time, then
DOE needs to find another cleanup manager. 

According to a Scripps Howard news story about the incident, a
fluorine leak has suspended much of the work at the Molten Salt
Reactor. 

One can’t help but wonder why that leak occurred. 
Copyright 1999 THE DECATUR DAILY. All rights reserved.

Copyright 1999 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
  
  THE DECATUR DAILY 201 First Ave. S.E. P.O. Box 2213 Decatur, AL 
35609 (256) 353-4612 webmaster@decaturdaily.com
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 52 DHHS: Sandia Lab worker petition

                         FR Doc 06-8817 
[Federal Register: October 20, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 203)] 
[Notices] [Page 61978] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr20oc06-50]                         

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
 
Decision To Evaluate a Petition To Designate a Class of Employees 
at Sandia National Laboratories--Livermore in Livermore, CA, To 
Be Included in the Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Health and 
Human Services (HHS). ACTION: Notice.

SUMMARY: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gives 
notice as required by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to evaluate a 
petition to designate a class of employees at Sandia National 
Laboratories-- Livermore in Livermore, California, to be included 
in the Special Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees 
Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. The 
initial proposed definition for the class being evaluated, 
subject to revision as warranted by the evaluation, is as 
follows:

    Facility: Sandia National Laboratories--Livermore in 
Livermore, California.

    Locations: Building 913 Room 113, Building 913 Room 128, and 
Building 941 Room 128.

    Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All x-ray technologists and 
materials scientists who worked in the X-ray Diffraction and 
Fluorescence Laboratory.

    Period of Employment: December 1967-December 1990.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Larry Elliott, Director, Office 
of Compensation Analysis and Support, National Institute for 
Occupational Safety and Health, 4676 Columbia Parkway, MS C-46, 
Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone 513-533-6800 (this is not a 
toll-free number). Information requests can also be submitted by 
e-mail to OCAS@CDC.GOV.

    Dated: October 16, 2006. John Howard, Director, National 
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention. [FR Doc. 06-8817 Filed 10-19-06; 8:45 am] 
BILLING CODE 4163-19-M
 
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 53 Inside Bay Area: Arms plan will draw stockpiles together

Expense of guarding nuclear sites outweighs extra security 
measures

By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

Article Last Updated:10/20/2006 02:54:28 AM PDT

Federal nuclear weapons officials launched plans Thursday for an 
ambitious remake of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex tied to 
building a controversial new arsenal of longer-lasting but 
untested H-bombs and warheads. 

I believe the complex is too big now, said Thomas DAgostino,
head of weapons work for the National Nuclear Security
Administration, the defense arm of the U.S. Department of
Energy. Its not efficient. Its too expensive. 

I feel a sense of urgency here, he said. 

The administrations plan for shrinking the archipelago of
federal weapons labs and factories is hardly the first since the
Cold War. 

There have been quite a few, said Robert Norris, a senior
weapons analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. This
ones quite grand. The question is: Is it going to be sustained
in the next Congress? 

Complex 2030, as federal officials have dubbed it, follows on
the heels of a reshuffling for stockpile stewardship, preceded
by plans for Complex 21 and Complex 2000. The U.S.
nuclearenterprise did shrink from 14 sites to todays eight, yet
federal spending on nuclear weapons work has soared from under 

$4 billion in the early 1990s to almost $7 billion. 

Two things make the new plan different: Federal officials
propose pulling all major research and manufacturing work with
weapons-grade plutonium into one remote, heavily guarded
facility by 2020. That includes dozens of atom bombs worth of
plutonium powder, metal and waste residues at Lawrence Livermore 
nuclear weapons lab, guarded at an annual cost of about $100 
million. 

The administration also wants to swap out the entire U.S. nuclear 
arsenal for new reliable replacement warheads, or RRWs. 
Scientists would design the bombs to be more durable, contain 
less toxic materials and be easier to make as well as maintain, 
in theory saving money over decades while keeping weaponeers 
skills up to par. 

To pack as many warheads on missiles as possible, Cold War
nuclear explosives were designed like high performance Ferraris.
As insurance, weapons officials have chosen to stock at least
two kinds of nuclear explosive for every form of delivery —
bombers, silo-based missiles and submarine-launched missiles —
and kept thousands more in reserve in case a design fails. 

For the same bang, the new RRWs would be bigger and heavier —
Buicks or Ford pickups — and because they could be fashioned
easily, federal officials say, there could be fewer of them. 

The administrations Complex 2030 plan is more than a
reorganization. Its a kind of bargain: Move weapons plutonium
out of a half-dozen places into one and keep a smaller arsenal
in exchange for building a new nuclear force and a highly
automated factory to supply it. 

What we want to do to is to replace our nuclear deterrent of
large numbers of Cold War nuclear weapons — and to have instead
a much smaller stockpile with a responsive infrastructure — in
essence to have that as capability rather than actual warheads,
DAgostino told reporters Thursday as his agency scrapped earlier
plans for a larger, nuclear bomb factory and announced an
environmental study of the new plan. 

If we are planning on taking full advantage of the RRW to enable
transformation in the complex itself, then the RRW allows us to
turn over the Cold War stockpile into a new nuclear arsenal,
starting in a few years but mostly between 2030 and 2040, he
said. 

The idea of a smaller, new nuclear arsenal is controversial for
several reasons, not least being that the new bombs and warheads
would never be exploded except in war. It would mean exchanging
an arsenal of H-bombs verified in more than 1,000 nuclear tests
for untested bombs. 

The proposal also comes before federal weapons officials decide
whether proposals for the first reliable replacement warhead are
technically and economically feasible. 

But the bigger hurdles are yet unpublished studies, one of them
classified, that undermine a leading argument for the new bombs
— namely that the existing weapons are getting old enough to
doubt their reliability. 

The new studies draw on four years of intensive work at
Livermore and Los Alamos weapons labs and the Nevada Test Site.
Scientists familiar with the findings say the studies conclude
that the most sensitive nuclear components in the existing U.S.
nuclear arsenal — hollow plutonium fission triggers called pits
— are turning out to be remarkably healthy and long-lived,
adding 40 or more years to the reliable operating lifetime of
the oldest bombs in the arsenal. 

Livermore scientists already are talking in amazement about
weapons lifetimes out to 100 years. 

The newly discovered longevity of U.S. weapons conflicts with
some arguments offered by Bush administration officials for the
replacement warheads, as recently as last February. 

When we start looking out another couple of decades, we start
getting to the point where the uncertainty in the way the weapon
behaves starts translating into uncertainty in what the yield
will be, National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton
Brooks told MediaNews in explaining the need for the new
warheads. One of the biggest uncertainties is in plutonium
aging. 

The Complex 2030 plan is a modification of an earlier proposal
criticized by some members of the Secretary of Energys Advisory
Board, before the board was disbanded. 

I am highly skeptical about the need for RRW and I have never
seen the analysis about the impact of us building a new
generation of nuclear weapons on the people who are already
nuclear weapons states or want to have them, said former
advisory board member Burton Richter, a Nobel Prize winning
physicist and former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center. 

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com

 © 2000-2006 ANG Newspapers 
*****************************************************************
 54 Windsor Journal: DOE reactor site returns to 'Green Field' conditions
 		 			 	 	 
By: 10/20/2006

On Wednesday, Oct. 18 the United States Naval Nuclear Propulsion 
Program commemorated the first-ever chemical and radiological 
release of a U.S. nuclear power reactor site for unrestricted 
future use - the Department of Energy S1C Prototype Reactor Site 
in Windsor. The ceremony, held at the DOE Windsor Site off 
Prospect Hill Road, included a performance by the U.S. Navy Band 
- Northeast Region.                                                   

 				
 The event was hosted by Admiral Kirkland H. Donald, director of
the U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, a joint Department of
Energy and Navy program. 

Attendees included Undersecretary of Energy and Administrator of
the National Nuclear Security Administration Linton Brooks,
Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner
Gina McCarthy, EPA Regional Administrator Robert Varney, and
Windsor Mayor Donald Trinks. Officials of the Department of
Energy and Environmental Protection Agency as well as other
federal, state and local elected officials were also invited.

 This ceremony concludes 12 years of facility dismantlement and
environmental characterization and restoration associated with
returning the site to "Green Field" conditions. First, the S1C
Prototype at the Windsor Site and all supporting facilities and
utilities were removed and the materials properly disposed of.

Then extensive environmental characterization of the site was
performed, followed by remediation where necessary. More than
140,000 environmental sample results from the 11-acre site were
analyzed and reported - a new standard in environmental
stewardship. 

Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program personnel and contractors
worked in cooperation with the Connecticut Department of
Environmental Protection and the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency to complete the project. These agencies also provided
independent oversight of the project. The current Windsor site
condition makes it suitable for any future use, without
restriction, from economic development to recreation.

 Throughout the Cold War, the S1C Prototype nuclear submarine
propulsion plant at the Windsor site supported the submarines
and surface ships of the Navy's nuclear fleet by testing new
equipment and training Naval propulsion plant operators. S1C was
the prototype for the USS TULLIBEE (SSN 597), an early
advanced-design, fast-attack submarine constructed by Electric
Boat and commissioned in 1960. The S1C Prototype was operated at
the Windsor site from 1959 until 1993. During that time, more
than 14,000 Naval operators were trained there, including Donald
early in his career. 

Under Donald, the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program is responsible 
for all aspects of the design, construction, operation, 
maintenance and disposal of the Navy's nuclear reactors, 
including selection and training of the Naval operators. Over the 
past 50 years, Navy warships have safely steamed more than 135 
million miles on nuclear power in support of the nation's 
defense, accumulating more than 5,800 reactor-years of operation.
 
©Windsor Journal 2006                                   
*****************************************************************
 55 lamonitor.com: Feds bid to transform weapons complex 

The Online News Source for Los Alamos
 
ROGER SNODGRASS roger@lamonitor.comMonitor Assistant Editor

Los Alamos National Laboratory may get the full-time job that
has gone vacant since the Rocky Flats facility was shuttered in
1989. LANL is currently the only place in the country where
"pits," or triggers for nuclear weapons, can be produced 
Whether it gets an even bigger assignment depends on factors to
be weighed under a new Programmatic Environmental Impact
Statement, a quest embarked upon by the National Nuclear
Security Administration on Thursday.

Ultimately, the decision hangs on yet-to-be-determined
evaluations concerning the Defense Department's interest and
pocketbook, numbers of pits to be produced, costs,
transportation factors, how much nuclear material would need to
be moved around, how well it could be protected and whether it
would be more or less secure at Los Alamos than elsewhere,
according to a senior NNSA official. 

Among the first priorities of the proposal would be to select a
site to be known as the "consolidated plutonium center," where a
"baseline capacity of 125 qualified pits per year" would be
produced.

Under the current draft environmental impact statement at LANL,
NNSA has proposed an interim capability of 80 pits, in order to
obtain 50 that can be certified. 
The consolidated plutonium center would also be responsible for
long-term research and development and surveillance in addition
to manufacturing, according to the notice.

A spokesman for Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said this morning
the senator supports NNSA's objectives to modernize the nuclear
weapons complex and to make it more cost-effective. 
"He supports the forward movement, without saying specifically
whether the laboratory should get this or that," said Chris
Gallegos from the senator's office.

Concerning the plan to expand pit production, he added that a no
action alternative to be included in the evaluation could "leave
the pit capacity where it is now."

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., campaigning in New Mexico, responded
to a question about the possibility that LANL might be selected
for the consolidated plutonium center.

"Given the site's layout on a mesa with surrounding local
communities, LANL does not appear to be suited to become home to
the nation's central storage facility for weapons plutonium,"
Bingaman said.

A spokesman for Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., Tom Nagle said, "From
the briefings we've had, it doesn't look like Los Alamos is the
best place for this."

In addition to Los Alamos, other sites under consideration for
the consolidated plutonium center are Nevada Test Site, Pantex
Plant, Y-12 National Security Complex and the Savannah River
Site.

The plan explicitly rejected the Secretary of Energy Advisory
Board's task force suggestion that there be a single
consolidated nuclear production center for all weapons-related
activity involving a significant amount of nuclear materials, as
well as its idea that the transformation could be accelerated to
take place by 2015.

Kevin Roark, a spokesman for LANL, said this morning, the
laboratory has been working with NNSA on the Complex 2030 plan
for some time.

"It's very early in the process," he said. "None of the plan is
decided yet."

If the task of production does fall to Los Alamos, NNSA Deputy
Director for Defense Programs Thomas D'Agostino's view is that
managing a national scientific laboratory is not the same as
managing a nuclear pit manufacturing facility and may even
require a separate manager at Los Alamos.

The major revision in the way the country organizes work on its
nuclear stockpile arises 15 years after the fall of the Soviet
Union and was described as an effort to transform and modernize
the Cold-War-era nuclear weapons complex.

"I feel a sense of urgency," D'Agostino said, comparing the
complex to an old house or automobile. "You have to keep pouring
money in it to keep it going," he said. "Meanwhile the world has
changed dramatically."

NNSA is relying on a new concept, known as the Reliable
Replacement Warhead (RRW), to enable the complex to modernize
and become sustainable for the long run. Although RRW is barely
mentioned in the initial document, it is an apparent catalyst
for change throughout.

NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks has described RRWs as
"replacements for existing stockpile weapons that could be more
easily manufactured with more readily available and more
environmentally benign materials, and whose safety and
reliability could be assured with the highest confidence,
without nuclear testing, for as long as the United States
requires nuclear forces."

An RRW design competition between LANL and Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in California concluded recently, but the
results are still being evaluated.

The Bush administration's doctrine on nuclear weapons, the
Nuclear Posture Review of 2002, called for a nuclear stockpile
that reflected that the Cold War is over and contains the lowest
possible number of warheads for current security needs.

D'Agostino emphasized significant reductions in the size of the
nuclear stockpile and plans for reduction under the Treaty of
Moscow, in which the U.S. and Russia agreed to limit themselves
to1700-2200 operationally-deployed nuclear weapons by 2012.

To that number the notice added "augmentation weapons,
reliability reserve weapons and weapons required to meet NATO
commitments."

The apparently new category of "augmentation weapons" is not
defined in the document, noted Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New
Mexico, among several nuclear watchdogs who are following the
new developments.

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a national network of
watchdog groups called the plan a "bombplex" and said the
Reliable Replacement Warhead "will potentially drive a new
nuclear weapons arms race, in order to carry out the expanded
first strike options envisioned in the 2002 Nuclear Posture
Review."

Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group said whether people
were in favor or opposed to pit production at LANL, we would
have to come to grips with a fundamental problem.

"We can't just provide management review for one proposal after
another to make more nuclear weapons," he said. "The country
needs to decide whether we're gong to make nuclear weapons the
centerpiece of world security, which means everybody is going to
have to get them, or whether we're going to lead the way to a
safer world where nuclear weapons can be everywhere condemned."

Thursday's announcement kicks off a 90-day scoping and comment
period that will end on Jan. 17, 2007.   


  © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.   
*****************************************************************
 56 KRISTV.COM: Pantex looking for larger role in nuclear weapons work
 
Corpus Christi, TX - 

AMARILLO, Texas -- The nuclear arms plant near Amarillo would see 
an enhanced weapons dismantlement role and compete to become a 
center for plutonium research, according to a National Nuclear 
Security Administration proposal.

The Pantex Plant is to keep nuclear weapons assembly, 
dismantlement and high-explosives fabrication, according to the 
NNSA plan. The plan calls for maintaining but would still reduce 
weapons assembly capacity and high-explosives fabrication work at 
Pantex.

The plant is operated by BWXT Pantex LLC for the Energy 
Department's NNSA.

Thomas D'Agostino, the NNSA's deputy administrator for defense 
programs, said Pantex will focus more on dismantlement as the 
United States scales back its inventory to between 1,700 and 
2,200 operational nuclear weapons by 2012. Pantex, he said, has a 
vital role to the weapons complex infrastructure because of its 
position in assembling and dismantling nuclear weapons.

"The mission of Pantex is fairly solid out into the foreseeable 
future because of the significant number of warheads that we have 
to dismantle. We've got decades of dismantlement activity that we 
want to try to move forward," D'Agostino said.

"This is about taking down quite a bit of the Cold War stockpile. 
There's a lot of work left to be done at Pantex," he said. "What 
it will involve is more work on the part of the Pantex workers 
themselves. It will help us with our storage problem. Right now 
the material is being stored in the warheads themselves."

The NNSA wants to make changes to the nuclear weapons complex in 
order to enhance national security measures and keep nuclear 
materials away from larger urban areas, D'Agostino said.

The agency has pared down its nuclear weapons complex from 14 
sites to eight facilities in seven states, he said, but the 
remaining sites still don't meet future infrastructure needs and 
security requirements.

"The eight sites that we have right now aren't sustainable in the 
long term," he said. "There will continue to be eight sites in 
the complex and these sites at the end of the modernization 
process will be more secure, they will be smaller, the footprint 
attributed to weapons work will be smaller. It will be safer and 
it will be more efficient."
z D'Agostino said the agency also wants to streamline work done 
at different sites across the complex, including high-explosives 
research and production.

"In essence, I believe the complex is too big now, not 
efficient," he said. "It's a little bit expensive. We have too 
many materials in too many places. We have need to dismantle more 
of our retired weapons as scheduled. It gets us away from the 
Cold War complex."

Information from: Amarillo Globe-News, http://www.amarillo.com

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 57 Local News 8:  Virtual Nuclear Reality at INL + +
		 	 								 	 				 				 			 		 	 								 	 				 				 			 		 	
Part of the Idaho National Laboratory is going virtual reality. 
It's a part of the center for nuclear systems design and 
analysis. 

Wednesday the INL welcomed the center with a press conference to 
announce the goals and mission of the program. The center will be 
a campus for research, design and development of new nuclear 
technology.

They'll utilize brand new virtual reality programs to develop and 
inspect next generation reactors before they're physically build. 
Dr. James Lake from the INL says, â€œWe believe once stood up and 
exercised this kind of facility will lead to a less expensive 
more thorough route to effective design in the future, one 
element.â€ 

The government hasn't commmited to building a new reactor in 
southeast Idaho, but the INL is hoping that programs like this 
one helps their chances.      

Story Created: Oct 18, 2006 at 5:57 PM MST 

MST Copyright © 2006 Powered by Broadcast Interactive Media. 		
		 		 							 		 				 						 		 				 Weather On Demand 		
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 58 Knox News: Director who saved ORNL remembered

By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com 

October 20, 2006

OAK RIDGE - His influence on energy policy and science was felt 
worldwide for more than half a century, but Alvin Weinberg's 
greatest achievements were at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 

Following Weinberg's death Wednesday night, former colleagues 
suggested that ORNL - the lab he directed for 18 years - might 
not exist today without his extraordinary efforts. 

"He was instrumental in saving ORNL's hide," said Alex Zucker, 
longtime physics researcher and administrator, who served as 
acting lab director in 1988. 

During the late 1940s, as the U.S. government re-evaluated the 
assets assembled for the World War II development of the first 
atomic bombs, the Oak Ridge lab was on the chopping block. 

As part of a plan to consolidate the Manhattan Project resources 
at a few locations, ORNL's work on nuclear reactors would have 
been moved to Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. 

Weinberg pitched a fit, and took his case to Washington, where he 
argued the Oak Ridge lab's merits before a key congressional 
committee. 

"He led the revolt and won, which is much to his credit," Zucker
said. "We wouldn't have an Oak Ridge National Laboratory if it
wasn't for him." 

Instead of shutting down the Graphite Reactor, the world's first
continuously operated reactor that is now a national historic
landmark, Congress allotted money to Oak Ridge for numerous
other research reactors - most of which carried Weinberg's
personal stamp of approval. 

Tributes to the Oak Ridge icon came from around the country
Thursday as many of his friends, fans and former colleagues
learned overnight of Weinberg's death at age 91. 

Alvin Trivelpiece, who directed the Department of Energy's
Office of Science during the Reagan administration and served as
director of ORNL from 1989 to 2000, said he was greatly saddened
by the news. 

"To have had the privilege of his friendship was a great reward
to me and to many others who were also inspired by him and
guided by his example of dedication to the advancement of
knowledge," Trivelpiece said. "He is in a class by himself. Our
nation and the world are diminished by his death. I will never
forget him." 

Murray Rosenthal, a former associate director at ORNL, said
Weinberg affected the lives of many people. 

"He created an enthusiasm for science and for the laboratory and
the things we do," Rosenthal said. 

Rosenthal said he remembers a meeting in which Weinberg
chastised him for not moving fast enough on a project. When
Rosenthal tried to explain that there were other things to be
done, the lab director told him, "You must find time for the
important things." 

That, Rosenthal said, was Weinberg's view on life: find time for
the important things. 

Weinberg received many honors during his career, including the
Atoms for Peace Award, the E.O. Lawrence Memorial Award, the
Heinrich Hertz Prize from West Germany and the Enrico Fermi
Award. He was elected to both the National Academy of Science
and the National Academy of Engineering. 

"He was someone I admired and respected my entire life," said
Bill Madia, a senior executive with Battelle in Columbus, Ohio,
who was director of ORNL from 2000 to 2003. "He truly was one of
the greats. As a nuke, Alvin Weinberg was the pinnacle." 

Jeff Wadsworth, the current ORNL director, said no one
personified the lab more than Weinberg. 

"Alvin was the first to understand there are scientific
challenges so big and so complex that they can be solved only at
places like Oak Ridge National Laboratory," Wadsworth said.
"More than four decades later, the Spallation Neutron Source and
the supercomputer at ORNL are legacies of Alvin's vision." 

Wadsworth said Weinberg made a point of meeting him after he
arrived in Oak Ridge and made him feel welcome. "He was
extremely gracious, and it was a privilege to have known him. I
have special memories of those meetings. His wisdom and ability
to articulate complex issues were remarkable, and we still use
his concepts," Wadsworth said. 

Zucker said Weinberg's contributions went beyond energy and
science, such as his support for the arts and philosophy and
broad interest in other topics. 

"I sort of tie his whole life together by saying his great
concern was the welfare of humanity, which is no small thing,"
Zucker said. "Not many people are in position to exercise that,
and those who are very often don't. He was an exceptional
person." 

Weinberg was an accomplished pianist, whose favorite composer
was Bach. He also played tennis well into his 80s. 

Weinberg's son, Richard Weinberg, who is a neuroscientist on the
faculty at the University of North Carolina, said there will be
no funeral service. A memorial service honoring Weinberg will be
held in three or four weeks, but those plans have not been
finalized, he said. 

Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.

© 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel
    
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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this 
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who 
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for 
non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more 
information go to: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
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