***************************************************************** 01/16/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.12 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 AFP: Bush, Cheney renew Iran warning to stay out of Iraq 2 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Said to Install Uranium Centrifuges 3 Guardian Unlimited: Iran target of US Gulf military moves, Gates say 4 BBC: Iran presses on with enrichment 5 BBC: Growing pressure on Ahmadinejad 6 AFP: China's CNPC to invest 3.6 billion dollars in Iran gas block - 7 AFP: Iran eyes at least 3,000 centrifuges at nuclear plant - 8 AFP: Iran defiant on nuclear ambitions amid US tensions 9 AFP: UN inspectors visit key Iran atomic plant 10 AFP: White House denies plans to invade Iran 11 UPI: Iran building 3,000 new centrifuges 12 Guardian Unlimited: U.S., N. Korea Meet to Prepare for Talks 13 Korea Herald: [NEWS FOCUS]Rival parties lock horns over summit 14 Korea Herald: China suggests frequent summits 15 Xinhua: Hill to visit to China this week on six-party talks 16 Korea Times: KEDO Demands $1.9 Bil. Compensation From NK 17 President: Determination on Sanctions Against North Korea for Detona 18 US: [du-list] New US nuke income stream 19 US: Nuke Watch: The Myth and Danger of 'Bunker Buster' Weapons 20 Calgary Sun: Nuclear notion should bomb out 21 BBC: Campaign's weapons claim 22 AFP: Britain pre-empting nuclear weapons vote - campaigners - 23 UPI: Asian nations agree on energy pact 24 UPI: Cold War safer than today, Ivanov says 25 UPI: Walker's World: The new ASEAN NUCLEAR REACTORS 26 US: [NukeNet] Bombplex 2030, EIS Response - Altermatives 27 US: [NukeNet] Deny PG&E Funds for Nuclear Re-License Study 28 US: [NukeNet] Supreme Court ruling in favor of Mothers for Peace 29 US: Stock Interview: Nuclear Renaissance Plagued by High Costs, Was 30 The Australian: Clean energy pact a 'diversion' 31 Deutsche Welle: Merkel Asks for Realistic Alternatives to Nuclear En 32 US: Dallas Morning News: Nuclear plants getting warmer reactions 33 US: Philadelphia Inquirer: Plants in hot water over hot water 34 US: Tucson Citizen: Palo Verde asks regulators not to lower nuke pla 35 US: Tucson Citizen: Palo Verde nuke plant wants to avoid regulatory 36 RIA Novosti: Ex-Russian nuclear power minister Adamov pleads not gui 37 US: Dallas Morning News: Power providers banking on getting a hand f 38 BBC: Water leak at Japan nuclear plant 39 US: Nuclear could be the missing ingredient 40 The Moscow Times: Chernobyl Fines May Be Toughened 41 US: Energy Tribune: The Three Ways Out 42 AFP: Japan makes two-billion-dollar energy pledge 43 US: APP.COM: Officials worried by impact N.J., Del. plants have on 44 US: APP.COM TOPIC OF THE DAY: Nuclear plant relicensing | 45 US: NRC: NRC to Hold Public Meetings on Draft Environmental Impact R 46 US: Rutland Herald: Global warming distorts VY case 47 US: NRC: Agency Information Collection Activities - Proposed Collect 48 US: NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards Subcommittee Meeti 49 US: Kiplinger.com: Three Promising Ways to Invest in Nuclear Energy 50 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Mitsubishi pulls out of nuclear partnersh 51 SPIEGEL ONLINE: New Reactors Across the Globe: A Nuclear Power Renai NUCLEAR SECURITY 52 The Australian: Hunt on for 61kg radioactive canister lost on way to 53 RIA Novosti: Russia completes air defense system deliveries to Iran 54 RIA Novosti: Cold War was "paradise" compared to modern threats - Iv 55 BBC: Pakistan 'nuclear' kidnap foiled 56 US: IHT: NRC chief says reactor designs should consider terror attac 57 IPS: U.N. Move to Downgrade Disarmament Triggers Protests 58 DAWN: Four officials of Atomic Energy Commission kidnapped - NUCLEAR SAFETY 59 [du-list] Depleted Uranium 'Killing Italian Troops' 60 [du-list] New on bandepleteduranium.org - Bertell summary and 61 US: [du-list] Opponents of Nevada Bomb Test Fault Impact Studies 62 US: WISC-TV: Milwaukee Authorities Search For Crate Of Radioactive M 63 AFP: British police seek return to Russia in poisoning case - news a 64 US: starbulletin.com: 2 accidents prompt sub force safety assessment 65 US: DG: Desert Greens Lead Utah Groups Demanding an End to Divine St NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 66 US: [NukeNet] New nuclear plant hinges on fuel disposal 67 [NukeNet] Scotland:: Businesses dump 60% of all waste 68 US: What If This Were Nuclear Waste? 69 Sydney Morning Herald: Nuclear waste containers will not work, say s 70 ForUm: Ukraine puts very high demands to safety of nuclear fuel stor 71 US: AU ABC: Mayor welcomes uranium exploration plans 72 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Agency issues report on Utah's environmental 73 US: The Mercury - NRC: Dry casks not part of new 9/11 safeguards 74 UNIAN: Ukraine to build nuclear waste storage 75 US: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: No consensus on rail shipment regulat 76 US: FPON: More uranium found PEACE 77 US: [NukeNet] Nevada Test Site Convergence 78 Gallup Independent: Doomsday Clock ticking - US DEPT. OF ENERGY 79 [NukeNet] Formal Protest Filed Over Livermore Lab Bid Rejection 80 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Radioactive animal carcasses reburied at 81 Tri-City Herald: DOE names PNNL scientist as director of isotope pro 82 ABQJOURNAL: State Says Sandia Lab Allowed To Do Work on Landfill 83 DOE: Notice of Availability of the Supplement to the Draft 84 DOE: Notice of availability with request for public comment. 85 Tracy Press: Site 300 radiation rise miniscule ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 AFP: Bush, Cheney renew Iran warning to stay out of Iraq by David Millikin Mon Jan 15, 2:17 AM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush" /> President George W. Bushand Vice President Dick Cheney" /> Dick Cheneyissued new warnings to Iran" /> Iran, saying it must keep out of Iraq" /> Iraq, but Iraq's foreign minister instead called for the release of five Iranians in US custody in his country. Bush, in an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes," warned Iranian Presiden Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "If we catch your people inside (Iraq) harming US citizens or Iraqi citizens you know we will deal with them." Asked if he agreed with US military officers that Iranian agents were killing US troops in Iraq, Bush said: "I think what they're saying ... is that the Iranians are providing equipment that is killing Americans, and therefore, either way its' unacceptable." Bush's tough line on Iran came as US forces in Iraq held five Iranians who were detained in the north of the country last week, accused of being linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Iran insists the detainees are all consular officials. Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News Iran was "fishing in troubled waters" in Iraq by aiding attacks on US forces and backing Shiite militia involved in sectarian violence against minority Sunnis that has pushed the country towards civil war. Referring to Bush speech last week outlining his new Iraq strategy and warnings to Iraq's neighbors, Cheney said: "I think the message (he) sent clearly is that we do not want (Iran) doing what they can to try to destabilize the situation inside Iraq." "We think it's very important that they keep their folks at home," Cheney said. Cheney refused again to rule out military action against Iran due to its support for radical Islamists in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Sunday his government has requested the release of the five Iranians US forces arrested Thursday from an Iranian "interests" office in the city of Arbil. "We have communicated with the US Embassy and the command of the multinational forces seeking their release if they are found not guilty," Zebari told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." He stressed that Iraq was "not a party" to the investigation of the detainees by US forces, adding that the Iranians were working out of a "liaison office" that had been providing consular services and which Iraq and Kurdish regional authorities for many years had been aware of. Zebari said Iraq had "recently ... asked the (Iranian) embassy to transfer this entity into the consulate so there would be a formal recognition of their status." Bush also said his decision to "surge" US forces in Iraq by 21,500 troops was reached after considering other options like "doing nothing" and getting out of Iraq, both of which he ruled out because "we'd have a crisis on our hands in Iraq." "Failure in Iraq, would empower Iran, which poses a significant threat to world peace," Bush told CBS. Cheney, the US administration's leading hawk, expanded on the alleged Iranian threat saying it was "multi-dimensional" -- reaching beyond Iraq to menace US-allied moderates by supporting radical Islamist movements in Lebanon, the Palestinian areas and throughout the Middle East. "They have begun to conduct themselves in ways that have created a great deal of tension throughout the region," he told Fox, adding that allies like Saudi Arabia and Jordan were worried by Iranian support for Islamist radicals and Tehran's suspected efforts to develop nuclear weapons. "If you look down the road a few years and speculate about the possibility of a nuclear armed Iran, astride the world's supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world, that's a serious prospect," he said. "It's important that not happen." Meanwhile, Bush's national security advisor, Stephen Hadley" /> Stephen Hadley, refused on Sunday to exclude the possiblity of US troops entering Iran. Hadley told interviewers in two television appearances that Washington would continue diplomatic efforts through the United Nations" /> United Nationsto convince Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program, which the US and others fear is a cover for making nuclear weapons. But asked if that meant invading Iran over its other activities was off the table, Hadley insisted "I didn't say that." "What I'm saying is ... this is a problem. It needs to be dealt with. We intend to deal with it by interdicting and disrupting activities in Iraq, sponsored by Iran, that are putting our troops and Iraqis at risk," he said. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 2 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Said to Install Uranium Centrifuges From the Associated Press [UP] Monday January 15, 2007 7:31 PM By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran said Monday it is installing 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at one of its nuclear facilities, effectively confirming that its nuclear program is running behind schedule as the devices were to have been in place two weeks ago. Over the weekend, Iran dismissed reports from Europe that its uranium enrichment program had been stalled. Enriched uranium is used as fuel in nuclear reactors and, at a higher degree of enrichment, can also be used to make atomic bombs. But Iran had said the installation of the 3,000 centrifuges at its facility in Natanz, located in central Iran, would be completed by the end of 2006. Its failure to do so has prompted reports that it is encountering technical difficulties in mastering large-scale enrichment. Diplomats in Vienna - where the International Atomic Energy Agency is based - said Thursday that the enrichment program in Natanz had ground to a halt. The diplomats said that suggests possible Iranian hesitancy to provoke U.N. Security Council sanctions harsher than the relatively mild penalties agreed on last month in response to Tehran's refusal to heed a council deadline to suspend enrichment. Or, they said, it could be a sign of headway by relative moderates in the leadership unhappy with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's confrontational manner. Some diplomats accredited or otherwise linked to the IAEA said some intelligence services believed the Natanz site could also be a front. While attention is focused on Natanz, Iranian scientists and military personnel could be working on a secret enrichment program at one or more unknown sites that is much more advanced, the diplomats said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in exchange for discussing restricted information. Other signs point to technical difficulties at Iran's nuclear facilities. Earlier this month, Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told reporters that about 50 centrifuges had exploded during a test. ``We had installed 50 centrifuges. One night, I was informed that all the 50 centrifuges had exploded. ... Ahmadinejad called me and said: 'Build these machines even if they explode 10 times more,''' Aghazadeh was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Iran has condemned the U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on it, and said it would move ahead with its nuclear program. Last month, Ahmadinejad boasted that Iran would soon celebrate, probably in February, the completion of its nuclear fuel cycle - the processing of uranium from mining the ore to enriching it. ``We are moving toward the production of nuclear fuel, which requires 3,000 centrifuges and more than this figure,'' government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham told a news conference. ``This program is being carried out and moving toward completion.'' The United States and some of its allies accuse Iran of trying to produce nuclear weapons. Iran denies this, saying its program is only for generating electricity. Tehran says that as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, it has the right to develop a peaceful uranium enrichment program to produce nuclear power. The IAEA has said it has found no evidence that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, but it has criticized the country for concealing certain nuclear activities and failing to answer questions about the program. Iran first showed its ability to enrich uranium in February, when it produced a small batch of low-enriched uranium using a first set of 164 centrifuges at its pilot complex in Natanz. Iran said it planned to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment involving 3,000 centrifuges, then expand the program to 54,000 centrifuges, which spin uranium gas into enriched material to produce nuclear fuel. --- Associated Press Writer George Jahn contributed to this report from Vienna, Austria. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 3 Guardian Unlimited: Iran target of US Gulf military moves, Gates says Mark Tran and agencies Monday January 15, 2007 Guardian Unlimited [The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, at a Nato press conference] The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, at today's Nato press conference. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA Increased US military activity in the Gulf is aimed at Iran's "very negative" behaviour, the Bush administration said today. The defence secretary, Robert Gates, told reporters that the decision to deploy a Patriot missile battalion and a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf in conjunction with a "surge" of troops in Iraq was designed to show Iran that the US was not "overcommitted" in Iraq. Speaking in Brussels after meeting Nato officials, Mr Gates said: "We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future." His remarks followed tough comments on Iran at the weekend from other senior US officials. The vice-president, Dick Cheney, accused Iran of "fishing in troubled waters inside Iraq", while the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said the US was "going to need to deal with what Iran is doing inside Iraq". Such remarks, following the prospect of "hot pursuit" raids into Iran as raised by George Bush in his televised address last week, have fuelled speculation that the US is softening up the American public for possible action against Tehran. The increasingly confrontational pose struck by the US is a repudiation of one of the key recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which called for the start of a dialogue with Iran and Syria in an effort to extricate the US from Iraq. Mr Gates, who as recently as 2004 publicly called for diplomatic engagement with Iran, said the situation was now different. In 2004, Iran was concerned by the presence of US forces on its eastern and western borders, in Iraq and Afghanistan, but its behaviour had changed. "The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in position to press us in many ways," he said. "They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point." "And so the Iranians are acting in a very negative way in many respects. My view is that when the Iranians are prepared to play a constructive role in dealing with some of these problems then there might be opportunities for engagement." Besides concerns about Iran's nuclear programme, the US has accused Tehran of supporting Shia militia and of not doing enough to stop foreign fighters from infiltrating Iraq. US-led forces in northern Iraq arrested five Iranians last week who the US military says were connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq - a claim Iran has rejected. Meanwhile, Iran said it was installing 3,000 centrifuges, effectively confirming that its nuclear programme was running behind schedule as these devices for uranium enrichment were meant to have been in place by the end of last year. "We are moving toward the production of nuclear fuel, which requires 3,000 centrifuges and more than this figure," the government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham told a news conference. "This programme is being carried out and moving toward completion." At the weekend, Iran dismissed reports from Europe that its uranium enrichment programme had stalled. Enriched uranium is used as fuel in nuclear reactors and, at a higher degree of enrichment, in atomic bombs. Iran has condemned as "invalid" and "illegal" a UN security council resolution that imposed sanctions on it last month for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 4 BBC: Iran presses on with enrichment Last Updated: Monday, 15 January 2007 [Iranian nuclear plant at Isfahan] Iran insists its nuclear programme in peaceful Iran has said it is pressing ahead with its nuclear programme despite recent sanctions by the UN Security Council. An official said Iran is moving towards the industrial production of nuclear fuel, with the installation of 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Reuters Iran was planning to expand its facilities "very soon, bit by bit". Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful and aimed at producing energy, denying US claims it is making a bomb. Industrial scale Monday's statement came after diplomats in Vienna began to worry that there was so little activity at Iran's main nuclear site that perhaps work had started on a secret site elsewhere in the country. UN SANCTIONS ON IRAN Ban on import and expor of nuclear-related material Assets frozen of 10 companies and 12 individuals Threat of further non-military sanctions Quick Guide: Iran crisis "We are moving towards production of nuclear fuel which needs 3,000 centrifuges and more... This plan is going ahead and is moving towards completion," Iranian government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said. "We need to produce fuel on an industrial scale for [our] power plants," he said. Centrifuges are the machines than spin uranium gas to enrich it to low levels for fuel and much higher levels for nuclear weapons. So far Iran has succeeded in connecting two cascades of 164 centrifuges each - a limited achievement considering thousands of machines are needed to produce enough fuel for a power plant, says the BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran. The Security Council passed a resolution on 23 December 2006 banning the supply of nuclear-related technology and materials to Iran and imposing an asset freeze on key individuals and companies. Iranian officials have been defiant since, vowing to press ahead with plans to install 3,000 centrifuges. Our correspondent says this is likely to be the nuclear achievement the country has promised to announce next month, to coincide with the anniversary of the revolution. But what is not clear is whether Iran is just going to install the machines at its enrichment site or whether it is going to operate all 3,000 and run them successfully to produce fuel. ***************************************************************** 5 BBC: Growing pressure on Ahmadinejad Last Updated: Tuesday, 16 January 2007 By Frances Harrison BBC News, Teheran [Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ] Criticism of Mr Ahmadinejad has been coming form unusual sources There are signs of growing opposition in Iran to the policies of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A group of reformist and moderate members of parliament have now started collecting signatures to summon him to answer questions about his policies. Editorials in normally uncritical hardline newspapers have been criticising him for being too aggressive towards the west. But such criticisms are unlikely to cost Mr Ahmadinejad his job. UN sanctions After the UN passed a resolution sanctioning Iran's nuclear programme, more criticism has been voiced inside the country of Mr Ahmadinejad. It is thought about 50 MPs have signed a document calling for the president to come to parliament and answer questions, but to take effect at least 75 signatures are needed. If this challenge succeeds, it would be unprecedented, but even Mr Ahmadinejad's opponents recognise it is unlikely they could ever impeach him given the support he enjoys from the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Surprisingly some hard-line newspapers have started criticising the president in recent days, asking why he has spent so much of Iran's foreign exchange and complaining about the confrontational language he uses on the nuclear issue. There has also been criticism of the conference the president organised last month questioning the World War II holocaust which lost Iran much sympathy internationally. Separately, 150 MPs have signed a letter urging the president to base his next budget on realistic assumptions - for example, about future oil prices which are key to Iran's economic forecasts. ***************************************************************** 6 AFP: China's CNPC to invest 3.6 billion dollars in Iran gas block - Mon Jan 15, 1:55 AM ET BEIJING (AFP) - China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's biggest oil producer, will invest 3.6 billion dollars to develop a block in Iran" /> 's offshore gas field, state media has reported. CNPC is still negotiating with Iran over the details of the project expected to lead to a seven-year deal to develop Block 14 of the South Pars gas field, the China Business News said. It added the company will invest 1.8 billion dollars on exploration of the block, which is reported to have natural gas reserves of 370 billion cubic meters (1.3 trillion cubic feet). Another 1.8 billion dollars will be used to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant with an annual output of 4.5 million tonnes. However, Liu Weijiang, a spokesman for CNPC's international business department in Beijing, declined to comment on the report. "CNPC has many subsidiaries and it's normal if they conduct business," said Liu. Another spokesman for CNPC's Hong Kong listed arm, PetroChina, also said he was not aware of the potential agreement. China has ratcheted up a global search for energy over the past few years as the nation seeks to secure resources that can power the world's fastest growing major economy. Last week, Iran announced it would finalise in February a 16-billion-dollar gas agreement with China's largest offshore oil producer CNOOC despite Washington's threat to slap sanction on Tehran over its nuclear program. Beijing is already the second largest buyer of energy products from Iran, home to the world's second biggest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and the second biggest gas reserves after Russia. Last month, PetroChina signed a deal with National Iranian Gas Exports Company in which Iran agreed to sell China three million tonnes of gas from the Pars LNG project over 25 years, beginning in 2011. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 7 AFP: Iran eyes at least 3,000 centrifuges at nuclear plant - Mon Jan 15, 4:50 AM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iranis aiming to install at least 3,000 centrifuges at a key nuclear plant, the government spokesman said, confirming Tehran would make a major announcement on its atomic programme next month. "We are heading towards a production of nuclear fuel that needs 3,000 and even more centrifuges," spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters on Monday. "Our aim is to ensure our industrial needs." "We are going in this direction. We are in the process of completing our programme and this will be announced shortly during the 10 days of Fajr," he said, referring to celebrations for the 28th anniversary of the Islamic revolution from February 1-11. Iran has so far declared the installation of two cascades of 164 centrifuges at the plant in Natanz. The machinery is used to enrich uranium, a highly sensitive process that can be used both to make nuclear energy and a nuclear bomb. Iran insists that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 AFP: Iran defiant on nuclear ambitions amid US tensions by Farhad Pouladi Mon Jan 15, 7:25 AM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iranhas defiantly stuck by its ambition to massively crank up uranium enrichment capacity amid spiralling tensions with the United States over its role in the Middle East. Government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham said Iran wanted to install "even more" than 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at a key nuclear plant in defiance of Western warnings to freeze the sensitive activity. His comments came amid a rumbling controversy over the arrest of five Iranian nationals by American forces in Iraq" /> Iraq, accused by the United States of being Revolutionary Guards agents bent on stirring up trouble. "We are heading towards a production of nuclear fuel that needs 3,000 and even more centrifuges," Elham told reporters. "Our aim is to ensure our industrial needs." Elham confirmed that Iran would be making a major announcement on the "completion" of Iran's nuclear programme during the 10-day anniversary celebrations for the Islamic revolution in February. He did not go into details. It remains unclear how far Iran has advanced with the plan to install 3,000 centrifuges and Elham only said the UN nuclear inspectors had been kept informed of "completed work". The Islamic republic has so far declared the installation of two cascades of 164 centrifuges at the plant in Natanz and the installation of 3,000 centrifuges would mark a major step towards industrial enrichment. It has so far shown no sign of caving into a Security Council resolution that imposed the first ever UN sanctions against Iran over its failure to suspend enrichment, which can be used to fuel power stations or to make nuclear bombs. The United States accuses Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, a charge fiercely rejected by Tehran which insists it only wants to provide energy for a growing population. The previous day, foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini had dismissed speculation that Iran had slowed down its activities in Natanz, saying the enrichment work was continuing. Its defiance comes amid mounting accusations from the United States that Iran is using its influence to meddle in the region, especially in Lebanon and Shiite-majority Iraq. US President George W. Bush" /> President George W. Bushand Vice President Dick Cheney" /> Dick Cheneyboth issued new warnings to Iran Saturday, while US forces are still holding the five Iranians arrested in northern Iraq who Tehran says are merely consular staff. "If we catch your people inside (Iraq) harming US citizens or Iraqi citizens you know we will deal with them," Bush warned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a television interview. Iran was "fishing in troubled waters" in Iraq, Cheney said. "We think it's very important that they keep their folks at home." However Elham lashed out at the United States, which has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since the seizure of the US embassy by student radicals in 1979. "The Americans are in a situation of escaping from the region and are ready to curse and insult in order to save face," he said. He reaffirmed that Iran remains open to dialogue with the United States, but only on condition that Washington first changes its attitude towards Iran and the region. "If the Americans are willing to get out of the region, and if they leave in calm, their previous yells and screams will be forgotten," said Elham. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 9 AFP: UN inspectors visit key Iran atomic plant [The Natanz nuclear power plant] TEHRAN (AFP) - Inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog have visited Iran's uranium enrichment plant and are to hold talks with atomic officials, a state-run news agency has reported. "The International Atomic Energy Agency inspections team has visited the installations in Natanz and will meet Iranian nuclear officials on Tuesday and on Wednesday," an Iranian nuclear official, who was not named, told IRNA news agency on Tuesday. "The progress made in Natanz has been so rapid that it has caused sensitivity at the agency. We hope that with this visit the sensitivities will disappear," the source added, without specifying further. Government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham said Monday Iran wanted to install "even more" than 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at Natanz, in central Iran, in defiance of Western warnings to freeze the sensitive activity. It remains unclear how far Iran has advanced with its plans for uranium enrichment, a process that can be used both to make a nuclear bomb and nuclear fuel. The Islamic republic has so far declared the installation of two cascades of 164 centrifuges at the plant in Natanz and the installation of 3,000 centrifuges would mark a major step towards industrial enrichment. The United States accuses Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, a charge fiercely rejected by Tehran which insists it only wants to provide energy for a growing population. UN inspectors make regular checks of Iranian nuclear sites as part of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran is a signatory. Parliament has passed a law obliging the government to "revise" its cooperation with the agency after UN Security Council sanctions were imposed against Iran, but the government has yet to decide how to react. AFP ***************************************************************** 10 AFP: White House denies plans to invade Iran Tue Jan 16, 2:04 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House again denied it had plans to invade Iran" /> Iran, emphasizing diplomacy with the Islamic republic and asserting great "respect, admiration and affection for the people of Iran." "Let me reassure you and everybody else: We're not planning on invading Iran," spokesman Tony Snow said with evident frustration at stubborn speculation that an imposing US buildup in the Gulf means war with Tehran. "Instead, the strategy continues to be the use of diplomacy as a way of putting pressure on the regime in Tehran" on issues like its nuclear program, the spokesman told reporters. "This government has a lot of respect, admiration and affection for the people of Iran," said Snow, who reiterated US plans to hit alleged Iranian and Syrian support for insurgents attacking US forces in Iraq" /> Iraq. "When it comes to people on Iraqi soil trying to kill Americans, trying to move arms that are going to be used to kill Americans or innocent Iraqis, it is a matter of military necessity to confront them and take them on," he said. "When you have the presence of Iranians on Iraqi soil killing Americans, that is provocative," said the spokesman. US President George W. Bush" /> President George W. Bushannounced last week he had ordered a second US aircraft carrier battle group to the Gulf and announced the deployment of a Patriot missile defense battalion to the region to protect allies against potential Iranian missile strikes. In a speech unveiling his new strategy for Iraq, Bush also vowed that US forces would "seek out and destroy" any networks funneling weapons or fighters from Syria" /> Syriaor Iran into Iraq. A senior US military official added that the United States planned to keep two aircraft carrier battle groups in the Gulf for months -- the first such deployment since the first year of the Iraq war. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 11 UPI: Iran building 3,000 new centrifuges United Press International - Security &Terrorism - 1/16/2007 12:16:00 PM -0500 TEHRAN, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- Iran is pushing ahead with building 3,000 centrifuges to separate nuclear material, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Monday. "We are moving toward the production of nuclear fuel, and we need 3,000 or more centrifuges for uranium enrichment to achieve that goal," Iranian government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham said. "All nuclear activities in Iran are conducted under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency. We are moving toward our goal and if they [the West] try to lay obstacles for us, then we will overcome them," Elham said according to the report. "Iran launched a second experimental chain of 164 centrifuges at its pilot nuclear facility at Natanz in October, and said it will have a total of 3,000 centrifuges there by next March. The long-term target is 60,000, enough to advance to industrial-scale enrichment," RIA Novosti said. Iran is continuing with its ambitious program to enrich uranium, creating nuclear fuel that could used for atomic weapons as well as civilian reactors in defiance of a United Nations Security Council resolution passed on Dec. 23 that called on Tehran to suspend all its programs on uranium enrichment. The U.N. resolution called on all member nations of the world body to suspend any and all contracts with their companies that provided Iran with any of the machinery and raw materials it needed to continue its nuclear program. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 12 Guardian Unlimited: U.S., N. Korea Meet to Prepare for Talks From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday January 16, 2007 4:16 PM WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. negotiator at North Korean nuclear talks met Tuesday with his North Korean counterpart in Germany to discuss ways to prepare for the next round of talks, the State Department said. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill met with chief North Korean negotiator Kim Gye Gwan in Berlin, where Hill had traveled for a speech Wednesday at the American Academy, State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters. He had no details on the meeting, but said the two were trying ``to set the groundwork for the next round of six-party talks, to ensure those talks will be productive.'' It was unclear why Kim was in Germany. Hill is scheduled to travel to Asia this week for discussions with his counterparts. He will be in Seoul Friday, in Beijing Saturday and in Tokyo Sunday. Casey was unaware of further plans by Hill to meet with North Korean officials during his trip. The latest round of talks among the Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia ended in December with no agreement on disarmament nor a date for further talks. During five days of meetings in Beijing, negotiators from other delegations said Pyongyang negotiators refused to talk about the country's nuclear weapons program and stuck instead to its demand that the United States first had to remove its financial restrictions on North Korea. North Korea tested a nuclear weapon in October and test-fired missiles in July, drawing strong criticism from world leaders. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 13 Korea Herald: [NEWS FOCUS]Rival parties lock horns over summit A political tug-of-war over another inter-Korean summit has ensued among ruling and opposition forces as they head into a presidential election against an ominous backdrop of North Korea's nuclear test. While an inter-Korean summit is considered a valuable diplomatic and political tool for the ruling Uri party to wield, it has been a sore spot for the conservative Grand National Party. The GNP deems it is not time for an inter-Korean summit and worries that an attempt to hold one could rattle the popularity ratings, which are currently tilted heavily in its favor. Yesterday, Uri Party leader Kim Geun-tae raised eyebrows of opposition members by openly backing a second inter-Korean summit. "I hope that diverse diplomatic efforts will persist in holding an inter-Korean summit and working out a peace treaty among the two Koreas and the U.S. government," Kim said in a party meeting. He also welcomed former President Kim Dae-jung's remarks last weekend that he would be willing to go to North Korea. "I urge that (the government) increase efforts to send the special delegate to North Korea as soon as possible," Kim said. The June 2000 inter-Korean summit is considered one of the flagship achievements by former President Kim Dae-jung, who has been a mentor for President Roh Moo-hyun. The incumbent government also embraces Kim Dae-jung's sunshine policy under a new name, now calling it the "engagement policy." Although Kim Dae-jung refuses to link his devotion to North Korea with the incumbent government or its policy, an inter-Korean summit has often been cited by ruling members as an effective way to gather public support. The first historic inter-Korean summit was held in June 2000 between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. While talking to a Japanese newspaper, Kim Dae-jung said, "If the South Korean government wants it I would go (to North Korea)." Progressive observers contend that another inter-Korean summit could help break the deadlocked negotiations in North Korea's nuclear problem. In an annual report outlining policy for this year, the Unification Ministry sad, "In cases of North Korea's nuclear situation sustaining long-term, (the government) will push to send a high-ranking delegation or arrange a top leaders' meeting to create a breakthrough." The GNP sturdily lashed out at any attempts by President Roh to embark on an inter-Korean summit. "It is neither right nor effective for the president, who is in his last year in office, to go to an inter-Korean summit. It is a conspiracy to regain the reins of power," senior GNP member Lee Jae-oh said at a party's meeting. Rep. Kang Jae-sup said, "For a president with less than a year remaining to push for an inter-Korean summit is just an attempt to regain political capital. It can also appear as if we are begging to the North (for the summit)." In a recent survey conducted by Herald Media Inc. of some 1,000 eligible voters, 39.5 percent of the respondents said that a Uri Party candidate would see his or her support expand should the Seoul government succeed in holding a second inter-Korean summit in 2007. Some 25.3 percent said the summit will have no effect on the presidential race while 19 percent said the GNP will benefit from it. (angiely@heraldm.com) By Lee Joo-hee 2007.01.16 ***************************************************************** 14 Korea Herald: China suggests frequent summits Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao highlighted the need for the leaders of South Korea, China and Japan to gather more frequently, during the Asian regional forum last weekend, officials said yesterday. "China, who was the host of the trilateral meeting, said when it is considered necessary the summits of the three countries (they) should hold talks and underscored the need to activate exchanges between leaders and high-ranking officials," a government source was quoted as saying, according to Yonhap News. President Roh Moo-hyun met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Chinese premier on Sunday while attending the ASEAN Plus Three meeting in Cebu, Philippines. The three leaders agreed to establish a high-level council between the three countries' foreign ministries to deal with regional and international issues, including the North Korean nuclear problem. Prior to the summit, South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon proposed holding annual talks including foreign ministers from the countries, in a three-way meeting with his Chinese and Japanese counterparts. The official said Wen's remarks focussed more on the need to increase the high-level exchanges and that he did not necessarily offer to regularize the trilateral summit meeting. In response, Roh expressed agreement without adding any more comments, while Abe said he would like to make good use of meetings with other leaders on the occasion of such regional forums. Leaders of the three countries have been meeting annually on the sideline of the ASEAN conference since 1999. But the trilateral summit was not held in 2005, because a row over history soured relations between the three countries. (angiely@heraldm.com) By Lee Joo-hee 2007.01.17 ***************************************************************** 15 Xinhua: Hill to visit to China this week on six-party talks www.chinaview.cn 2007-01-16 17:44:41 BEIJING, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- China on Tuesday confirmed that Chief U.S. negotiator to the six-party talks Christopher Hill will visit Beijing later this week to discuss the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. During the visit, Hill will meet with his Chinese counterpart and Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao. But Liu declined to give further details on Hill's visit. "The Chinese and U.S. sides are working on the date and schedule (of Hill's visit)," Liu said. The nuclear negotiations, involving China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the United States, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Russia, convened in Beijing last December. It was the first talks since the DPRK conducted an underground nuclear test in October. The talks ended without any breakthrough. And the envoys agreed to resume the talks at an early date, but didn't set an exact date. Reports said Hill is also scheduled to visit Seoul and Tokyo later this week. Editor: Pliny Han ***************************************************************** 16 Korea Times: KEDO Demands $1.9 Bil. Compensation From NK Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Nation An international energy consortium has asked impoverished North Korea for nearly $1.9 billion in compensation for its defunct project to build two nuclear power plants in the North under the 1994 agreement on the North's freezing of its nuclear activities, Yonhap News Agency reported Tuesday, quoting diplomatic sources here. North Korea, however, has yet to respond to the claim, the report said, adding that analysts also said the North is unlikely to respond favorably, given its past record and current claims. The North claims the 1994 agreement, known as the Agreed Framework, was breached by the United States long before it withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in early 2003, and is demanding compensation for the unfinished reactors, it said. ``Now that the construction of the light-water reactors came to a final stop, the DPRK is compelled to blame the United States for having overturned the Agreed Framework and demand it compensate (the North) for the political and economic losses it has caused to the former,¡¯¡¯ an unidentified spokesman for the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the country's Korean Central News Agency Nov. 28, 2005. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name. The diplomatic sources said the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) has asked for the amount in at least three letters sent to Pyongyang, Yonhap said. ``(KEDO) has sent a letter (to North Korea) following every meeting of its executive board of directors since (last) May, demanding compensation for its assets at the construction site¡¯¡¯ in North Korea, one of the sources was quoted as saying. ``Letters were sent on five occasions, but the organization stated the specific amount in the three sent after September,¡¯¡¯ the source added. The $4.6-billion project was officially scrapped early last year after years of suspension following the outbreak of an ongoing dispute over North Korea's nuclear weapons program in late 2002. The Stalinist state conducted its first nuclear weapons test on Oct. 9 last year. The sources said the amount includes expenses for KEDO's executive office in New York, according to Yonhap. A total of $1.56 billion had been spent on the nuclear reactor project before its official termination, of which, some $1.14 billion was shouldered by South Korea and $410 million by Japan. The European Union also pitched in $18 million for the joint project, which also included the United States. The countries blame the North for scrapping the project, which was part of a 1994 agreement between Washington and Pyongyang to settle a dispute over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. 01-16-2007 19:43 ***************************************************************** 17 President: Determination on Sanctions Against North Korea for Detonation of a Nuclear Explosive Device FR Doc 07-133 [Federal Register: January 16, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 9)] [ Presidential Documents] [Page 1897-1899] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr16ja07-118] [[Page 1897]] Part IV The President Presidential Determination No. 2007-7 of December 7, 2006--Presidential Presidential Determination No. 2007-9 of December 15, 2006--Suspension of Limitations Under the Jerusalem Embassy Act Presidential Determination No. 2007-10 of December 29, 2006-- Eligibility of Vietnam To Receive Defense Articles and Defense Services Under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act Presidential Documents __ Title 3-- The President [[Page 1899]] Presidential Determination No. 2007-7 of December 7, 2006 Presidential Determination on Sanctions Against North Korea for Detonation of a Nuclear Explosive Device Memorandum for the Secretary of State In accordance with section 102(b) (1) of the Arms Export Control Act and section 129 of the Atomic Energy Act, I hereby determine that North Korea, a non- nuclear-weapon state, detonated a nuclear explosive device on October 9, 2006. The relevant agencies and instrumentalities of the United States Government are hereby directed to take the necessary actions to impose on North Korea the sanctions described in section 102(b) (2) of the Arms Export Control Act, as amended (22 U.S.C. 2799aa-1), and section 129 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2158). You are authorized and directed to transmit this determination to the appropriate committees of the Congress and to arrange for its publication in the Federal Register. (Presidential Sig.) THE WHITE HOUSE, Washington, December 7, 2006. [FR Doc. 07-133 Filed 1-12-07; 8:45 am] Billing code 4710-10-P ***************************************************************** 18 [du-list] New US nuke income stream Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:16:26 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.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 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/washington/07nuke.html?_r=1&oref=slogin (Page 1 of 2) WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 - The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country's first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades. It will propose combining elements of competing designs from two weapons laboratories in an approach that some experts argue is untested and risky. Skip to next paragraph The new weapon would not add to but replace the nation's existing arsenal of aging warheads, with a new generation meant to be sturdier, more reliable, safer from accidental detonation and more secure from theft by terrorists. The announcement, to be made by the interagency Nuclear Weapons Council, avoids making a choice between the two designs for a new weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which at first would be mounted on submarine-launched missiles. The effort, if approved by President Bush and financed by Congress, would require a huge refurbishment of the nation's complex for nuclear design and manufacturing, with the overall bill estimated at more than $100 billion. But the council's decision to seek a hybrid design, combining well-tested elements from an older design with new safety and security elements from a more novel approach, could delay the weapon's production. It also raises the question of whether the United States will ultimately be forced to end its moratorium on underground nuclear testing to make sure the new design works. On Friday, Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the Energy Department, said the government would not proceed with the Reliable Replacement Warhead "if it is determined that testing is needed." But other officials in the administration, including Robert Joseph, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, have said that the White House should make no commitment on testing. Congress authorized exploratory research for the weapon three years ago, and has financed it at relatively low levels since. But now the costs will begin to increase. If Mr. Bush decides to deploy the new design, he could touch off a debate in a Democrat-controlled Congress and among allies and adversaries abroad, who have opposed efforts to modernize the arsenal in the past. While proponents of the new weapon said that it would replace older weapons that could deteriorate over time, and reduce the chances of a detonation if weapons fell into the wrong hands, critics have long argued that this is the wrong moment for Washington to produce a new nuclear warhead of any kind. At a time when the administration is trying to convince the world to put sanctions on North Korea and Iran to halt their nuclear programs, those critics argue, any move to improve the American arsenal will be seen as hypocritical, an effort by the United States to extend its nuclear lead over other countries. Should the United States decide to conduct a test, officials said, China and Russia - which have their own nuclear modernization programs under way - would feel free to do the same. North Korea was sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council for conducting its first test on Oct. 9, and it may be preparing for more, experts said. Both administration officials and military officers like Gen. James E. Cartwright, head of the Strategic Command, which controls the nation's nuclear arsenal, argue that because the United States provides a nuclear umbrella for so many allies, it is critical that its stockpile be as reliable as possible. "We will not 'un-invent' nuclear weapons, and we will not walk away from the world," General Cartwright said in a recent interview. "Right now, it is not the nation's position that zero is the answer to the size of our inventory." "So, if you are going to have these weapons, they should be safe, they should be able to be secured, and they should be reliable if used," General Cartwright said in the interview, conducted before the Department of Energy's decision was announced. The current schedule, which is subject to change, would call for the president to make a decision in a year or two and, if approved, to begin engineering development by fiscal year 2010 and production by 2012. The two teams competing to design the weapon, one at Los Alamos in New Mexico, the other at the Livermore National Laboratory in California, approached the problem with very different philosophies, nuclear officials and experts said. Livermore drew on a single, robust design that, before the testing moratorium, was detonated in the 1980s under a desolate patch of Nevada desert. The weapon, however, never entered the nation's nuclear stockpile. The Los Alamos team drew on aspects of many weapons from the stockpile and pulled them together in a novel design that has never undergone testing. A winner of the competition was to have been announced in November. But federal officials said they had a hard time choosing between the two designs, calling both excellent. 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Share Ideas Publish your own blog with Yahoo Web Hosting. . 14c7efed.jpg __,_._,___ Attachment Converted: 14c7efdb.jpg: 00000001,10047edb,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 14c7efed.jpg: 00000001,10047edc,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 19 Nuke Watch: The Myth and Danger of 'Bunker Buster' Weapons Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:15:53 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.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 Nuke Watch - Projects of Peace No War Network _http://www.counterrecruitment.net_ (http://www.counterrecruitment.net/) _http://www.nukewatch.net_ (http://www.nukewatch.net/) Please Join Peace No War Listserv, send e-mail to: _peacenowar-subscribe@lists.riseup.net_ (mailto:peacenowar-subscribe@lists.riseup.net) Explosion of nuclear 'bunker buster' weapons cannot be 'contained' January 7, 2007 (mailto:jensenmk@plu.edu) [This background report on precision low-yield nuclear weapons of the sort that Israel is reported (_http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5538/_ (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5538/) ) to be training to use against Iran was published in 2001 by the Federation of American Scientists.[1] -- It states that "the use of any nuclear weapon capable of destroying a buried target that is otherwise immune to conventional attack will necessarily produce enormous numbers of civilian casualties. No earth-burrowing missile can penetrate deep enough into the earth to contain an explosion with a nuclear yield even as small as 1 percent of the 15 kiloton Hiroshima weapon. The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout." -- The report strongly suggests that the notion that such weapons can be used in such a way that radiation is contained in the ground is a fantasy (or a lie). -- "[I]t is simply not possible for a kinetic-energy weapon to penetrate deeply enough into the earth to contain a nuclear explosion," wrote Robert W. Nelson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University. -- For more information, see here. (_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bunker_buster_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bunker_buster) ) --Mark] _http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5539/_ (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5539/) LOW-YIELD EARTH-PENETRATING NUCLEAR WEAPONS By Robert W. Nelson Federation of American Scientists January/February 2001 _http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm_ (http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm) Despite the global sense of relief and hope that the nuclear arms race ended with the Cold War, an increasingly vocal group of politicians, military officials and leaders of America's nuclear weapon laboratories are urging the U.S. to develop a new generation of precision low-yield nuclear weapons. Rather than deterring warfare with another nuclear power, however, they suggest these weapons could be used in conventional conflicts with third-world nations. Critics argue that adding low-yield warheads to the world's nuclear inventory simply makes their eventual use more likely. In fact, a 1994 law currently prohibits the nuclear laboratories from undertaking research and development that could lead to a precision nuclear weapon of less than 5 kilotons (KT), because "low-yield nuclear weapons blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war." Last year, Senate Republicans John Warner (R-VA) and Wayne Allard (R-CO) buried a small provision in the 2001 Defense Authorization Bill that would have overturned these earlier restrictions. Although the language in the final Act was watered down, the Energy and Defense Departments are still required to undertake a study of low-yield nuclear weapons that could penetrate deep into the earth before detonating so as to "threaten hard and deeply buried targets." Legislation for long-term research and actual development of low-yield nuclear weapons will almost certainly be proposed again in the current session of Congress. Senators Warner and Allard imagine these nuclear weapons could be used in small-scale conventional conflicts against rogue dictators, while leaving most of the civilian population untouched. As one anonymous former Pentagon official put it to the *Washington Post* last spring, "What's needed now is something that can threaten a bunker tunneled under 300 meters of granite without killing the surrounding civilian population." Statements like these promote the illusion that nuclear weapons could be used in ways which minimize their "collateral damage," making them acceptable tools to be used like conventional weapons. As described in detail below, however, the use of any nuclear weapon capable of destroying a buried target that is otherwise immune to conventional attack will necessarily produce enormous numbers of civilian casualties. No earth-burrowing missile can penetrate deep enough into the earth to contain an explosion with a nuclear yield even as small as 1 percent of the 15 kiloton Hiroshima weapon. The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout. Moreover, as Congress understood in 1994, by seeking to produce usable low-yield nuclear weapons, we risk blurring the now sharp line separating nuclear and conventional warfare, and provide legitimacy for other nations to similarly consider using nuclear weapons in regional wars. CONFENTIONAL EARTH-PENETRATING WEAPONS Video clips from _CNN_ (http://cnn.com/WORLD/9802/06/bunker.buster.bomb/bunker.busters.26.2.3.mov) (2.2MB) and _Lockheed Martin_ (http://www.missilesandfirecontrol.com/products/strike/BLU-109/blu109.mpg) (2.8MB) The Pentagon already has a number of conventional weapons capable of destroying hardened targets buried within approximately 50 feet of the surface. The most well-known of these is the GBU-28 developed and deployed in the final weeks of the air campaign in the Gulf War. The Air Force was initially unable to destroy a well-protected bunker north of Baghdad after repeated direct hits. The 4000 lb GBU-28 was created from a very heavy surplus Army eight-inch gun tube filled with conventional explosive and a modified laser guidance kit. It destroyed the bunker, which was protected by more than 30 feet of earth, concrete, and hardened steel. The precision, penetrating capability, and explosive power of these conventional weapons has improved dramatically over the last decade, and these trends will certainly continue. Indeed, the GBU-37 guided bomb, a successor to the GBU-28, is already thought to be capable of disabling a silo-based ICBM -- a target formerly thought vulnerable only to nuclear attack. In the near future, the United States will deploy new classes of hard target penetrators which can land within one to two meters of their targets. THE B61-11 NUCLEAR BOMB However, mini-nuke advocates -- mostly coming from the nuclear weapons labs -- argue that low-yield nuclear weapons should be designed to destroy even deeper targets. The U.S. introduced an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon in 1997, the B61-11, by putting the nuclear explosive from an earlier bomb design into a hardened steel casing with a new nose cone to provide ground penetration capability. The deployment was controversial because of official U.S. policy not to develop new nuclear weapons. The DOE and the weapons labs have consistently argued, however, that the B61-11 is merely a "modification" of an older delivery system, because it used an existing "physics package." The earth-penetrating capability of the B61-11 is fairly limited, however. Tests show it penetrates only 20 feet or so into dry earth when dropped from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Even so, by burying itself into the ground before detonation, a much higher proportion of the explosion energy is transferred to ground shock compared to a surface bursts. Any attempt to use it in an urban environment, however, would result in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low end of its 0.3-300 kiloton yield range, the nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area. CONTAINMENT Just how deep must an underground nuclear explosion be buried in order for the blast and fallout to be contained? The U.S. conducted a series of underground nuclear explosions in the 1960s -- the Plowshare tests -- to investigate the possible use of nuclear explosives for excavation purposes. Those performed prior to the 1963 Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty, such as the Sedan test shown in Figure 4, were buried at relatively shallow depths to maximize the size of the crater produced. In addition to the immediate effects of blast, air shock, and thermal radiation, shallow nuclear explosions produce especially intense local radioactive fallout. The fireball breaks through the surface of the earth, carrying into the air large amounts of dirt and debris. This material has been exposed to the intense neutron flux from the nuclear detonation, which adds to the radioactivity from the fission products. The cloud typically consists of a narrow column and a broad base surge of air filled with radioactive dust which expands to a radius of over a mile for a 5-kiloton explosion.[1] In the Plowshare tests, roughly 50 percent of the total radioactivity produced in the explosion was distributed as local fallout -- the other half being confined to the highly-radioactive crater. In order to be fully contained, nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site must be buried at a depth of 650 feet for a 5 kiloton explosive -- 1300 feet for a 100-kiloton explosive.[2] Even then, there are many documented cases where carefully sealed shafts ruptured and released radioactivity to the local environment. Therefore, even if an earth-penetrating missile were somehow able to drill hundreds of feet into the ground and then detonate, the explosion would likely shower the surrounding region with highly radioactive dust and gas. LONG-ROD PENETRATION It is straightforward to show, however, that the maximum penetration depth is severely limited if the missile casing is to remain intact. One can make reasonably accurate estimates of the penetration depth based on the well-developed theory of "long-rod penetration." The fundamental parameter R is the ratio of the projectile ram pressure to the yield strength of the material.[3] The target material yields, and penetration occurs, when R is greater than one. For a steel rod to penetrate concrete, the minimum velocities for penetration is about one half a kilometer per second (1100 miles per hour). For ductile materials, the kinetic energy lost from the penetrator can deform the target and dig out a penetration crater. Fundamentally, however, the depth of penetration is limited by the yield strength of the penetrator -- in this case, the missile casing. Even for the strongest materials, impact velocities greater than a few kilometers per second will substantially deform and even melt the impactor. An earth-penetrating nuclear weapon must protect the warhead and its associated electronics while it burrows into the ground. This severely limits the missile to impact velocities of less than about three kilometers per second for missile cases made from the very hardest steels. >From the theory of "long-rod penetration," in this limit the maximum possible depth D of penetration is proportional to the length and density of the penetrator and inversely proportional to the density of the target. The maximum depth of penetration depends only weakly on the yield strength of the penetrator.[4] For typical values for steel and concrete, we expect an upper bound to the penetration depth to be roughly 10 times the missile length, or about 100 feet for a 10 foot missile. In actual practice the impact velocity and penetration depth must be well below this to ensure the missile and its contents are not severely damaged. Given these constraints, it is simply not possible for a kinetic-energy weapon to penetrate deeply enough into the earth to contain a nuclear explosion. THE WEAPONS LABS AND THE CTBT The most vocal proponents of new small-yield weapons come from the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories, at Los Alamos and Livermore. In a 1991 *Strategic Affairs* article entitled "Countering the Threat of the Well-armed Tyrant," Los Alamos weapons analysts Thomas Dowler and Joseph Howard II, argued that the U.S. has no proportionate response to a rogue dictator who uses chemical or biological weapons against U.S. troops. Our smallest nuclear weapons -- those with Hiroshima-size yields -- would be so devastating that no U.S. president could use them. We would be "self-deterred." To counter this dilemma, they argued the U.S. should develop "mininukes," with yields equivalent to 0.01-1 KT: ". . . nuclear weapons with very low yields could provide an effective response for countering the enemy in such a crisis, while not violating the principle of proportionality." More recently, in a speech to the Nuclear Security Decisionmakers Forum, Sandia Laboratory Director Paul Robinson stated "The U.S. will undoubtedly require a new nuclear weapon . . . because it is realized that the yields of the weapons left over from the Cold War are too high for addressing the deterrence requirements of a multipolar, widely proliferated world. Without rectifying that situation, we would end up being self-deterred." A more cynical interpretation of these statements is that the laboratory staff and leadership simply feel threatened by the current restrictions on their activities, and want to generate a new mission (and the associated funding) to keep them in operation indefinitely. Indeed, beginning in 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, there was serious discussion of closing one of the bomb labs. Moreover, President Clinton ended U.S. nuclear testing in 1993, and signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) -- a permanent worldwide ban on nuclear testing -- in 1996. Despite the Senate's failure to ratify the CTBT in 1999, its proponents believe the treaty will eventually come into force. The major nuclear powers continue to abide by the world moratorium on nuclear testing, and even India and Pakistan appear to have joined the moratorium after their May 1998 nuclear tests. The nuclear weapons labs are particularly threatened by the CTBT, since it will probably limit them to maintaining the stockpile of weapons already in our arsenal. Keeping young scientists interested in the weapons program is especially difficult when their main job is the relatively mundane task of assuring reliability. The labs desire the challenge of designing new nuclear weapons, simply for the scientific and technical training experience the effort would bring. Hence, there is tremendous pressure to create a new mission that justifies a new development program. But could the U.S. deploy a new low-yield nuclear earth-penetrating weapon without testing it? Under continued political pressure to support the Test Ban and its related Stockpile Stewardship Program, Los Alamos Associate Director Steve Younger has stated, "one could design and deploy a new set of nuclear weapons that do not require nuclear testing to be certified. However, . . . such simple devices would be based on a very limited nuclear test database." On the other hand, it seems unlikely that a warhead capable of performing such an extraordinary mission as destroying a deeply buried and hardened bunker could be deployed without full-scale testing. First, even if the missile casing were able to withstand the high-velocity ground impact, the warhead "physics package" and accompanying electronics must function under extreme conditions. The primary device must detonate and produce a reliable yield shortly after suffering an intense shock deceleration. Second, there must be great confidence that the actual nuclear yield is not greater than expected. Since the natural energy scale for a fission nuclear weapon is of order 10 KT, much lower-yield weapons must be sensitive to exacting design tolerances; the final yield is determined by an exponentially growing number of fission-produced neutrons, so the total number of neutron generations must be finely-tuned. Given that these weapons may be used near population centers, it thus seems highly unlikely that designers could certify a low-yield warhead without actually testing it. What would be the consequence if the U.S. decides to go ahead and test a new generation of nuclear weapons? As House Democrats expressed in a letter to Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, "The resumption of nuclear test explosions that will result from such a program involving nuclear weapons would decrease rather than increase our national security and undermine U.S. and international non-proliferation efforts." If the U.S. abandons the moratorium, Russia, and China will almost certainly respond in kind -- destroying prospects for eventual passage of the CTBT. CONCLUSION Proponents of building a new generation of small nuclear weapons have seldom been specific about situations where nuclear devices would be able to perform a unique mission. The one clear scenario is using these warheads as a substitute for conventional weapons to attack deeply buried facilities. Based on the analysis here, however, this mission does not appear possible without causing massive radioactive contamination. No American president would elect to use nuclear weapons in this situation -- unless another country had already used nuclear weapons against us. The end of the Cold War should allow us to place further limits on the development and use of nuclear weapons. The danger of moving from a conventional to a nuclear war is so enormous, that the U.S. refrained from using nuclear weapons in Korea even when U.S. troops were in danger of being overwhelmed. Attempts to develop a new generation of low-yield nuclear weapons would only make nuclear war more likely, and they seem cynically designed to provide legitimacy to nuclear testing -- steps that would return us to the dangers of Cold War nuclear competition, but with a larger number of nations participating. Robert W. Nelson, a theoretical physicist who works on technical arms control issues, is on the research staff of Princeton University and a consultant to FAS. NOTES [1] The base surge radius scales roughly as 4000 W1/3kt feet, where Wkt is the yield in kilotons. [2] In general, NTS tests are buried at depths of D 450 Wkt1/3.4 feet to be fully contained. [3] R = v2 / 2Y = (v/vc) 2 where is the projectile density, v is its velocity, Y is the yield strength of the material, and the critical velocity vc = (2Y /)1/2 [4] For a penetrator which is much stronger than the target, D/L (p / t) ln(Yp / Yt), where L is the length of the penetrator, is the material density, and Y is the material strength to plastic yielding; the subscripts p and t stand for the penetrator and target. ================================================================= Peace, No War War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate Not in our Name! And another world is possible! Information for antiwar movements, news across the World, please visit:_ http://www.PeaceNoWar.net_ (http://www.peacenowar.net/) e-mail: _Info@PeaceNoWar.net_ (mailto:Peace@ActionLA.org) Tel: (213)403-0131 Please Join PeaceNoWar Listserv, send e-mail to: _peacenowar-subscribe@lists.riseup.net_ (mailto:peacenowar-subscribe@lists.riseup.net) Please Donate to Peace No War Network! Send check pay to: ActionLA/SEE ActionLA / The Peace Center 8124 West 3rd Street, Suite 104 Los Angeles, California 90048 (All donations are tax deductible) ============================================= The web page has been design by Activist Design Studio Please visit: _http://www.ActivistDesign.net_ (http://www.activistdesign.net/) Toll-Free: (888)635-3307 ============================================= <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> *To Translate this page to Arabic, please visit ajeeb.com:_http://tarjim.ajeeb.com/ajeeb/default.asp?lang=1_ (http://tarjim.ajeeb.com/ajeeb/default.asp?lang=1) *To Translate this page to French, Spanish, German, Italian or Portuguese, please visit Systran:_http://www.systransoft.com/_ (http://www.systransoft.com/) <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> **"Report From Baghdad" CD-ROM** Pacifica Radio KPFK Los Angeles Reporter Lee Siu Hin's July 2003 trip to U.S. occupied Iraq. An interactive CD-ROM with articles, photos, audio and video interviews includes: people of Iraq, U.S. military, human rights workers, religious leaders and more! Please Visit the Web Site: _http://www.BaghdadReport.net_ (http://www.baghdadreport.net/) Each CD costs: $15.00 plus $3.50 S/H (work both PC and Mac) The CD sells will be benefit the Baghdad Independent Media Center, ActionLA, and PeaceNoWar.net *Additional donations are welcome, and it will be tax deductible. Send check/money orders to: ActionLA / The Peace Center 8124 West 3rd Street, Suite 104 Los Angeles, California 90048 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. 14c76ea9.jpg Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Visit Your Group SPONSORED LINKS * California energy * Science lab equipment * Increase energy level * Life science research * Life sciences Yahoo! News US News Get the latest national news now Ads on Yahoo! Learn more now. Reach customers searching for you. Free Blogging Y! Web Hosting Share your views with the world. . 14c76ebc.jpg __,_._,___ Attachment Converted: 14c76ea9.jpg: 00000001,12b940d2,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 14c76ebc.jpg: 00000001,12b940d3,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 20 Calgary Sun: Nuclear notion should bomb out 2007/01/16 Bill Kaufmann In war, it's called destroying the village to save it. When it comes to powering the oilsands in a more eco-friendly manner, it's called using nuclear energy. It seems you can't keep a dubious proposition down, the most-recent example being the interest among several oil giants and the province in exploring the merits of employing nuclear reactors to power their Alberta oilsands operations. To many, the concept sounds like an attractive alternative: A green, fossil fuel-free approach to unlocking the hydrocarbon motherlode. But a closer inspection would explain the historical reluctance of the provincial government in exploiting the atom. First, there's the enormous generation of greenhouse gases in mining, processing uranium and building plants that would render moot the nuclear option's green raison d'etre. It's estimated all activities related to uranium in Canada produce up to 366,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. That mining itself has been notoriously, fatally consequential in the toxic remnants left behind. Just ask the Navajo in the U.S. southwest who have been poisoned after mining the radioactive substance and living near the sites. Presumably, radioactive discharges and lethal reactor waste requiring storage and security for a mere million years will be taken into account by Energy Minister Mel Knight, who's endorsed considering nukes. "No other energy source combines the generation of as wide a range of conventional pollutants and waste streams including heavy metals, smog and acid rain precursors and greenhouse gases..." states a report by the Pembina Institute. In her book Nuclear Power Not the Answer, Dr. Helen Caldicott writes the plants are allowed to "emit hundreds of curies of radioactive gases and other radioactive elements into the environment every year." Add to that the reactors' and uranium processing's insatiable thirst for water -- a challenge already plaguing the oilsands. According to the Pembina Institute, ground and surface water in Ontario has been tainted by routine, accidental reactor discharges of radioactive and other pollutants. If pollution concerns fail to sour Albertans on nuclear energy, perhaps the sector's record as a massive boondoggle will. The nuclear industry in North America has been chronically dependent on taxpayer handouts; Ontarians are still saddled with paying down a $30-billion debt from cost overruns. If reactors went on line for Alberta's oilsands, it's more than a safe bet running them would yield another subsidy for the petroleum industry. Even with corporate welfare and a half century of commercialization, the cost of nuclear energy remains prohibitive. A 2004 University of Chicago study and a similar MIT paper states the cost of nuclear-generated electricity will continue to exceed that produced by natural gas or coal by 50-90%. Given their miserable performance, it's little wonder no new nuclear plants have been ordered in the U.S. in 25 years, while other industrialized countries are moving away from them. Recalling the boondoggles that surrounded the Swan Hills waste disposal plant, imagine the hijinks awaiting the transport and disposal of nuclear waste. And if our fears of a terrorist attack on the petroleum infrastructure are genuine, then nuclear plants providing premium targets with the potential to disperse radioactive pestilence should be worth a few sleepless nights. The Pembina Institute's Dr. Marlo Raynolds suggests tapping into deep geothermal energy sources or gasified coke -- a byproduct of oilsands development -- then trapping and storing resulting carbon dioxide afterwards. Otherwise, the nuclear cure could be worse than the disease. webmaster@calgarysun.com Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc.All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 21 BBC: Campaign's weapons claim Last Updated: Tuesday, 16 January 2007 [Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment] AWE is the headquarters of Britain's nuclear development programme Britain's new generation of nuclear warheads are being developed at a Berkshire site ahead of any government decision, a campaign group alleges. Aldermaston Women's Peace Campaign (AWPC) wrote to Downing Street stating nuclear warheads are being developed at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE). In October, building work at the Aldermaston site led to claims from Greenpeace of new nuclear developments. The MoD denied new weapons were being developed and insisted AWPC was wrong. Prime Minister Tony Blair announced plans late last year to upgrade Trident at a cost of up to £20bn with the commons to vote on future plans for any nuclear deterrents in March. Conspiracy theory In a letter to the Commons Defence Select Committee, the AWPC stated: "Plans for warhead replacement are already well advanced - we suggest that the decision has already been made. "The Defence White Paper [December's paper on the Trident system] fails to reveal the true extent of the government's progress on developing a successor system." Labour MP Kevan Jones dismissed the AWPC's ideas as a "conspiracy theory". A spokesman for the MoD said: "They've got it wrong. Work on the warheads will not be needed yet - we've already announced that. "We are reducing the number of warheads, because the threat has changed. There's not much to be gained by developing new warheads. "And the decision whether or not we need or don't need to replace warheads will not be taken until the next parliament." 'Laser technology' He added that additional investment at the AWE research site was "sustaining facilities and skills to maintain existing stockpiles". "Before if you had a stockpile of 100 every few years we'd dip in and test 10 - now we can't do that, so how do you ensure all work? "Modelling and laser technology - that's what a lot of the investment is about," he added. The building work, at a cost of £1bn, and the creation of new jobs had led to claims from Greenpeace that the Article 6 of International Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, relating to nuclear disarmament, was being contravened at the site. ***************************************************************** 22 AFP: Britain pre-empting nuclear weapons vote - campaigners - Tue Jan 16, 1:52 PM ET LONDON (AFP) - An anti-nuclear group claimed the government is already working on new warheads for the country's Trident missile nuclear deterrent even before parliament has voted on the matter. But the Ministry of Defence dismissed the claim by the Aldermaston Women's Peace Campaign (AWPC), saying it was simply wrong, while the ruling Labour Party said it was a conspiracy theory. Members of parliament are due to decide in March whether to back Prime Minister Tony Blair" /> Tony Blairin supporting plans to modernise the ageing weapons system. Lawmakers on the House of Commons Defence Select Committee were told Tuesday that building work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston, west of London, suggested the decision had already been taken. In written evidence, the AWPC said "plans for warhead replacement are already well advanced". "AWPC are calling on the government to come clean about the fact that at AWE Aldermaston, the Ministry of Defence has already started work on facilities to test, design and build new warheads, in advance of any parliamentary decision." Committee member Kevan Jones, from Blair's governing Labour Party, said the claims were a "conspiracy theory". An MoD spokesman told AFP the group had "got it wrong": warheads were not being replaced but work has been carried out recently to refurbish Aldermaston, whose facilities were last overhauled in the 1960s, he added. Blair's proposals for Trident, including a new generation of nuclear submarines at a cost of up to 20 billion pounds (39.5 billion dollars), has been controversial. Unilateral nuclear disarmament was Labour Party policy in the 1980s and many members are still opposed to retaining the nuclear deterrent. Lobby group the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) argue that to replace Trident would promote proliferation, particularly at a time when Blair and the West is opposed to North Korea" /> North Koreaand Iran" /> Iranhaving atomic weapons. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 UPI: Asian nations agree on energy pact United Press International - NewsTrack - 1/15/2007 7:16:00 AM -0500 CEBU, Philippines, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Leaders of 16 Asian nations signed an energy pact at their summit in the Philippines, backing energy security and the search for alternatives fuels. Signatories to the Cebu Declaration on Energy Security pledged their support on ensuring the security of energy supplies in the Asian region and to work together to find alternatives to fossil fuels, blamed for producing so-called greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. In their statement, the summit leaders agreed more money should be put into research and development of alternative fuel, The Australian Broadcasting Corp. said. The statement put heavy emphasis on biofuels but also said other options such as nuclear energy would be considered. In a separate meeting during the summit, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao agreed on the need to work together on developing cleaner coal -- China's main source of energy production. Australia's coal exports to China were worth more than $550 million last year. Howard told reporters the two countries had agreed to set up a working party, which was expected to meet in April to promote cooperation on developing and using clean coal options. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 24 UPI: Cold War safer than today, Ivanov says United Press International - Security &Terrorism - 1/16/2007 11:18:00 AM -0500 MOSCOW, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- The world today is a far more dangerous place than it was during the Cold War, Russia's defense chief said Tuesday. "The world has been changing dynamically, and threats have been changing with a kaleidoscopic speed. The times of the Cold War, when everything was predictable and measured-out, were like a paradise in comparison with the present day," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said, according to a report carried by the RIA Novosti news agency. He was speaking during the first session of the Russian Defense Ministry's public council, the report said. "Ivanov, who is also Russia's deputy prime minister, said that today the most threatening trend is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In that light, he called on political scientists in the public council to prepare their assessments on developments in the world situation in terms of their impact on Russian national security," the RIA Novosti report said. The Soviet Union and the United States sustained a strategic nuclear balance of fear, or deterrence through the 44 years of the Cold War from 1945 through the start of the collapse of communism in 1989. The most dangerous moments during that long stand-off were the 1961 Berlin Crisis and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Both crises occurred during the leaderships of Premier Nikita Khruschchev in the Soviet Union and President John F. Kennedy in the United States. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 25 UPI: Walker's World: The new ASEAN United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 1/15/2007 9:49:00 AM -0500 By MARTIN WALKER UPI Editor Emeritus WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- The most important place in diplomacy over the weekend was not with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the Middle East, nor with the "21st century Socialism" rhetoric of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on his Latin American tour. It was in the pleasant resort of Cebu in the Philippines that the real shape of the future was to be discerned. Cebu was hosting the 40th anniversary summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, which was also attended by the Asian heavyweights of China, India, South Korea and Japan. ASEAN has already become the nuclear of a much greater Asian community, with its free trade negotiations with China and India under way, and its new progress toward an ASEAN Security Community. Most important, the leaders of the 10 ASEAN nations over the weekend approved a series of visionary agreements that are intended to create a local version of the European Union, an integrated community of pooled sovereignty, a single market and a common series of security and economic policies. Significantly, the plans acknowledge that the old ASEAN rules of reaching decisions by consensus and non-interference in the internal affairs of other members would have to be modified if such a community is to work. With rules demanding a common commitment to the rule of law, human rights and democratic values, the new ASEAN Community will need mechanisms to suspend or even expel members that fall below the required standards. The proposals for the "ASEAN Community" came in a detailed report with 28 recommendations from an Eminent Persons Group of senior diplomats, politicians and officials that was appointed at the ASEAN summit two years ago to come up with proposals for integration. Their report was released Friday, based on the principles of "strengthening of democratic values, good governance, rejection of unconstitutional and undemocratic changes of government, respect of the rule of law, including international humanitarian law, human rights and fundamental freedoms." The key recommendation, which is being embraced with enthusiasm by ASEAN leaders, calls for a charter that establishes the Southeast Asian community as a legal entity, committed to an EU-style, complete with a free-trade zone by 2015, a security agreement that intensifies cooperation in the war on terrorism, codifies structures and rules for migrant labor across ASEAN, and coordinates the campaign against HIV and AIDS. "We want to advance the sense of community in our shared interest to look after each other in terms of justice, economic development and common security," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines said as she opened the ASEAN summit meeting. ASEAN includes the five original members of Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia, and the more recent members of Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. It now comprises an economic community of 560 million people, which with the signing of the new free trade pact with China will become the world's biggest trading bloc. ASEAN has already become the focus of jostling by Asian power as the new security structure of the region starts to emerge. China sees it as core component of an East Asian Community based around a group called ASEAN plus 3, which includes China, Japan and South Korea. But Japan, suspecting Chinese ambitions to dominate the region, wants the group widened further to include India, Australia and New Zealand. India is equally keen to give institutional force to its own involvement with ASEAN, fearing exclusion from what could then become a Chinese-dominated Asia. Australia and New Zealand are determined to be seen as members of the Asian community, since their trade and economic prospects are increasingly dependent on Asian markets. So the stakes at the ASEAN summit in Cebu concern the future structure of Asia, as an economic, a diplomatic and a security system. And the ASEAN nations are clearly determined to club together to be a major player, rather than remain separate and small and easily dominated by the larger powers like China and Japan. In this context, the proposal for an ASEAN Security Community is of particular importance. ASEAN already has an agreement to keep its region a nuclear-free zone, and has also taken the lead of organizing talks with China intended to resolve the territorial disputes over the potential oil riches of the disputed Spratley chain of islands. The new accord on anti-terrorist cooperation, along with the decision to hold regular meetings of ASEAN defense ministers, takes the ASEAN military and intelligence cooperation to a new level. "We signed the ASEAN Convention on Counter-Terrorism to enhance the region's capacity to confront terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, and to deepen counter-terrorism cooperation among our law enforcement and other relevant authorities," notes the formal report of President Arroyo, the summit host. There are other building blocks for the proposal ASEAN Community, including forums on socio-cultural and on economic policies. But these are not easy to coordinate when the per capita income of Myanmar is less than one-tenth that of Singapore, by far the richest of the ASEAN states. The disparities of size, between Indonesia's population of 225 million and Singapore's 4.3 million, are as glaring as the disparities of wealth. There are also religious and cultural differences, far wider than those between the states that make up the EU, which mean that building the ASEAN Community will be a real challenge. Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei are predominantly Muslim states, Thailand is traditionally Buddhist, and Vietnam is nominally a communist state, albeit in a state of dramatic economic reform. The Philippines is a robust if sometimes shaky democracy, while the military government of Myanmar is shunned by much of the world. And yet they all seem to get along reasonably well within ASEAN, perhaps because they have little choice. With the rise of China to the east and of India to the west, it may seem safer to be part of a group rather than face such massive security changes alone. After all, few in Asia are entirely convinced that the United States, distracted and bogged down in Iraq, will continue to play its traditional role as the region's security guarantor. And while the heads of government of India, China, Japan and South Korea all flew to Cebu to pay their respects, no really high-ranking American even bothered to show up. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 26 [NukeNet] Bombplex 2030, EIS Response - Altermatives Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:06:36 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61] X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61 X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) Gentlemen, There is no way you can prepare an adequate EIS for a new Bombplex, in your language, Complex 2030. A true EIS must include a cost-benefit analysis. How can you even imagine the costs that will be incurred by the public by your arcane proposal to restart the nuclear arms race. What price will a nuclear winter be? The end of life on earth? Alternatives must be considered in all Environmental Impact Statements. Consider living up to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Consider a non-nuclear future for us and our children. Consider putting all the money that you propose to sink into this black hole into life affirming non nuclear renewable energy sources that will truly help the world to become a cooperative society, instead of a hostile, kill them before they kill us, and thereby all of us die, world with no hope. For a blueprint of how to begin promoting peace and hope instead of death and destruction, which blombplex 2030 will surely cause, take a few minutes off and go to the movies. See the newly released "Freedom Writers." It is a blueprint for peace making, beginning at the local level. Extrapolate the worldwide distribution of that movie into your cost benefit analysis for alternatives to building a whole new complex to produce nuclear weapons, taking us back into a world wide nuclear arms race. Respectfully submitted, Jeannine Honicker, djhonicker@msn.com _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://mail.energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 27 [NukeNet] Deny PG&E Funds for Nuclear Re-License Study Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:08:45 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61] X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61 X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) From: "Sierra Club California" <actionalerts@sierraclub-sac.org> >Date: January 12, 2007 3:51:54 PM PST >To: <ronrattner@earthlink.net> >Subject: Deny PG&E Funds for Nuclear Re-License Study > >14c0e3db.jpg >14c0e420.jpg > >Deny PG&E Funds for Nuclear Re-License Study > > >The license for the nuclear reactors at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power >Plant do not expire until 2025, yet PG&E is requesting that the California >Public Utilities Commission force its ratepayers fork over $14 million >dollars for an in-house feasibility study of renewing the plant's license >for another 20 years. >This is an affront to California legislators and Governor, who recently >passed legislation for the Energy Commission to do an in-depth analysis of >the full costs, benefit and risks of the California's continued reliance >on its aging nuclear reactors beyond current license periods. >Action Needed: >Ratepayers must speak out as soon as possible to prevent this waste of >public moneys for private studies. At minimum, the CPUC should deny >PG&E's request until the California Energy Commission (CEC) has completed >it analysis and the results have been approved and implemented. >California deserves an energy future that is clean, economic and reliable. >Until the CEC analysis is complete, that future is in jeopardy. >Using the link below, please send a letter to the President of the >California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). >Deadline for responding: Please take action by January 17, 2007. > >14c0e439.jpg > >NOTE: Do not use your email program to forward this message to others as >it has been personalized with your account information. To spread the word >about this issue, please use the "Forward to a friend" link above. > >Materials created and maintained by the Sierra Club. >Sierra Club >Website Terms >and Conditions of Use and >Privacy Policy . >Unsubscribe > >14c0e449.jpg > In Peace Rochelle Becker, Executive Director Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility www.a4nr.org PO 1328 San Luis Obispo, Ca 93406-1328 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs": Source: Arundhati Roy, "Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire," Molly Johnson 6290 Hawk Ridge Place San Miguel, CA 93451 Cell: 805 296-0524 Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business. _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://mail.energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net Attachment Converted: 14c0e3db.jpg: 00000001,6df6ee16,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 14c0e420.jpg: 00000001,6df6ee17,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 14c0e439.jpg: 00000001,6df6ee18,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 14c0e449.jpg: 00000001,6df6ee19,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 28 [NukeNet] Supreme Court ruling in favor of Mothers for Peace Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:06:46 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61] X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61 X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) SAN LUIS OBISPO MOTHERS FOR PEACE www.mothersforpeace.org Press Advisory: The United States Supreme Court Rejects Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Petition regarding San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace v. NRC For immediate release, January 16, 2007 Contacts: Jane Swanson, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace (MFP) spokesperson (805) 595-2605 home (805) 440-1359 cell (805) 595-9229 FAX janeslo@slonet.org Diane Curran, MFP counsel (202) 328-3500 x24(office) (240) 393-9285 (cell) dcurran@harmoncurran.com Today, January 16, 2007, the United States Supreme Court ruled against Pacific Gas and Electric Company's (PG&E's) petition for a writ of certiorari seeking review of the June 2, 2006 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace v. NRC, 449 F.3d 1016. The Supreme Court's rejection of PG&E's petition means that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must carry out the Ninth Circuit's mandate to consider the environmental impacts of intentional attacks on the proposed dry cask storage installation at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California. PG&E had asked the Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit's ruling that, in order to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the NRC must consider the environmental impacts of terrorist attacks before it licenses the new facility. MFP spokesperson, Jane Swanson, is elated with the Court's decision. "After the events of September 11, 2001, it is only reasonable that the significant health and environmental risks of terrorist attacks be considered when designing and building nuclear facilities. Now, after years of resistance, the NRC and PG&E are forced to address these concerns." MFP's attorney, Diane Curran, said that she expects the NRC to issue a new environmental review document that addresses the impacts of an intentional attack on the proposed facility. In the meantime, PG&E is precluded by law from loading fuel into the new facility. BACKGROUND PG&E is running out of storage space for the "spent" or used fuel generated by the two nuclear reactors on the site of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Thus, in late 2001, PG&E applied to the NRC for a license for a new facility to store spent fuel on the Diablo Canyon site in dry storage casks. As allowed by NRC regulations, respondents San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Sierra Club, and Peg Pinard (collectively, "MFP") requested a hearing on the adequacy of PG&E's license applications in the summer of 2002. Among other things, MFP contended that the application was inadequate to satisfy NEPA because it did not address the environmental impacts of terrorist attacks on the proposed spent fuel storage facility. Citing the NRC's increased preparedness in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, and other assaults on U.S. facilities during the past ten years, MFP argued that the NRC's own conduct shows that it considers such attacks to be reasonably foreseeable. The NRC denied MFP's hearing request, relying on a previous decision in which it had held as a matter of law that it was not required to consider the environmental impact of intentional attacks on nuclear facilities. According to the NRC, no Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was required. In December 2003, MFP sought review of the NRC's decision in the Ninth Circuit. PG&E was not named as a respondent but intervened to support the NRC's actions. On June 2, 2006, the court granted MFP's petition for review with respect to its NEPA claim and ordered the NRC "to fulfill its responsibilities under NEPA." Under the Court's order, the obligation to comply with NEPA is placed upon the NRC - not upon PG&E. The NRC did not request a stay of the order by the en banc Ninth Circuit or by the Supreme Court, but on September 29, 2006, PG&E filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace v. NRC. NEPA: National Environmental Policy Act Congress established a national policy to encourage careful review of the impacts of human development on the environment. Before taking actions that may have a significant impact on the environment, NEPA requires federal agencies to prepare environmental impact statements (EISs) that carefully consider the environmental impacts of proposed decisions and alternatives for reducing or avoiding those impacts. They must consider environmental impacts that are "reasonably foreseeable" and have "catastrophic consequences, even if their probability of occurrence is low." -- Jane Swansonjaneslo@slonet.org janeslo@kcbx.net - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs": Source: Arundhati Roy, "Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire," Molly Johnson 6290 Hawk Ridge Place San Miguel, CA 93451 Cell: 805 296-0524 Any questions? Get answers on any topic at Yahoo! Answers. Try it now. _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://mail.energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 29 Stock Interview: Nuclear Renaissance Plagued by High Costs, Waste Issues [StockInterview.com] by James Finch - jfinch@stockinterview.com
January 15, 2007 Exelon Corp Chief Executive John Rowe. He wont build any more U.S. nuclear power plants until the government gets its act straight on nuclear fuel disposition. Depending upon which side of the fence you are sitting, the nuclear renaissance is either in full blossom or an arid landscape. The new uranium miners Paladin Resources, UrAsia and SXR Uranium One celebrate the record spot and long-term uranium price. Exelon Corp Chief Executive John Rowe is less sanguine, based upon comments he made this past Friday, The government may have fooled me on 17 reactors that I currently run, but Im the one whos being foolish if I build a new plant without knowing what theyre going to do with the spent fuel. Exelon is the largest owner of nuclear power plants in the United States . In a September 19th article, we interviewed Steven Kraft, Nuclear Energy Institute Director for Used Fuel Management. Mr. Kraft hinted the stalls around the nuclear renaissance in the United States would revolve around the spent fuel depository issue. What happens with the 40,000 metric tons of used nuclear reactor fuel? Right now, they are chilling out in 141 concrete cooling ponds scattered around the country. For the past quarter century, the nuclear industry expected the reactor fuel would end up in a centralized depository, as has been proposed at Yucca Mountain , Nevada . Thanks to U.S. Senator Reid, and his efforts to squash this site, the Department of Energy has been paralyzed in moving forward. Alternatives are now being proposed, and the U.S. part of the nuclear renaissance remains stalled. Then the other shoe drops. Because of the vociferous environmental lobbyists, pre-construction costs dissuade nuclear utilities from accelerating their plans to build new nuclear reactors in the United States . Utilities do what is convenient they pass on these licensing costs to their utility consumers. Because of the environmental lobby, Georgia electricity consumers are paying the freight to license the new nuclear reactors proposed by Atlanta-based Southern Co. Charlotte-based Duke Energy hopes to get the same deal in North Carolina . How much does it cost to license a nuclear power plant? Standard & Poors analyst Dimitri Nikas estimated the permits to construct a nuclear plant would cost between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. This means roughly one-half the cost of constructing a nuclear plant in the United States goes to pay for a permit to build and operate the reactor. New reactors are supposed to cost between $3 and $5 billion each to build (plus financing costs). If 30 new reactors are planned in the U.S., about $45 to $60 billion will be spent on permitting costs (A special thanks to 'Friend of the Earth' for that penalty!). Because of this expensive proposition, nuclear energy costs more to produce electricity in the United States than it would in places like China, Korea, Japan or just about anywhere else. For a nuclear plant costing $2 million per megawatt to build, the power plants electricity would cost $55 per megawatt hour. By comparison, a coal-fired power plant costs consumers $53 per megawatt hour for their electricity. A combined cycle integrated gasification plant fueled by coal produces electricity for $50 per megawatt hour. On the bright side, the S&P analyst believes that after the first wave of nuclear power plant construction, overall costs could plunge to $1.5 million per megawatt hour for electricity, or roughly $44 per megawatt hour. Because of this drop Mr. Niklas concluded nuclear energy is by far the most competitive cost from any resource, except perhaps hydroelectricity generation. This is more good news for uranium miners now supplying the nuclear industry and those who hope to do so over the next decade. The question facing most Americans and we would guess 99 percent havent the slightest clue about this problem is whether or not they would prefer losing the nuclear option as part of their electricity generation. The environmental lobby would cheer the loss but the utility consumer would lose up to 20 percent of their baseload electricity generation. And on a darker note, the alternative would be more coal-fired power plants not wind or solar power, which are still more than one decade away from offering any sort of hope for baseload electricity generation. To put this into perspective, coal now generates 54 percent of America s electricity. One pound of coal produces 1.25 kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to power one 100-watt light bulb for 10 hours. The average internet user consumes more than his body weight in coal just to surf the net: 12 hours weekly over the course of one year consumes 300 pounds of coal. (For example, the electricity consumed to order StockInterviews Investing in the Great Uranium Bull Market, would burn up one lump of coal.) Total demand for electricity by personal computers now amounts to 8 percent of the U.S. electrical supply. In the future, over one billion people will be accessing the Internet. This amount of computer time would be equal to the total current capacity of U.S. electrical production. If the U.S. nuclear renaissance doesnt get launched, we will either be accessing the Internet by polluting our environment with several hundred additional millions of tons of CO2 emissions, or the Internet users will suffer. Wind and solar wont power the Internet, but coal, gas and especially nuclear will. And at this stage of the uranium renaissance, U.S. utilities have contracted with three non-U.S. uranium mining companies Paladin, SXR Uranium One and UrAsia to purchase uranium mined in Namibia , South Africa and Kazakhstan . Where is the energy independence in that observation? Next well be buying our electricity from the Russians, Chinese, and quite possibly the Iranians, if this nonsense continues. Please bring this to the attention of your local environmental lobbying office. ***************************************************************** 30 The Australian: Clean energy pact a 'diversion' + NEWS.com.au | + January 16, 2007 This story is from our news.com.aunetwork Source: AAP PRIME Minister John Howard's pact with China to use so-called clean coal technology was a typical diversion from the need to switch from coal to renewable energy, Greenpeace said today. The environmental group said Mr Howard continued to ignore options that would deter industrialised economies from increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia and China yesterday pledged to work together to develop cleaner energy alternatives following top level talks in the Philippines. The pact coincided with a wider declaration on energy security made by 16 countries at the East Asia Summit (EAS) of regional leaders. The declaration pledges a move towards nuclear and other alternative energy solutions, acknowledging the need for renewable energy development. But Greenpeace spokesman Ben Pearson said China was already moving in that direction, having recently announced plans to invest 45.6 billion yuan ($7.41 billion) to more than triple wind power generation capacity by 2010 and aiming to reach a 15 per cent renewable energy target by 2020. "This is the real solution to climate change and what Australia should be promoting," Mr Pearson said. "The deal seems to involve no new financing and doesn't address the central problem that without a price on carbon, technologies such as geosequestration will never be commercially deployed. "Moreover, it will be at least 10 years before we know if geosequestration even works, which is simply too late." Mr Pearson said deep cuts were needed in greenhouse emissions of industrialised countries of at least 30 per cent by 2020 to avoid dangerous climate change. "We may not even know if geosequestration will work by then," he said. © The Australian ***************************************************************** 31 Deutsche Welle: Merkel Asks for Realistic Alternatives to Nuclear Energy | 15.01.2007 DW-World.de Deutsche Welle Merkel Asks for Realistic Alternatives to Nuclear Energy [German nuclear power plant Biblis] Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The current plan requires German nuclear power plants be shut down by 2020 German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked the opponents of nuclear energy in Germany to come up with realistic solutions to the country's energy needs while paying heed to environmental issues. "I'm saying that those who want both the nuclear phase-out and climate protection are now, naturally, called upon to provide answers," Merkel said in an interview on German Radio on Sunday. The coalition of Socialist Democrats (SPD) and the Green party under former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder reached a ground-breaking agreement that all of Germany's nuclear power plants would be shut down by 2020. [Angela Merkel] Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Merkel says she wants realistic but environmentally safe alternatives to nuclear energy Merkel -- whose Christian Democrats (CDU) signed on the nuclear phase-out plan when they formed a grand coalition government with SPD after the 2005 elections -- said, however, that German nuclear power plants could not be replaced by coal-powered plants because of carbon dioxide emissions and concerns about their contributing to global warming. According to Merkel, climate change is one of the greatest challenges that humanity is facing today. Sticking to the plan Even though members of Merkel's own party have repeatedly asked for the government to reconsider the nuclear phase-out -- especially in view of Germany's reliance on Russian gas supplies -- Merkel said she was not planning on backing out of the coalition agreement, at least for the time being. [The chimney stack belches smoke into the air] Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The EU wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions "At least for this legislative period, there will be no changes," Merkel said, referring to the phase-out. "But we need to be realistic and look into how much can be achieved in how long." Six billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year pour into the atmosphere worldwide from sources such as power stations, chemical plants and steel foundries. CO2 contributes to global warming by trapping the sun’s rays in the atmosphere. Merkel's coalition partners from the SPD remain strongly opposed to any changes to the phase-out plan. "The nuclear phase-out is possible along with a tightening of climate protection," said Ulrich Kelber, deputy president of the SPD parliamentary bloc. Germany itself is divided over nuclear issues. According to a Forsa poll published on Sunday, one half of Germans are either in favor of prolonging the life of the country's nuclear power plants or abandoning the nuclear phase-out altogether. The other half would like to stick to the plan to shut the nuclear plants down. Last week, the EU unveiled sweeping plans to diversify energy sources, limit greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and increase the use of renewable energy sources. 1. © 2007 Deutsche Welle ***************************************************************** 32 Dallas Morning News: Nuclear plants getting warmer reactions [DallasNews.com] Regulators, public more receptive to power source 08:28 AM CST on Tuesday, January 16, 2007 By SUDEEP REDDY / The Dallas Morning News WASHINGTON  The U.S. nuclear power industry is planning for a renaissance, drawing up its first applications to build nuclear plants since the 1970s. Just a decade ago, many energy executives didn't think nuclear power had much of a future. Strict regulations had led to costly downtime for reactors. The public showed little interest in betting billions on new plants. [Nuclear plant graphic] DEAN HOLLINGSWORTH/DMN Instead of fading away, the industry launched a revival, using a friendlier political climate to spur a regulatory overhaul. Rules that had led to lengthy investigations and plant shutdowns became less restrictive. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission started embracing industry efforts to create alternative, less costly regulations. Today, the turnaround is nearly complete. The electricity output of the nation's remaining 103 reactors is at or near record highs. Also Online Power providers banking on getting a hand from Uncle Sam Republicans and Democrats  and a growing number of environmentalists  are embracing nuclear power as a critical response to global warming and reliance on unstable oil suppliers. And Wall Street is slowly warming up to the idea of new construction. The change in direction came in large part by reshaping a regulatory environment that often meant the difference between a profit and loss  and whether a plant could afford to operate. Some industry critics say the regulatory changes have lowered safety standards, increasing the risk to the public. Lessons from past accidents and near-misses, they say, are being written off. "It's a must for this industry to lower its costs in an increasingly competitive electricity market," said Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a nonprofit group that opposes nuclear power. "That comes at a cost to public safety, health and security." The industry slowly won over key lawmakers and regulators in the 1990s by making the case that many of the prescriptive rules created earlier for a nascent industry imposed heavy burdens without much of a safety benefit. Central to the effort was reassessing the risk of accidents and breakdowns based on a plant's history and industry experience, rather than trying to protect against an unlikely "perfect storm" scenario. "You can focus on what really matters and get some cost reductions at the same time," said Tony Pietrangelo, vice president of regulatory affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group. The effort helped to improve the industry's overall operational performance dramatically. Unplanned reactor shutdowns for six months or more dropped from more than 120 reactor months in 1997 to 10 months or less for most of this decade, according to NRC figures. Better performance Sharp drops in refueling times and offline maintenance sent capacity factors  a measure of a plant's efficiency  from 71 percent in 1997 to more than 90 percent today, government data show. And the average cost of producing a kilowatt-hour of nuclear power fell 28 percent to 1.72 cents in 2005 from 2.38 cents in 1997. The performance won nuclear plants credibility as a reliable source of power, setting the stage for new construction. More than 30 new reactors are under consideration nationwide. Dallas-based TXU Corp. has said it's interested in building as many as six new reactors, likely to include an expansion of its Comanche Peak plant southwest of Dallas. Nuclear developers are betting on a new generation of technology to avoid past licensing and construction delays. They're also counting on a more accommodating regulatory environment. Critics of nuclear power warn that the bullish environment could end with a single accident. An accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa., led to a public backlash and widespread cancellations of new projects. A scare They cite one of the most recent close calls, in 2002, when workers at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio found a football-size hole in the nuclear reactor vessel head caused by a boric acid leak. If the hole had opened up, it could've caused a meltdown. The NRC's inspector general later found that the agency's staff had accepted a request from the plant operator, FirstEnergy Corp., to continue operating to avoid financial losses from a shutdown. Watchdog groups say that's part of the risk that comes from relaxing requirements. "The NRC is trusting the plant owners more and more to get it right," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and safety expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Davis-Besse and some of the others show what happens when that trust is misplaced." Industry officials criticized FirstEnergy and maintained that it wasn't representative of conditions at other reactors. They say that safety has only improved under the newer approach of allocating resources based on risk. Lawmakers and other government officials who support nuclear power have pushed to ease the regulatory burden since the early 1990s. The first Bush administration and the Clinton administration supported plans to cut regulations across the government. The industry regained congressional support as environmental concerns grew; by the end of the decade, leading lawmakers were threatening to slash the NRC's budget if it didn't ease its grip on the industry. By the late 1990s, the industry was proposing regulatory changes and in many cases attaching figures of cost savings, part of the "risk-informed" approach of focusing on what's probable rather than simply possible. For instance, revamping the regulations for emergency core cooling systems in a reactor could save $3 million per unit, according to one Nuclear Energy Institute estimate. Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace, which opposes nuclear power, calls the overhaul over the last decade a "regulatory retreat" in the face of industry pressure. 'Stop signs' Mr. Riccio said the industry's efforts to deregulate technical specifications  rules for equipment operations and testing at a plant  led the NRC to remove 40 percent of the "stop signs" that would force a plant to shut down. "The public is going to be exposed to more risk, while the industry is exposed to less regulation," he said. The NRC and industry faced a barrage of criticism throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Nuclear plant owners accused the agency of using vague guidelines, imposing unreasonable requirements or meddling beyond their scope. The NRC took heat from lawmakers and the public for not always enforcing the rules it created. Some of the decades-long battles, such as how to protect against fires inside a plant, are still being resolved today. A 1975 incident at Alabama's Browns Ferry nuclear facility exposed how nuclear plants are vulnerable to fire. A worker using a candle set cables ablaze, with a fire that burned for seven hours and shorted out the plant's backup safety systems. Regulations In the years that followed, the NRC created regulations requiring protection of at least one set of equipment needed to shut down a plant safely. Dozens of plants failed to comply with the requirements. Some utilities used fire barriers that turned out to be faulty. Many sought exemptions from the NRC to use manual actions  a worker physically pulling breakers during a fire, for instance. The industry argued that the rules were applied regardless of the chance of a fire in a particular location, and sought a new standard  being implemented today  based on the likely risk of ignition of a piece of equipment at a particular plant. The new standard, which 41 plants say they plan to adopt, is "the best thing that's happened to fire protection," said Alex Marion, the Nuclear Energy Institute's executive director for nuclear operations and engineering. Nuclear reactors that accept the new system would be given a pass for not being compliant with the original rules. NRC and industry officials say it's a common-sense approach to solving a longstanding problem. Changing focus "You try to shift the focus ... to what's really important to safety as opposed to your compliance requirements," said Sunil Weerakkody, chief of the NRC's fire-protection branch. Mr. Gunter, of the nuclear watchdog group NIRS, said the reliance on probabilities should not be a primary protection "particularly in a post-9/11 world." "These are all backdoor approaches ... rather than state-of-the-art fire-protection features," he said. TXU was among the companies cited for fire-safety violations, receiving notice of noncompliance in 1998. A TXU spokesman says the company is now in compliance  without signing on to the new rule  and had no fire-safety violations in the NRC's last inspection there in 2005. Reactivating activists Even as many companies are looking toward the next round of plants, the regulatory overhaul is starting to draw attention from activists from the last era. Among the NRC's new rules is one that allows nuclear operators to reclassify safety-related parts. The move would allow existing plants to purchase less-expensive commercial-grade parts instead of the nuclear-grade materials that were previously required. Three senior engineers inside the NRC protested the rule, saying it could not provide adequate assurances of protecting public safety. But the changes were ultimately passed over their objections. For Steve Comley, a nuclear activist now living in Florida, the new standards  that plants could voluntarily adopt  draw parallels to the problem of substandard and counterfeit parts in nuclear power plants in the 1980s. At the time, 72 out of the nation's 113 licensed reactors were found to have parts such as fasteners, valves and circuit breakers that did not conform to their safety specifications. Some were provided by counterfeit suppliers that later faced criminal charges. The industry says the parts were replaced. But Mr. Comley says the issue lost attention in the late 1990s and never received the full inspection that was promised. "They haven't proved the plants are safe," said Mr. Comley, whose group, We the People, drew attention to the counterfeit parts issue. "They don't want to know. If that isn't putting safety second to the profits of the industry, I don't know what is." Mr. Comley has spent the last year gathering dozens of letters of support from activists around the country in a bid for a congressional investigation of nuclear plants' parts and the NRC's new regulatory stance. E-mail sreddy@dallasnews.com © 2007 The Dallas Morning News Co. ***************************************************************** 33 Philadelphia Inquirer: Plants in hot water over hot water 01/15/2007 | Delaware to push firms along the river to find a way to cool their sites that is fish-friendly. Associated Press WILMINGTON - Delaware regulators plan to push for expensive changes in the cooling systems of some industries along the Delaware River, which are blamed for killing tens of billions of aquatic organisms each year. Alarming studies in recent years have provided environmental groups with information to demand changes in the cooling systems, which use river water to cool industrial operations, then discharge the warmed water back into the river. Giant industrial intakes draw trillions of gallons of water from stretches of the river that include nursing and feeding grounds for striped bass, weakfish, and other valuable aquatic life. "The river and bay simply cannot sustain this kind of day-in and day-out destruction," said Tracy Carluccio, a staff member of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. Carluccio's group and several others sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year for failing to control damage from some water-cooling intakes. 4 plants are killing fish The intakes at the Salem nuclear power complex, Conectiv's Edge Moor power plant, the Valero refinery in Delaware City, and Conectiv's Deepwater, N.J., plant destroy roughly 607 million year-old fish annually - a federal estimate based on industry reports. If fish eggs, larvae and other organisms are added, the number killed rises into the tens of billions. The best alternatives to intakes are massive water-cooling towers that recycle and reuse water, dramatically reducing the number of fish killed. But those would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to install, and that cost could be passed on to customers. Regulators want plant operators to consider alternatives to water-cooling intake systems. EPA water resources director Evelyn McKnight told the (Wilmington) News Journal her agency had targeted Conectiv's plant and Valero's refinery for renewal of long-outdated permits. That permitting process is carried out by the state. Delaware regulators said they planned to push the companies during the renewal process to consider installing cooling towers. State to get tough John Hughes, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said his agency had urged Valero and Conectiv to consider cooling systems that spared more fish. "We've got a strong argument. I've made the argument personally at the highest levels with Valero that... they need to look at cooling water as a major investment issue," Hughes said. The EPA estimated in 2002 that the refinery intakes destroyed 775,879 pounds of weakfish annually. Counting egg and larval losses, the EPA estimated the same refinery cost the river 662,871 pounds of striped bass - more than four times the number taken by rod and reel or net in 2003. "There hasn't really been a significant change to the intake system at the refinery, I don't believe, since the mid-'60s at least," said Roy Miller, who directs state fish and shellfish programs. "It's high time." Valero officials were unavailable for comment. The impact of the intake systems is not just environmental, but economic. Annual economic damage from the river's four largest power plants is estimated at $49 million, according to one EPA study. "The final estimates may well underestimate the full ecological and economic value of these losses," an EPA research office reported in 2002. ***************************************************************** 34 Tucson Citizen: Palo Verde asks regulators not to lower nuke plant's safety rating | www.tucsoncitizen.com ® Published: 01.15.2007 BOB CHRISTIE The Associated Press PHOENIX - The operator of the nation's largest nuclear power plant complex will plead with federal regulators Tuesday to reconsider a negative safety finding that if upheld would move the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station into the worst performance category. Arizona Public Service will appear before regulators in Texas and try to show that an emergency backup generator that was inoperative for 18 days and unreliable for 40 days last year was only a minor risk. Emergency generators at nuclear reactors are critically important because they provide electricity to pumps, valves and control rooms if the main electrical supply fails. If the NRC determines that is anything greater than a minor safety issue, the triple-reactor plant would be bumped into the commission's most stringent reactor performance category. That would trigger even more stringent oversight by regulators, who already have stepped up inspections following two years of failures and problems at the plant west of Phoenix. The failed generator was partnered with a second that remained operational. The NRC requires two sources of backup power for each reactor, a common approach with virtually all safety systems at nuclear plants. Arizona Public Service, or APS, said it will present technical arguments at the hearing that it hopes will show that the failure wasn't a serious safety issue. Jim McDonald, a spokesman for APS, downplayed the significance of any safety downgrade on how the plant is operated, or on costs for APS or the consortium of companies in four states that own the plant. "We know that we have issues at Palo Verde that need to be resolved. We know that there are a lot of human issues that need to be improved upon," McDonald said. "Obviously we would prefer to stay out of category 4 - but that work's going to get done either way." Last month, the NRC backed away from a similar safety downgrade after a hearing with APS officials. That review was prompted by inspectors' discovery in September that heat exchangers that cool emergency equipment and spent fuel storage areas had been fouled by years of plant technicians using an improper chemical mix. The chemical residue on the heat exchangers lowered their efficiency, but had a very low risk of triggering a serious failure in a crisis, regulators determined. Nonetheless, they called the problem "particularly egregious" because it went undetected for years, and another example of repeated problems at Palo Verde since 2004. David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer for the watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists, said regulators should step in and increase oversight at Palo Verde. "This latest event, coupled with the event from the year before, shows that the company isn't finding problems. They're waiting on the NRC or for them to self-reveal, which isn't the way it is supposed to work," Lochbaum said. "The company is not finding hardly anything - they're relying on outside forces to find them." Palo Verde has been on the regulatory hot seat since 2004, when NRC inspectors found that APS had drained a large pipe designed to flood the reactors with water in an emergency years earlier without informing them. Since then, a series of problems has occurred, and APS fired or transferred a dozen supervisors and line workers earlier this year in response to NRC concerns. The company hired a new chief nuclear engineer earlier this month. Randy Edington, 53, will become a senior vice president and chief nuclear officer of the state's largest utility on Jan. 25. The hearing wasn't expected to generate an immediate ruling. Federal regulators were expected to make a final decision on the safety downgrade in several weeks. If Palo Verde is downgraded, it will become the third plant in the nation on the list, out of 103 plants. Copyright © 2006 Tucson Citizen ***************************************************************** 35 Tucson Citizen: Palo Verde nuke plant wants to avoid regulatory downgrade | www.tucsoncitizen.com ® Published: 01.16.2007 BOB CHRISTIE The Associated Press The operator of the nation's largest nuclear power plant complex will plead with federal regulators today to reconsider a negative safety finding that if upheld would move the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station into the worst performance category. Arizona Public Service will appear before regulators in Texas and try to show that an emergency backup generator that was inoperative for 18 days and unreliable for 40 days last year was only a minor risk. Emergency generators at nuclear reactors are critically important because they provide electricity to pumps, valves and control rooms if the main electrical supply fails. If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission determines the matter is anything greater than a minor safety issue, the triple-reactor plant would be bumped into the commission's most stringent reactor-performance category. That would trigger even more stringent oversight by regulators, who already have stepped up inspections following two years of failures and problems at the plant west of Phoenix. The failed generator was partnered with a second that remained operational. The NRC requires two sources of backup power for each reactor, a common approach with virtually all safety systems at nuclear plants. Arizona Public Service, or APS, said it will present technical arguments at the hearing that it hopes will show that the failure wasn't a serious safety issue. Jim McDonald, a spokesman for APS, downplayed the significance of any safety downgrade on how the plant is operated, or on costs for APS or the consortium of companies in four states that own the plant. "We know that we have issues at Palo Verde that need to be resolved. We know that there are a lot of human issues that need to be improved upon," McDonald said. Last month, the NRC backed away from a similar safety downgrade after a hearing with APS officials. That review was prompted by inspectors' discovery in September that heat exchangers that cool emergency equipment and spent fuel storage areas had been fouled by years of plant technicians using an improper chemical mix. The chemical residue on the heat exchangers lowered their efficiency, but had a very low risk of triggering a serious failure in a crisis, regulators determined. Nonetheless, they called the problem "particularly egregious" because it went undetected for years and another example of repeated problems at Palo Verde since 2004. David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer for the watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists, said regulators should step in and increase oversight at Palo Verde. "This latest event, coupled with the event from the year before, shows that the company isn't finding problems. They're waiting on the NRC or for them to self-reveal, which isn't the way it is supposed to work," Lochbaum said. "The company is not finding hardly anything - they're relying on outside forces to find them." Palo Verde has been on the regulatory hot seat since 2004, when NRC inspectors found that APS had drained a large pipe designed to flood the reactors with water in an emergency years earlier without informing them. Since then, a series of problems has occurred, and APS fired or transferred a dozen supervisors and line workers earlier this year in response to NRC concerns. The company hired a new chief nuclear engineer earlier this month. Randy Edington, 53, will become a senior vice president and chief nuclear officer of the state's largest utility on Jan. 25. The hearing wasn't expected to generate an immediate ruling. Federal regulators were expected to make a final decision on the safety downgrade in several weeks. If Palo Verde is downgraded, it will become the third plant in the nation on the list, out of 103 plants. | Copyright © 2006 Tucson Citizen ***************************************************************** 36 RIA Novosti: Ex-Russian nuclear power minister Adamov pleads not guilty 15/ 01/ 2007 MOSCOW, January 15 (RIA Novosti) - Ex-Russian nuclear power minister Yevgeny Adamov, who has been charged with fraud and abuse of office, has pleaded not guilty. "As there are neither elements nor the event of a crime, you cannot be guilty of what does not exist," Adamov told journalists. Adamov, 67, has been charged with leading an organized criminal group that inflicted damages to the Russian budget, enterprises and organizations totaling over 3 billion rubles (about $110 million). Adamov, as well as his co-defendants in the case - Vyacheslav Pismennyi, former director of the Troitsky research center, and Revmir Fraishtut, former director of TechSnabExport - said Monday following the hearing that he does not understand the indictment. Adamov said his only fault was the "untimely nomination for awards of people who prevented the sector from being ruined." The hearing will resume January 17. The prosecution has about 50 witnesses, while the defense plans to summon some 10 people for questioning. The Prosecutor General's Office said another person accused in the Adamov case - Globe Nuclear Services and Supply president Alexander Chernov - is on an international wanted list. Prosecutors have accused the defense team of deliberately delaying the trial, as court sessions were postponed many times due to Pismennyi's alleged illness or the absence of his lawyer. The ex-minister was originally arrested in Switzerland in May 2005 at the request of the United States, where authorities accuse him of misappropriating $9 million given to Russia for nuclear safety projects. Had he been convicted in the U.S., Adamov would have faced 60 years in prison. He was extradited to Russia in early 2006 to face charges, but was released by the Russian Supreme Court July 21, after a total of 15 months in prison, to await trial. Adamov, who served from 1998 to 2001 as Russia's nuclear power minister, said in October he will insist on a trial in a U.S. court, although the U.S. authorities have accused him of a crime they said was committed in Russia. On October 16, the Moscow City Court canceled the Zamoskvoretsky District Court's earlier decision to send Adamov's case back to the Prosecutor General's Office for a clarification of the charges. The city court thereby upheld an appeal by prosecutors against the district court decision. Prosecutors demanded that the case should instead be sent for retrial in the district court. © 2005 RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 37 Dallas Morning News: Power providers banking on getting a hand from Uncle Sam [DallasNews.com] 08:16 AM CST on Tuesday, January 16, 2007 By SUDEEP REDDY / The Dallas Morning News WASHINGTON  To kick-start the U.S. nuclear power industry, the federal government is preparing to spend billions of dollars to prove a point to Wall Street. Proponents of nuclear power are banking on federal support to show investors that revamped licensing procedures and new technology won't result in mammoth cost overruns that defined the last era of nuclear plant construction. Whether that support materializes may make the difference between a future of growth or stagnation for nuclear power, which now provides 20 percent of the U.S. electricity supply. Energy companies have announced their interest in building as many as 30 new reactors, including at least six in Texas. Dallas-based TXU Corp. alone says it may construct six new reactors at three sites. But most energy executives remain cautious publicly about their prospects. Bond agencies have already warned that companies taking on the multibillion-dollar risk of a new plant could put their credit ratings at risk. Investors generally are interested in shorter-term projects. Even the strongest supporters of nuclear power agree that the industry's goals hinge on the government's financial support to show that new plants can get built on time and on budget. "The industry has been dormant for so many years," said Keith McCoy, vice president of resources and environmental policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. "In order to move nuclear energy back to a level of where we should be, you're going to need some incentives." Once promoted as a limitless source of low-cost electricity, nuclear plants would later be derided as boondoggles on the backs of taxpayers and consumers. Numerous plants went far off schedule and way over budget. TXU's Comanche Peak power plant took two decades to build. Its original cost estimate: less than $1 billion. The final tab: $11 billion. Dozens of nuclear construction projects were canceled in the 1970s and 1980s. No new reactors have been ordered since before the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island that raised government scrutiny and scared off much of the public. But as other nations moved forward with new construction, U.S. lawmakers slowly reawakened to the idea of new plants. Environmental concerns throughout the 1990s helped give the industry new momentum. Regulators revamped licensing procedures, though no companies stepped forward until recently. A new climate Soaring oil and gas prices in recent years, along with worries about global warming, have allowed the nuclear industry to market itself as a stable source of emissions-free power. The Bush administration embraced nuclear power from its earliest days, backing key industry incentives that ultimately passed in the 2005 energy bill. And several key lawmakers have indicated that they won't entertain legislation to address global warming unless nuclear power is considered part of the solution with incentives or other support. "I think what the politicians are doing is attempting to level the playing field to such an extent that nuclear can compete with coal," said Patrick Moore, co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a group funded by the nuclear industry. Dr. Moore, a founder of Greenpeace who later left the organization, said a tax on carbon emissions would be one of the strongest ways to give the industry a boost. "It is still cheaper to build a coal plant because of environmental discharge," Dr. Moore said. "That is likely what a business person would do unless the law changed." TXU has focused its energy recently on a plan to build 11 coal plants across Texas, meeting stiff resistance from environmental groups and many local officials. The company hasn't said where it would build all of the nuclear reactors, though it would double the size of its 2,300-megawatt Comanche Peak plant. It could partner with other power companies to build some of the six reactors, which would go online between 2015 and 2020. "Texas needs power," spokesman Tom Kleckner said. "We're not looking at nuclear to solve short-term problems. We think it'll work for the long term." TXU plans to file for its construction and operating licenses by the end of next year. Companies that file by then would be eligible to share federal tax breaks for the energy produced by their nuclear plant. Approved changes The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already approved standardized plant designs using newer technology. The pressures of deregulation could scare away some utilities, even though nuclear plants have lowered their production costs and raised output to near-record levels. The federal government has already committed $6 billion in tax credits for the first companies to build new plants. The Department of Energy has also promised $260 million to offset plant design and application costs with NuStart, a consortium of nuclear operators aiming to build new plants. Michele Boyd, legislative director for Public Citizen's energy program, said the overall cost of subsidies and tax breaks outlined in the 2005 energy bill would be at least $13 billion. "The whole point of investors and making money is that you make money when you risk your money," said. "This is yet another attempt to put the burden on the taxpayers and yet allow investors to make a bundle." Critics and supporters agree that two of the most critical issues have yet to be resolved. Storing the radioactive waste produced at nuclear plants has shown few signs of resolution, as Nevada lawmakers block development of the Yucca Mountain Repository. Spent fuel remains at nuclear reactor sites across the country. New definitions? "The industry and investors need to see progress on waste," said Christine Tezak, a policy analyst at Stanford Group Company in Washington. With Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada as the new Senate majority leader, "we may need to adjust our definition of progress." Companies are also waiting to see how the Bush administration aims to fund the $2 billion in loan guarantees that the 2005 energy bill authorized. The government can back up to 80 percent of a project's cost, but offering less than that could turn away companies operating in competitive markets rather than regulated ones. "The loan guarantees may dictate who scrambles to the front of the queue," Ms. Tezak said. Critics warn that despite the industry's bullish sentiments, the hope for construction of new power plants without subsidies is far from proving itself out. "What Congress and the Department of Energy are proving right now is that the government can build nuclear plants, which we know already," said Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now vice chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "They're going to need to operate for some years before private investors are going to have confidence that the claims that have been made for this generation of power plants are really reliable," Mr. Bradford said. E-mail sreddy@dallasnews.com © 2007 The Dallas Morning News Co. ***************************************************************** 38 BBC: Water leak at Japan nuclear plant Last Updated: Monday, 15 January 2007 [map] Four employees at a nuclear plant in Japan were splashed by radioactive water during a routine inspection. The workers' health and the area had been unaffected by the incident, the plant's operators, Kansai Electric Power Co, were quoted as saying. The water, with traces of radiation, leaked at the Takahama No 1 reactor in Fukui, in western Japan. Japan's nuclear industry has been hit by a string of mishaps and accidents but most have not involved people. The country is reliant on nuclear power to meet its energy needs, but its shaky safety record has fuelled popular opposition to the plants. Japan's worst nuclear accident also occurred in Fukui prefecture, at the Mihama plant in 2004 when a pipe burst killing five workers. The latest incident took place as the Takahama unit was closed for regular inspection on Sunday, Kansai said in a statement. A reported 370 litres (96 gallons) of the water leaked from a coolant pump, spraying the four staff members but not injuring them. ***************************************************************** 39 Nuclear could be the missing ingredient 16.Jan 2007 By: Jason Hovet, 15. 01. 2007, More by this author The European Commission (EC) has proposed cutting emissions by at least 20 percent of 1990 levels by 2020, but to meet this goal – and the country’s rising energy demand – more nuclear power is needed, say proponents. As part of a larger energy strategy, the EC aims to reduce emissions through increasing use of renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass and biofuels, to 20 percent of the EU’s energy mix, as well as through improving the EU’s energy efficiency by 20 percent before 2020 and expanding the EU’s emission trading scheme past the post-Kyoto treaty time of 2012. “The target to cut CO2 emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 [is] very ambitious, but needed,” said Jakub Kašpar, spokesman for the Ministry of the Environment (MŽP). Nuclear power, with zero CO2 emissions, has also been seen as an option in combating rising emissions, but the EC last week left the nuclear power option up to individual governments. In the Czech Republic, public and political support for nuclear power was evident last year, however the indecisive June 2006 general elections have complicated the situation, and state-owned energy provider ÈEZ has postponed a decision on completing the final two reactors at the Temelín nuclear power plant in South Bohemia. The ruling three-party coalition – the Civic Democrats (ODS), Christian Democrats (KDU-ÈSL) and the Green Party (SZ) – signed a coalition agreement Dec. 28, 2006, and stated in it that “we will not plan and support the construction of new nuclear blocks [this election cycle].” However, some say a discussion on nuclear’s future is needed now. “A reduction of emissions by 20 percent is realistic; but in principle it means a rehabilitation of nuclear energy,” said Václav Bartuška, the government’s special envoy to the EU for energy security. Still, because of the Czech Republic’s history of heavy industry prior to 1990, the country should have no problem meeting reduction targets, said Jíøí Gavor, partner in energy consultancy ENA. Last week, Green Party officials went further than the coalition agreement, though, and said in Austrian and Czech media that its medium-term goal was for the country to abandon nuclear power, which currently makes up 30 percent of total Czech power generation. Party chairman and new Minister of the Environment Martin Bursík told daily Právo the Greens remain skeptical of nuclear energy “due to the risks of a nuclear accident, abuse of nuclear fuel and, above all, the unresolved problem of where spent nuclear fuel should be stored for several hundred thousand years.” As demand for electricity in the Czech Republic grows – it grew by 2.3 percent to 57,664 gigawatt hours in 2005, according to ÈEZ data — renewables will need to play a stronger role. The country already has a goal for renewable sources to reach 8 percent of production by 2010. “It will be difficult to reach this,” MŽP’s Kašpar said. Currently, renewable production accounts for 4.3 percent of energy production, but Kašpar said legislation from 2004 is beginning to attract more investors. The absence of the new nuclear sources in the coalition agreement raised criticism from the opposition Social Democrats (ÈSSD), which also criticized the agreement’s decision to preserve mining limits in North Bohemia. Coal-fired power generation accounts for 66 percent of total Czech production. “A third of the country’s electricity consumption will be missing within 20 years” if no decisions are made about new generation capacities before 2010, said Milan Urban, ÈSSD’s shadow minister of industry and trade. “The potential of renewable energy sources has limits in the Czech Republic.” ©2004 Stanford, a. s. with all rights reserved. webmaster@cbw.cz --> ***************************************************************** 40 The Moscow Times: Chernobyl Fines May Be Toughened Wednesday, January 17, 2007 / Updated Moscow Time Issue 3576. Page 4. The Associated Press Kiev — Ukraine's government will ask the parliament to toughen fines for sneaking food, building materials and other items out of the irradiated zone near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, an emergency official said Tuesday. Ukraine continues to enforce a 50-kilometer exclusion zone around the plant, where reactor No. 4 exploded in 1986 in the world's worst nuclear accident. The zone is patrolled by Ukraine's Emergency Situations Ministry, and special permission is needed to enter. But Emergency Situations Ministry Nestor Shufrych said his ministry, responding to concerns, decided to increase fines, in some cases tripling them, for citizens and officials caught illegally spiriting items out of the zone. The parliament must approve the changes. Fears run high in Ukraine and Russia that items from the Chernobyl region, where many had to abandon household belongings, and contaminated foods such as berries and mushrooms are being sold to unsuspecting buyers. Copyright 2006. The Moscow Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 41 Energy Tribune: The Three Ways Out Jan. 15, 2007 By George Taylor Any prudent observer would consider the possibility that fossil fuels might run short within years and very short within decades. Given that we depend on oil, natural gas, and coal for 90 percent of our energy, we could be facing the most catastrophic change in modern history. Equally scary, even should more fossil fuels be discovered, burning them without storing away the carbon dioxide they produce could cause global warming. The False Ways Out Many purported ways out are false hopes, either because they are too small to matter or because they have a fatal flaw. - Hydroelectric power is low-cost, but cannot be expanded. - Geothermal is available in only a few locations, and likewise cannot be expanded. - Wind has huge potential capacity, but even in the best locations only blows fast enough to turn the windmills one-third of the time. Its fatal flaw is that we have no storage mechanism for electricity today, and none of the proposed ones would return more than 25 percent of the energy that goes in. The electricity produced by windmills could be used to make liquid fuels, but such transformations are very wasteful. If battery technology improves enough, hybrid-electric or pure electric vehicles may be the wave of the future, and full-time electric power plants (such as coal or nuclear) would avoid the conversions required by intermittent ones, such as wind or solar. - Photovoltaic solar is many times more expensive than competing technologies, and will remain so indefinitely because sunlight is weak, the physical infrastructure costs are huge, and the sun delivers only about two thousand effective hours per year (25 percent), even in the desert. Plus, solar has the same flaw as wind: we can’t store it. Thus, while it may address peak electricity demand on a summer afternoon, it would not be reliable enough to power the world. - Biomass as currently practiced – corn ethanol or soybean diesel – produces such small net gains in energy that no amount of farmland could ever replace a meaningful portion of our fossil fuel consumption. Corn ethanol is just a way to convert natural gas (through fertilizer and steam) into a liquid fuel. It has only gained traction because of the temporary availability of natural gas at prices lower than oil, state-level mandates, and federal-level subsidies (of 75 cents per gasoline-equivalent gallon). Soy diesel, in contrast, can be produced at a small profit, but only because we need the soy protein first. Even so, net production of 35 gallons per acre would yield less than 1 percent of U.S. petroleum consumption (2.5 billion gallons) even if all 75 million acres of soybeans were utilized. The only biomass that hasn’t been discredited as a serious energy source is cellulosic alcohol – because the proposals for it are so poorly defined no one can say what they mean. We should be skeptical because cellulose is far more difficult to break down than corn or soybeans, and the lignin that cellulose advocates propose to use for process heat is as little as 20 percent of fast-growing plants. - Finally, while both the world and the U.S. have a lot of coal, we have yet to demonstrate even one case of large-scale long-term storage of CO2. The Real Ways Out Fortunately, we won’t have to live in the dark or melt all the glaciers. Conservation, efficiency, and nuclear power are real ways out. Cutting demand (conservation) won’t be popular, but we could take at least one significant step – by curbing population growth. By 2050, the path we’re on will add 150 million people to the 300 million we reached in the U.S. this year. But the growth is driven almost entirely by immigration levels set by Congress, which Congress has the power to reduce. They just haven’t made the connection between population and energy. Increased efficiency, particularly in transportation, space heating, and electric appliances, could generate huge savings, and many observers claim the first 50 percent reduction could be achieved with little impact on quality of life. Higher-mileage cars, better insulation, and more efficient lighting could go a long way. But after all that, we will still need a massive source of reliable, long-lasting, low-pollution energy. And, except for a huge piece of luck, there might have been none. But we’re lucky, and one exists – nuclear fission. If, over the next 50 years, we built a thousand one-gigawatt nuclear power plants in the best known way, we could simultaneously: 1) meet all of our energy needs at reasonable cost, 2) operate them more safely than any other large-scale technology ever deployed, 3) reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a fraction of their current rate, 4) solve the waste disposal problem, 5) have a fuel supply that would last forever, and 6) add nothing to the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. The fundamental reason is that nuclear forces are vastly stronger than chemical bonds – about 3 million times stronger, if you compare the weight of uranium to the energy-equivalent weight of coal. The way to unlock uranium’s full potential while minimizing its harmful by-products is to change from today’s open fuel cycle to a closed one, and from today’s fleet of light-water reactors to one containing at least some so-called fast reactors. A closed fuel cycle means reprocessing the spent fuel, in order to send the unused uranium and the created undesirable trans-uranium elements back into the reactor to be split apart, thereby releasing more energy. Only the fission products – the smaller atoms created when large ones break – would be sent to a repository. Fast reactors, which are named after the higher-energy neutrons they utilize, would serve two purposes – to burn up the trans-uranium elements and to breed new fuel (hence, the name breeder reactors) by converting the 99 percent of uranium which will not normally split into plutonium atoms which will. Light-water reactors do this, too, but on too small a scale to keep the process going. Thus they require far higher quantities of fresh uranium. The differences would be dramatic – over 100 times more energy per ton of uranium in, and 20 times less waste per gigawatt-year of electricity produced. Even more important, the waste stream would contain so little radioactive material that after 500 years it would be no more radioactive than uranium ore in the ground. Repositories such as Yucca Mountain could be simplified or even eliminated. How could these claims be true, you ask, since we rarely hear anyone talking about them? Because after Three Mile Island, the nuclear industry had to improve its procedures and designs, nuclear power’s opponents stopped all rational discussion, and natural gas was plentiful and cheap for a couple of decades. Nuclear power genuinely had a problem, but that’s changed. Let’s look at these claims. Nuclear is safe enough, because even an accident which caused a large economic loss, such as Three Mile Island, harmed no one. The defense-in-depth design did what it was supposed to do, and the industry learned and applied many lessons to reduce the chance of a similar accident. We would have greenhouse gas reductions, because nuclear fission emits none. And there would be non-proliferation, because all the proposed fuel cycles mix materials in ways which would make recycled fuel undesirable for weapons design and dangerous to handle. Nuclear power can be had at reasonable cost because: 1) the 2005 energy bill solved the unpredictable licensing process by mandating a single license for construction and operation, 2) because fast reactors will keep nuclear fuel inexpensive, and 3) because nuclear waste can be reduced to a small problem by reprocessing steps that would cost less, some say far less, than one cent per kilowatt-hour (about 12 percent of today’s average retail price). Not that all of this will be simple. The development of closed fuel cycles and fast reactors is not yet finished. But what’s left is engineering, not the discovery of new solutions. It will take decades to build a thousand reactors, but that just underlines the task’s urgency. We can’t wait until there’s a crisis to start developing solutions, and we can’t afford to waste time on false hopes. George Taylor is a writer in Los Altos, California who is researching a book on the feasibility, economics, and environmental impacts of all practical sources of primary energy for the next 50 years. ©2006 Energy Tribune - All Rights Reserved - ***************************************************************** 42 AFP: Japan makes two-billion-dollar energy pledge by Kyoko Hasegawa Mon Jan 15, 1:48 AM ET CEBU, Philippines (AFP) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced a two-billion-dollar aid package to help Asian nations develop energy-saving technology and ease the region's dependence on oil. Abe unveiled the offer at a half-day summit of Asian leaders aimed at improving energy security and looking at alternatives to costly fossil fuels, including nuclear power and biofuels. "For the purpose of eliminating poor access to energy in East Asia countries, we will offer two billion dollars of aid," Abe told the closed-door meeting, according to a Japanese official. Japan is a frontrunner in energy-efficient technologies as the resource-poor nation, which relies mostly on oil imports from the Middle East, has been seeking to reduce its consumption since the oil shock of the 1970s. "Energy-saving is a measure that brings about the maximum quantitative effects and immediate results," Abe told the meeting, as quoted by the official. "Japan has improved energy efficiency at a rate of 37 percent in the past three decades since the oil shock ... For the purpose of contributing to Asia's energy-saving efforts, we would like to share our experience," Abe said. Tokyo's aid package includes accepting 1,500 engineers and researchers from other nations as trainees and setting up an energy-saving centre in Asia based on Japanese technology. In addition, the plan includes the establishment of a research centre for biofuels as well as a support centre for efficient use of coal energy. Following Abe's proposal, other leaders pointed out the need for ministerial-level meetings to work out the specifics of the plan, the Japanese official said. "One leader said that securing marine transportation for energy is also important, namely counter-piracy activities," he said without giving details. "Another leader from a less developed country pointed out that inducing investment in East Asia for the development of hydro-power is also important to eradicate poor access to energy," he said. Abe presented the aid package at the East Asia Summit, a gathering of leaders from 16 regional countries -- the 10-country ASEAN bloc plus Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea" /> South Koreaand New Zealand. Summit leaders endorsed a plan to move toward alternative energies and improve energy security, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, open up energy markets and cut greenhouse gas emissions. ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, held its own summit on Saturday and talks with other East Asian leaders on Sunday. The bloc agreed to set up a free-trade zone by 2015. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 43 APP.COM: Officials worried by impact N.J., Del. plants have on river's ecosystem | Asbury Park Press Online />Monday, January 15, 2007 FISH DEATHS: Environmentalists estimate billions are killed by cooling water intakes at riverside plants THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WILMINGTON, Del. — State regulators plan to push for expensive changes to the cooling systems for a few industrial sites along the Delaware River, which are blamed for killing tens of billions of aquatic organisms each year. Alarming studies in recent years have provided environmental groups with ammunition to push for the changes. The giant intakes draw trillions of gallons of water from stretches of the river that include nursing and feeding grounds for striped bass, weakfish and other valuable aquatic life. "The river and bay simply cannot sustain this kind of day-in and day-out destruction," said Tracy Carluccio, a staff member for the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. Carluccio's group and several others sued the Environmental Protection Agency last year for failing to control damage from some cooling water intakes. The intakes at the Salem nuclear power complex, Conectiv's Edge Moor power plant, the Valero refinery in Delaware City and Conectiv's Deepwater, N.J., plant destroy roughly 607 million one-year-old fish annually — a federal estimate based on industry reports. If fish eggs, larvae and other organisms are added, the number killed rises into the tens of billions. The best alternatives to intakes are massive water-cooling towers that recycle and reuse water, dramatically reducing the number of fish that are killed. But those would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to install, and that cost could be passed on to customers. Regulators are leaning on the plants' operators to consider alternatives to the intake water cooling systems. EPA water resources director Evelyn McKnight told The (Wilmington) News Journal that her agency has targeted Conectiv's plant and Valero's refinery for renewal of long-outdated permits. That permitting process is carried out by the state. Delaware regulators said they plan to push the companies during the renewal process to consider installing cooling towers. John Hughes, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said his agency has urged both Valero and Conectiv to consider cooling systems that spare more fish. "We've got a strong argument. I've made the argument personally at the highest levels with Valero that . . . they need to look at cooling water as a major investment issue," Hughes said. The EPA estimated in 2002 that the refinery intakes destroy 775,879 pounds of weakfish annually. Counting egg and larval losses, the EPA estimated that the same refinery cost the river 662,871 pounds of striped bass — more than four times the number taken by rod and reel or net in 2003. "There hasn't really been a significant change to the intake system at the refinery, I don't believe, since the mid-60s at least," said Roy Miller, who directs state fish and shellfish programs. "It's high time." Attempts by The News Journal to reach Valero officials for comment on the company's plans were unsuccessful. The impact of the intake systems is not just environmental, but economic. Annual economic damages from the river's four largest power plants are estimated at $49 million, according to one Environmental Protection Agency study. "The final estimates may well underestimate the full ecological and economic value of these losses," an EPA research office reported in 2002. Copyright © 2007 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 44 APP.COM TOPIC OF THE DAY: Nuclear plant relicensing | Asbury Park Press Online Tuesday, January 16, 2007 Review process safe, thorough It is wrong to conclude, as the Asbury Park Press has done, that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is dismissing issues of emergency planning and security by not addressing them in the relicensing process. These issues were just as important immediately after 9/11 as today, whether or not a relicensing application is filed. Had Oyster Creek not filed, wouldn't you have wanted the same scrutiny applied to the plant on an ongoing basis that you ask for in a relicensing application? Plant security and emergency planning have been under enhanced scrutiny by the NRC. New regulations that reflect post-9/11 concerns ensure reviews and requirements can be modified to include not previously known challenges. Nuclear plant owners, with the guidance of intelligence agencies and independent security and emergency planning experts, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in added protections for plants like Oyster Creek and Indian Point in New York. Nuclear plants are safe and secure. They are vital, both regionally and nationally, for maintaining a strong economy and achieving our clean air goals. As a former Jersey Shore resident with seven brothers and sisters and 20 nieces and nephews and children of my own there, I care about nuclear safety as much as anyone in New Jersey. It would have been unacceptable had the industry or the NRC not taken into account nuclear plant safety and security after 9/11. The NRC's relicensing process was developed to help ensure that plants operate safely in the period granted in a renewed license. To that end, the plants must first undergo a two-year heightened and public regulatory review of their material condition and maintenance programs. That's the appropriate focus. The other equally important issues deserve and get just as much industry and regulatory attention outside the relicensing process. That also is appropriate. Jim Steets EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER ENTERGY NUCLEAR NORTHEAST WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. Copyright © 2007 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 45 NRC: NRC to Hold Public Meetings on Draft Environmental Impact Report for Pilgrim Nuclear Plant License Renewal Application News Release - Region I - 2007-00 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I No. I-07-002 January 12, 2007 CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: Members of the public will have an opportunity on Wednesday, Jan. 24, to comment on a draft report that assesses the environmental impact of extending the operating license for the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth, Mass. On Jan. 25, 2006, Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., which operates the plant, submitted an application to renew the license for an additional 20 years. The NRC report, known as the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, was issued on Dec. 8, 2006. As part of its license renewal application, the company submitted an environmental report. The NRC staff reviewed the report and performed an on-site audit. The staff also considered comments made during the environmental scoping process, including comments offered at public meetings held by the NRC on May 17, 2006, in Plymouth. Based on its review, the NRC staff has prepared and issued its draft environmental impact statement, which preliminarily recommends that the Commission determine the adverse environmental impacts of license renewal for the Pilgrim plant are not so great that preserving the option of license renewal for energy planning decision-makers would be unreasonable. This recommendation is based on: 1) the analysis and findings in the Generic Environmental Impact Statement used for license renewal reviews; 2) the plant-specific environmental report submitted by Entergy; 3) NRC consultation with other federal, state and local agencies; 4) the NRC staffs own independent review; and 5) the NRC staffs consideration of public comments received during the environmental scoping process. The NRC will hold two meetings on Jan. 24 to accept comments on the report. The first session will begin at 1:30 p.m. A second session will get under way at 7 p.m. Both meetings will take place at the Radisson Plymouth Harbor Ballroom, 180 Water St., Plymouth. NRC staff will be available for an hour prior to the start of each meeting for informal, one-on-one discussions of the report. Those interested may pre-register to attend or speak at the meetings by contacting Alicia Williamson, NRC Environmental Project Manager for the Pilgrim application, at 1-800-368-5642, ext. 1878, or by sending an e-mail to by Jan.17. Members of the public may also register 15 minutes before each session to provide oral comments. The duration of individual comments may be limited by the time available, depending on the number of speakers who register. Written comments on the draft report will also be considered by the NRC staff. Comments can be submitted by mail to the Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Mail Stop T-6 D59, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555-0001. They can also be submitted electronically to . The public comment period ends on Feb. 28, 2007. Under NRC regulations, the original operating license for a nuclear power plant has a term of 40 years. The license may be renewed for up to an additional 20 years if NRC requirements are met. The current operating license for the Pilgrim plant is due to expire on June 8, 2012. The draft report is posted on the NRC web page at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1437 /supplement29/. The Pilgrim license renewal application is posted at: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applicati ons/pilgrim.html#appls. Additional information about the license renewal process is available at: www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal.html. The draft report is also available for review at the following libraries: Ï The Plymouth Public Library, 132 South St., Plymouth; Ï The Duxbury Free Library, 77 Alden St., Duxbury, Mass.; and Ï The Kingston Public Library, 6 Green St., Kingston, Mass. ----------------------------------------------------------------- NRC news releases are available through a free list server subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. Last revised Friday, January 12, 2007 ***************************************************************** 46 Rutland Herald: Global warming distorts VY case Rutland Vermont News & Information January 16, 2007 Vermont Yankee is a nuclear power plant whose safe operation ought to be a concern for every Vermonter. VY is applying for a 20-year license extension and getting lots of misguided help from the global warming debate. President Bush and groups like the Clean And Safe Energy Coalition and the Vermont Energy Partnership are championing nuclear power as an answer to global warming. The spin is that nukes generate no CO2. Here's President Bush on 6/2-2/05: "The 103 nuclear power plants in America produce 20 percent of the nation's electricity without producing a single pound of air pollution or greenhouse gases." Members of the Vermont Energy Partnership claim that VY must be relicensed to "keep Vermont pristine" and that VY helps make Vermont a "cleaner, better place to live." However genuine these sentiments might be, they are spurious. VY emits radioactive isotopes daily. It has exceeded state limits for fence-line radiation three times in the past eight years. The National Academy of Sciences informs us that no amount of ionizing radiation is safe. VY also produces highly radioactive waste for which there is no safe method of disposal. Future generations will be saddled with safeguarding it for 240,000 years. VY produces such delights as iodine 131, strontium 90, cesium 137, and plutonium, one-millionth of a gram of which is carcinogenic. Plutonium is used to make nuclear bombs. The uranium enrichment process produces "depleted" uranium (DU) which is being used by our military in munitions in Iraq. The United Nations Human Rights Commission calls DU a weapon of mass destruction. When it explodes, aerosol particles are produced that are radioactive and chemically toxic. Breathing or ingesting these particles leads to cancers and birth defects. Contamination of the human gene pool becomes permanent. DU's half-life is 4.5 billion years. VY wouldn't have fuel rods without the production of DU. It's true that VY produces no appreciable CO2 during its operation, but plenty results from the uranium fuel cycle of mining, milling, enrichment and transport. Plenty also results from plant construction and decommissioning. So it is dishonest to claim that nuclear power is an answer to global warming. And it is not safe. And it is not clean. Energy efficiency is seven times more effective at reducing greenhouse gases per dollar spent than is nuclear power. For Vermont to be pristine, we need to develop truly clean, safe, and sustainable energy such as wind and solar. We already have the technology. (The threat of terrorist attack would be negligible. No evacuation plans would be necessary.) Most of all, we need to conserve energy and use it more efficiently. Let your legislators hear from you on the VY issue. They will play a pivotal role in the relicensing process. BILL PEARSON Brattleboro © 2007 Rutland Herald ***************************************************************** 47 NRC: Agency Information Collection Activities - Proposed Collection; FR Doc E7-403 [Federal Register: January 16, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 9)] [ Notices] [Page 1778] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr16ja07-88] Comment Request AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). ACTION: Notice of pending NRC action to submit an information collection request to OMB and solicitation of public comment. SUMMARY: The NRC is preparing a submittal to OMB for review of continued approval of information collections under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. Chapter 35). Information pertaining to the requirement to be submitted: 1. The title of the information collection: State Agreements Program, as authorized by Section 274(b) of the Atomic Energy Act. 2. Current OMB approval number: 3150-0029. 3. How often the collection is required: One time or as needed. 4. Who is required or asked to report: Thirty-four Agreement States who have signed Section 274(b) Agreements with NRC. 5. The number of annual respondents: 34. 6. The number of hours needed annually to complete the requirement or request: 1,066. 7. Abstract: Agreement States are asked on a one-time or as-needed basis to respond to a specific incident, to gather information on licensing and inspection practices and other technical statistical information. The results of such information requests, which are authorized under Section 274(b) of the Atomic Energy Act, are utilized in part by NRC in preparing responses to Congressional inquiries. Agreement State comments are also solicited in the areas of proposed procedure and policy development. Submit, by March 19, 2007, comments that address the following questions: 1. Is the proposed collection of information necessary for the NRC to properly perform its functions? Does the information have practical utility? 2. Is the burden estimate accurate? 3. Is there a way to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected? 4. How can the burden of the information collection be minimized, including the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of information technology? A copy of the draft supporting statement may be viewed free of charge at the NRC Public Document Room, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Room O-1 F21, Rockville, MD 20852. OMB clearance requests are available at the NRC World Wide Web site . The document will be available on the NRC home page site for 60 days after the signature date of this notice. Comments and questions about the information collection requirements may be directed to the NRC Clearance Officer, Margaret A. Janney, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, T-5 F52, Washington, DC 20555-0001, by telephone at 301-415-7245, or by Internet electronic mail to: . Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 9th day January, 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Margaret A. Janney, NRC Clearance Officer, Office of Information Services. [FR Doc. E7-403 Filed 1-12-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 48 NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards Subcommittee Meeting on FR Doc E7-404 [Federal Register: January 16, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 9)] [ Notices] [Page 1778-1779] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr16ja07-89] Planning and Procedures; Notice of Meeting The ACRS Subcommittee on Planning and Procedures will hold a meeting on January 31, 2007, Room T-2B1, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The entire meeting will be open to public attendance, with the exception of a portion that may be closed pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552b(c)(2) and (6) to discuss organizational and personnel matters that relate solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of the ACRS, and information the release of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. The agenda for the subject meeting shall be as follows: [[Page 1779]] Wednesday, January 31, 2007, 10 a.m.-11:30 a.m. The Subcommittee will discuss proposed ACRS activities and related matters. The Subcommittee will gather information, analyze relevant issues and facts, and formulate proposed positions and actions, as appropriate, for deliberation by the full Committee. Members of the public desiring to provide oral statements and/or written comments should notify the Designated Federal Official, Mr. Sam Duraiswamy (telephone: 301-415-7364) between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. (ET) five days prior to the meeting, if possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be made. Electronic recordings will be permitted only during those portions of the meeting that are open to the public. Further information regarding this meeting can be obtained by contacting the Designated Federal Official between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. (ET). Persons planning to attend this meeting are urged to contact the above named individual at least two working days prior to the meeting to be advised of any potential changes in the agenda. Dated: January 9, 2007. Michael R. Snodderly, Branch Chief, ACRS/ACNW. [FR Doc. E7-404 Filed 1-12-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 49 Kiplinger.com: Three Promising Ways to Invest in Nuclear Energy - After simmering on the back burner for decades, generators of nuclear-powered electricity are all fired up. By David Landis From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, February 2007 It's been more than 20 years since Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and nuclear power's long winter is finally beginning to thaw. Rising prices for oil and natural gas are making atomic energy seem cheap by comparison, and global-warming concerns are prompting reconsideration of clean-burning nuclear power. After a decade in which no nuclear-powered electric generating stations came online in the U.S., 31 new reactors are on the drawing boards. The amount of electricity the U.S. uses is expected to rise 50% by 2030, the Department of Energy forecasts. To meet this new demand while keeping a lid on pollutants spewed by fossil-fuel plants, utilities are again eyeing nuclear power. Overseas, the same scenario is playing out on a grander scale. Worldwide electricity consumption is expected to double by 2030 as more and more residents of developing nations become able to afford TVs, computers and air conditioners. Currently, 28 reactors are under construction in China, India, Russia and elsewhere. The London-based World Energy Council says that meeting new demand for electricity while reducing the current level of emissions will require tripling the world's nuclear-plant capacity by 2050. Although many crucial issues -- such as how to dispose of toxic byproducts -- must be resolved, nuclear power is clearly assuming a higher profile. Investor interest is rising as well. The bad news is that most companies involved in building new plants are privately held or trade only in foreign markets. An exception is General Electric (symbol GE), a major provider of boiling water reactors, which are found in 81 of the world's 442 nuclear plants. However, GE's energy business represents only about 10% of its $160 billion in annual revenues, and nuclear is only a portion of that. Moreover, GE recently agreed to pool its nuclear business in a joint venture with Japan's Hitachi. There are two more-direct ways to invest in nuclear power: through utilities with big fleets of reliable, low-cost nuclear plants and through companies that mine and process uranium. Nuclear's edge Nuclear generating stations' advantage over fossil-fuel plants becomes clear when you compare their costs of operation and upkeep. Nuclear plants cost about 1.72 cents per kilowatt-hour to operate, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group. Compare that with 2.21 cents for coal plants, 7.51 cents for gas and 8.09 cents for oil. The difference is attributable primarily to fuel costs, which account for 78% to 94% of the tab for producing electricity at fossil-fuel plants but only 26% at nuclear plants. So even though the price of uranium, which powers nuclear plants, has risen sharply, it has far less impact on overall costs. "Because of rising gas and coal prices, nuclear has become a big cash machine for utilities," says Roger Conrad, editor of the newsletter Utility Forecaster. TIMELINE A Brief History of Nuclear Power 1896 Antoine Becquerel discovers radioactivity. 1942 Scientists at the University of Chicago create the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction. 1951 An experimental nuclear reactor in Arco, Idaho, produces enough electricity to power four light bulbs. 1954 The Atomic Energy Act authorizes development of nuclear energy for civilian use. 1957 First commercial nuclear-powered generating station is built in Shippingport, Pa. 1979 Mechanical failure and human error cause loss of coolant from the reactor core at the Three Mile Island power plant, near Middletown, Pa. 1986 Chernobyl disaster occurs in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. Contamination from the radioactive fallout spreads to 58,000 square miles. 1996 Last nuclear plant in the U.S., Watts Bar-1, in Spring City, Tenn., comes online. 2003 Dominion Power and Exelon file applications to build nuclear facilities in Virginia and Illinois, respectively. The facilities would be the first new reactors since 1996. But it is enormously expensive to build nuclear plants: They cost as much as $2,000 per kilowatt-hour of output, compared with up to $1,500 for coal plants and $800 for gas plants, according to the International Energy Agency. So that's another argument for investing in companies that already own nuclear facilities. It takes years to clear regulatory hurdles for a new nuclear plant, build it and obtain a license for it to operate. "The advantage of owning nuclear today is that new competition is probably ten years away, at least," says John Kohli, manager of the Franklin Utilities fund. Utility firms that are able to generate lots of cheap, nuclear-powered electricity and sell it on the open market have an even greater advantage. Entergy, for example, provides electricity to 2.7 million customers in four southern states. The business is heavily regulated, and profits are limited to what state overseers allow. But the New Orleans-based firm also owns five nuclear plants in the Northeast that sell power primarily to wholesale customers and are largely unregulated. The merchant-power business provides 14% of Entergy's revenues, but in the third quarter of 2006 it accounted for 28% of operating profits. And as rising gas and oil prices push up the cost of power from competing plants, Entergy will be able to charge more for future output. Goldman Sachs analyst Michael Lapides estimates that every $1 increase in the price of gas (now about $8 per million British thermal units) could boost Entergy's earnings per share by roughly 11%. He thinks Entergy (ETR) could earn almost $8.50 per share in 2010, compared with an expected $4.80 in 2006. Entergy's regulated utility business, however, may be holding down the stock, which fetched $91 in mid December. Hurricane Katrina caused $1.5 billion of damage to the company's facilities and forced its New Orleans utility business into Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. It remains unclear how much of the repair cost will be covered by insurance, rate increases and federal assistance. The stock is near an all-time high, but, Lapides says, it's still cheaper than rivals' shares on a price-to-earnings basis. Further gains in the stock could come from progress in the bankruptcy case and a possible large-scale share buyback. Like Entergy, Chicago-based Exelon is getting a big boost in profits from its largely nuclear-powered wholesale energy business. Exelon (EXC) operates two large utilities serving 5.2 million customers in Illinois and Pennsylvania. A third business, Exelon Nuclear, has interests in 17 atomic reactors, making Exelon the nation's largest nuclear-plant operator. The merchant-power business is expected to account for 65% of operating profits in 2007, up from 50% in '06, says Standard & Poor's analyst Justin McCann. But Exelon's shares, recently $61, have encountered some turbulence. A merger with Public Service Enterprise Group was scuttled after regulators in New Jersey, where PSE is based, balked. And Illinois regulators recently decided to allow just $8 million of a requested $317 million rate hike for Exelon's Chicago utility. Illinois regulators also want to extend an expiring rate freeze, which could force Exelon to buy power at market rates and sell it to customers at a loss. Still, S&P's McCann says, the stock could be worth $70 in a year. He anticipates operating profits in 2007 of $4.55 per share, up 37% from 2006 earnings, thanks in part to higher wholesale prices and profit margins in merchant energy. A riskier but potentially more rewarding way to invest in nuclear energy is through uranium. Its price has soared because of rising demand and years of under-investment by mining firms. In addition, surplus government uranium from weapons stockpiles, which in recent decades supplemented the supply, is running thin. Today, uranium costs $63 a pound, up from $12 three years ago. Fadi Shadid, an analyst at investment bank Friedman Billings Ramsey, expects the demand for uranium to exceed supply by 10% annually through 2015 and looks for prices to hit $80 a pound within the next few years. That's why he is still bullish on Cameco (CCJ), a Canadian uranium miner, despite the more than sevenfold increase in its share price since 2003. Nuclear utilities buy uranium under long-term contracts, and Shadid estimates that Cameco currently realizes about $21 per pound for its output. About 30% of the company's contracts will end in 2008, just as prices are peaking, he says. In addition, Cameco has a new mine coming online, and when it reaches full production in 2010, it will boost the company's uranium output by 50%. Shadid sees earnings per share rising from about $1.10 in 2006 to $4.17 in 2011. The stock, recently $40, could be worth $46 in a year, he says. Uranium play Shadid also likes USEC, which operates the only uranium-enrichment facility in the U.S. Enrichment is a process that increases the potency of natural uranium. USEC's plant, in Paducah, Ky., uses an energy-intensive enrichment process, called gaseous diffusion, that many consider outmoded. But a Piketon, Ohio, plant that uses centrifugal separation, a newer method, is expected to begin operations in 2009. The Piketon plant is commercially unproven, however, and the project's cost, $2.5 billion, is more than twice the company's market value and will depress earnings for several years. The stock (USU), recently $13, is down 16% since January 2006. But as the new technology gains credibility, Shadid says, investors will warm to USEC's shares. He thinks they could be worth $22 in a year. Contents © 2007 The Kiplinger Washington Editors ***************************************************************** 50 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Mitsubishi pulls out of nuclear partnership - By Thomas Olson TRIBUNE-REVIEW Tuesday, January 16, 2007 Westinghouse Electric Co.'s long-time nuclear-power partner, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., is ending its alliance to help the Monroeville corporation develop the AP 1000 advanced nuclear reactor. Kazuo Tsukuda, president of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, said during a meeting in Tokyo on Monday that the Japanese company would terminate agreements to license technology to and from Westinghouse, according to a Bloomberg News report. Westinghouse has partnered with Mitsubishi for nuclear power development since 1959. Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert could not confirm the report. Mitsubishi officials could not be reached. Mitsubishi had hoped to acquire Westinghouse about a year ago, but lost to Toshiba Corp. Mitsubishi was part of a bidding team that included Washington Group International Inc. of the United States, which wanted to acquire Westinghouse from then-owner British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. Another group of potential acquirers was headed by General Electric Co. Instead, the British sold Westinghouse to Toshiba last February. The $5.4 billion deal that was completed Oct. 16 left Toshiba with a 77 percent share of Westinghouse, and The Shaw Group, Baton Rouge, La., with 20 percent. The rest is held by Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. of Japan. "We've had a relationship with Mitsubishi that dates back over 50 years, and it's been a good relationship," said Gilbert. "Our hope is that it will continue, but that's not our decision." Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor design is smaller, safer and less expensive to operate than previous conventional designs, says the company. It was key to China's decision last month to award Westinghouse $5.3 billion in new power plant contracts. "Regardless of what happens, this would have no impact on our ability to fulfill any of our obligations for new plant business or on the servicing or fuel business," said Gilbert. Westinghouse employs more than 9,000 people worldwide, including about 3,300 in Western Pennsylvania. About 1,700 work at the Monroeville headquarters, while the balance work at sites from Churchill to Blairsville, Indiana County. Thomas Olson can be reached at tolson@tribweb.comor (412) 320-7854. Tribune-Review Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 51 SPIEGEL ONLINE: New Reactors Across the Globe: A Nuclear Power Renaissance - | Feedback January 16, 2007 By Rüdiger Falksohn With concerns about global warming and energy security on the rise, countries the world over are taking a new look at nuclear energy. Some are building new reactors as fast as they can. They are coming from everywhere in Australia; shirt-sleeved workers from every corner of the continent heading to a remote stretch of the South Australian desert. There is no water, and not much of anything else either. But the Olympic Dam mine is located here. And the mine is hiring. The company currently employs about 700 miners, who have already dug several kilometers of tunnels under the desert. The area is so bone dry that drinking water must be pumped through a system of pipes from a distant spring. Recently, there has even been talk of building a desalination plant. After all, uranium mining requires water -- lots of it -- and Australia wants to remain the world's second largest supplier after Canada. Photo Gallery: Revival of Nuclear Energy The explanation for the government's enthusiasm for nuclear power can be found in a report by nuclear physicist and former IT manger Ziggy Switkowski. As if on cue, he enthuses about the need for more nuclear power plants: Australia must start building reactors so that the first one can be completed in 2020. If a concerted effort is made, another 25 could be online by mid-century. On the one hand, this would help the country improve its poor record of carbon dioxide emissions. On the other, it would allow Australia to tap an almost inexhaustible source of energy; the country possesses more than 38 percent of the world's accessible uranium reserves. The international atomic energy lobby loves such talk. Almost 21 years after the Chernobyl disaster, and just a couple months after the most recent breakdown at Sweden's Forsmark reactor last July, the risks associated with nuclear power are largely fading into the background. So too are questions about the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and atomic weapons. The industry, in short, is preparing for a new boom. Plans for more nuclear plants Currently there are 435 atomic reactors generating electricity in 31 countries across the globe. They fill 6.5 percent of the world's total energy demand and use close to 70,000 tons of enriched uranium per year. Atomic plants produce one-sixth of the total electricity supply -- roughly on par with hydropower. Nuclear plants across the world. All rights reserved [IHT] ***************************************************************** 57 IPS: U.N. Move to Downgrade Disarmament Triggers Protests Inter Press Service News Agency Wednesday, January 17, 2007 05:28 GMT Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS, Jan 16 (IPS) - A proposal by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to downgrade the U.N.'s Department of Disarmament Affairs (DDA) -- and possibly bring it under the umbrella of the Department of Political Affairs -- has sparked a critical reaction from member states, peace activists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). "This is the wrong move for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to make and would be an inauspicious start to his term," warns John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy. He said the DDA was established in its current form in 1998 in order to meet post-Cold War challenges of disarmament and non-proliferation. "Those challenges have grown more, not less, urgent since then," Burroughs told IPS. He said disarmament NGOs have already started opposing this proposal. "We will be sending letters to the secretary-general and requesting meetings," he added. At a meeting of the "troika" of the 116-member Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) -- comprising past chair Malaysia, present chair Cuba and future chair Qatar -- there was unified opposition to the proposed move. Worse still, noted one ambassador who was present at the NAM meeting last week, are rumours that the soon-to-be revamped U.N. department of political affairs is likely to be headed by a U.S. national: a nominee of the administration of President George W. Bush, which has strong reservations on arms control and nuclear disarmament. "Having an American as head," the ambassador told the meeting "is like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop." The largest single political bloc at the United Nations, NAM is planning to send a letter of protest to the secretary-general. But the NAM Caucus decided to hold back the letter until an upcoming meeting with Chief of Staff Vijay Nambiar, who is expected to provide details of Ban's merger proposal. The DDA, which was once headed by an assistant secretary-general (ASG), was downgraded during the five-year tenure of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali (1992-1996). But his successor Kofi Annan, who gave high priority to arms control and nuclear disarmament, upgraded the DDA with an under-secretary-general (USG), a higher rank than ASG, as its head. "I think the dismantling of DDA as a U.N. department is a retrograde step irrespective of whether an American is to head DPA or not," an Asian diplomat told IPS. "We will only be repeating the blunder that Boutros Ghali made and which Kofi rectified." He said the problems of disarmament and nuclear proliferation are mounting, particularly in the context of the failure of the 2005 U.N. summit to reiterate disarmament in its outcome document; the collapse of the 2005 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference; and the deadlock at the U.N. small arms conference last year. "This is all the more important why the United Nations should not abdicate its leadership role in this vital field in which it has played an influential role since the very first General Assembly resolution of January 1946," he said. "Burying disarmament in the department of political affairs will kill it, and especially so under a U.S. national as its head," he added. There has also been an unwritten rule at the United Nations that the department of disarmament should not be headed by any one of the five declared nuclear weapons states: the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia. Cora Weiss, U.N. Representative, International Peace Bureau, and president of the Hague Appeal for Peace, told IPS: "It is most unfortunate that the new secretary-general has made this a priority move -- to decimate the most important raison d'etre of the United Nations and to repeat Boutros Ghali's mistake." She said it is pretty difficult to "prevent the scourge of war" with a world awash in weapons. "Removing (the existing) under-secretary-general from DDA removes a direct voice to the secretary-general, and also undermines the DDA to the department of political affairs, presumably under a U.S. designated chief." Weiss said such a move also removes the organisation's independence to pursue work on elimination of nuclear weapons; fighting the illicit trade in small arms; and providing support for the implementation of so many international disarmament treaties and agreements that the United States once supported and now eschews. "It's a disaster," said Weiss, adding that "naming some fine women for high posts, although a good move, does not compensate for this most unfortunate move." Since he assumed office on Jan. 2, Ban has been praised by women's groups for appointing two women to high-level posts in the Secretariat: Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro of Tanzania and Under-Secretary-General for Management Alicia Barcena of Mexico. "How can the secretary-general promote the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals (aimed primarily at eliminating poverty and hunger) -- which will cost lots of money -- while the world spends well over a trillion dollars a year on war and preparation for war?" Weiss asked. "We can't have it both ways. Keeping the DDA is a reminder of the need to reduce military budgets," she noted. Burroughs said DDA also houses technical and policy expertise and institutional memory built up over many years. All of this is invaluable to governments and civil society. But this legacy and DDA's potential to do much more could be damaged or lost if DDA is subsumed in DPA. The proposal is similar to the actual absorption of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency into the State Department in the late 1990s, he added. Technical expertise and institutional memory has been lost since then, as has advocacy within the U.S. government for disarmament. Meanwhile, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, which has launched a project called "Reaching Critical Will", is already spearheading an NGO campaign to stop the dismantling of DDA. "The Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA) is the United Nation's institutional memory and stronghold of expertise on disarmament at the international level," says a statement on its website. "Several countries have a shameful record on disarmament and would like to see the department and its institutional memory and activity downgraded." Disarmament was recognised from the outset of the United Nations as an essential condition for global peace and security. The U.N. Charter recognised that an armed peace was not going to be a just peace, and that preparation for war was not going to bring peace. In fact military budgets are soaring, wars are being fought over weapons and new treaty processes are forming. The disarmament agenda remains unfinished, which lies at the core of today's security challenges. "Putting the issue of disarmament into the Department of Political Affairs is unhelpful and unnecessary, both in terms of the United Nations fulfilling its mandate, and servicing inter-governmental meetings and treaty bodies," the statement continued. The world's disarmament machinery, norms and regime are embattled right now, and reducing the stature of the primary global institution responsible for implementation of U.N. decisions is the wrong course, the League added. (END/2007) [World Social Forum - Nairobi 2007] ***************************************************************** 58 DAWN: Four officials of Atomic Energy Commission kidnapped - Stories; January 15, 2007 By Abdul Sami Paracha KOHAT, Jan 14: At least four officials of the Atomic Energy Commission based in Banda Daud Shah tehsil of Karak district were kidnapped from their office by armed men on Sunday, sources said. Police officials said five staff members were in their office when four armed men entered the compound and demanded keys of vehicles of the commission from the drivers. They took away four officials and three vehicles. The office was established a few years back following discovery of high-grade uranium in the area. Banda Daud Shah police sources said two teams headed by senior officials were searching for the vehicles and kidnapped persons. They claimed that two vehicle had been found and an encounter had been reported with the outlaws. Contributions Privacy Policy © DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2007 ***************************************************************** 59 [du-list] Depleted Uranium 'Killing Italian Troops' Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:05:52 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.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 Depleted Uranium 'Killing Italian Troops' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6247401.stm Last Updated: Wednesday, 10 January 2007, 09:59 GMT Uranium 'killing Italian troops' By Christian Fraser BBC News, Rome Depleted uranium shells were used to destroy Yugoslav tanks Italian soldiers are still dying following exposure to depleted uranium in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, their relatives say. Troops who served during the wars in the 1990s believe they have contracted cancer and other serious illnesses from extended exposure to the munitions. The US says it fired around 40,000 depleted uranium rounds during the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts. A pressure group says 50 veterans have died and another 200 are seriously ill. Depleted uranium is used on the tips of bullets and shells. Because of its density it can pierce the armour plating on tanks. But when it explodes it often leaves a footprint of chemically poisonous and radioactive dust. The Italians who served in Bosnia and Kosovo were involved in the clear-up of battlefields and came into close contact with exploded ammunition. Children with disabilities The association representing the soldiers, known as Anavafaf, says many of those who have died or are ill have contracted cancer. In 2002 the Italian defence ministry published a report compiled by independent scientists which found a higher than average number of servicemen were suffering from cancer. It said there was an excessive number of Hodgkin's disease victims among Italian Balkan peacekeepers. A number of children fathered by the soldiers have been born with disabilities. There are similar reports from soldiers' associations in Belgium, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. Both the US and Britain acknowledge the dust from depleted uranium can be dangerous if inhaled but they insist the danger is short-lived and localised. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. 14be4216.jpg Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Visit Your Group SPONSORED LINKS * California energy * Science lab equipment * Increase energy level * Life science research * Life sciences Yahoo! News Kevin Sites Get coverage of world crises. Search Ads Get new customers. List your web site in Yahoo! Search. Business News Hot Headlines Get localized news for your area. . 14be4224.jpg __,_._,___ Attachment Converted: 14be4216.jpg: 00000001,4a075a7a,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 14be4224.jpg: 00000001,4a075a7b,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 60 [du-list] New on bandepleteduranium.org - Bertell summary and Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:06:33 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.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 Belgium Joins UN Security Council With Remit to Support DU Ban. http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/a/108.html Summary of Dr Rosalie Bertell's latest paper - Depleted Uranium: All the questions about DU and Gulf War Syndrome are not yet answered http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/a/82.html __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. 14bee17f.jpg Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Visit Your Group SPONSORED LINKS * California energy * Science lab equipment * Increase energy level * Life science research * Life sciences Yahoo! News Health News Important health news - get it now Need traffic? Drive customers With search ads on Yahoo! Business News Hot Headlines Get localized news for your area. . 14bee18e.jpg __,_._,___ Attachment Converted: 14bee17f.jpg: 00000001,7051cffc,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 14bee18e.jpg: 00000001,7051cffd,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 61 [du-list] Opponents of Nevada Bomb Test Fault Impact Studies Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:06:04 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.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 Item begins... Las Vegas - A twice-postponed non-nuclear bomb test in the middle of the Nevada desert may face additional legal challenges over its potential to propel dangerous radioactive particles from the soil into the air over four states. An environmental assessment released last week showed that although the bomb, which comprises 700 tons of ammonium nitrate-fuel oil, could stir up and release radioactive material from the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles north of here, the amount would barely be measurable. The radioactive particles are in the soil as the result of above-ground and underground nuclear weapons tests at the test site from 1951 to 1992. ... http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/011107HA.shtml [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. 14be6f9d.jpg Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Visit Your Group SPONSORED LINKS * California energy * Science lab equipment * Increase energy level * Life science research * Life sciences Yahoo! News World News Get the latest world news now Ads on Yahoo! Learn more now. Reach customers searching for you. Sell Online Yahoo! makes it easy to start selling online. . 14be6fab.jpg __,_._,___ Attachment Converted: 14be6f9d.jpg: 00000001,2161ddd7,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 14be6fab.jpg: 00000001,2161ddd8,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 62 WISC-TV: Milwaukee Authorities Search For Crate Of Radioactive Material - [Channel3000.com] Material Is Low-Grade, Used For Medical Testing UPDATED: 6:52 pm CST January 15, 2007 MILWAUKEE -- Milwaukee authorities said that a container with radioactive material is missing. The Sheriff's Department said that the material is in a shipping box that a courier reported missing on Sunday. The radioactive material is low-grade and used for medical testing. Deputies said that there's such a small quantity that the material can't be used for anything other than medical purposes. Authorities said that the material could cause burns if it comes into contact with skin and can be poisonous if ingested. Department spokeswoman Kim Brooks said that the container is a shipping crate with large warning labels. Deputies are asking anyone who finds it to contact authorities immediately. Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ***************************************************************** 63 AFP: British police seek return to Russia in poisoning case - news agencies - Tue Jan 16, 6:00 AM ET MOSCOW (AFP) - British investigators want to visit Russia for a second time to probe the poisoning death of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika has said. "Literally yesterday we received a new investigative order from our British colleagues, in which they ask about the possibility of coming again, working together and exchanging materials," Chaika was quoted by news agency ITAR-TASS as saying. "I do not rule out that after the trip by our representatives to London, we will again receive our colleagues here," Chaika said. He said the Russian team particularly wanted to interview two prominent Russian exiles in London: influential businessman Boris Berezovsky and former Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev, both of whom have been given asylum by the British authorities. Chaika said on Sunday that the Russian investigators would leave shortly for London. "Concerning the Litvinenko case itself, we are also interested in solving this crime, since, first, he was a Russian citizen, and second, we have our own versions of the murder," Chaika said Tuesday, adding that "this murder may have been committed by Russian citizens living abroad." The death in London of Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer turned Kremlin critic, caused a storm of media speculation. He died November 23 in agonising pain after being administered a huge dose of radioactive substance polonium-210. Before dying, Litvinenko accused President Vladimir Putin" /> Vladimir Putinof ordering his murder, while Kremlin-linked media pointed the finger at Boris Berezovsky, a Russian businessman and Putin opponent living in exile in London. British police operated under strict conditions during their first trip to Russia in December. They were not permitted to question witnesses directly, and officials stressed that Britain would not be allowed to extradite any Russian suspects. Russian deputy prosecutor general Alexander Zvyagintsev was quoted by state-owned Rossiiskaya Gazeta last week as saying that Russian authorities wanted to question more than 100 witnesses in Britain. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 64 starbulletin.com: 2 accidents prompt sub force safety assessment Vol. 12, Issue 15 - Monday, January 15, 2007 By Gregg K. Kakesako gkakesako@starbulletin.com In the wake of two submarine accidents, one of them fatal, the Navy has ordered its sub fleet, including 16 nuclear attack boats stationed at Pearl Harbor, to spend a week assessing practices and procedures. Cmdr. Mike Brown, spokesman for the Pacific Fleet Submarine Force, said the review should not affect normal operations. The "stand down" ordered by Vice Adm. Chuck Munns, U.S. Submarine Forces commander, began Friday and will run for a week. Brown said the leaders of the Pacific Fleet Sub Force as well as the skippers of its nuclear subs have been told to review procedures as well as two recent sub accidents. "It is clear that a common thread through recent problems has been errors conducting normal routine operations," Munns said in a written statement. "We are going back to basics, back to practice." On Dec. 29, four sailors were swept off the deck of the USS Minneapolis-St. Paul as it was leaving Plymouth, England. The accident occurred in rough seas as they were trying to transfer a harbor pilot from the sub to a waiting boat. Two sailors were rescued and two were killed. Last Monday, the USS Newport News collided with a Japanese supertanker in the Straits of Hormuz. Navy and Japanese officials said damage to the attack submarine and the supertanker was minimal and that there was no oil spillage. Both nuclear submarines are home-ported at Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia. The Navy says that following the stand down, "submarine squadron and group commanders will review inputs from the force's submarines and implement actions to improve routine efficiency. The Submarine Force will also take additional actions to incorporate findings from the stand down and better prepare commanding officers with tools and techniques that foster good judgment, technical, and mariner skills." © Honolulu Star-Bulletin -- http://starbulletin.com ***************************************************************** 65 DG: Desert Greens Lead Utah Groups Demanding an End to Divine Strake Nuclear Blast Simulation Desert Greens/Green Party of Utah January 15, 2007 Released January 12 SALT LAKE CITY -- Applauding Governor Huntsman's call for meetings that allow public input regarding the Divine Strake explosion, the Desert Greens Green Party of Utah, Blue Sky Institute and Shundahai Network as members of the Stop Divine Strake Coalition, a coalition of four-dozen indigenous, peace, environmental justice, disarmament groups and Western Shoshone leaders, are echoing the dire need for an EIS. An s-EIS is needed since an activity like Divine Strake was not evaluated in the original EIS (1996) for the NTS. This would allow more public involvement into the purpose for Divine Strake. Concerned citizens fear that the blast, which is predicted to create a 10,000 foot mushroom cloud, will re-suspend long-lived radioactive contaminants in the soil at the Nevada Test Site, putting Western Shoshone communities, Utahns and other civilian downwind populations once again at risk. Citizens are also concerned that information from the test will lead to the development of new nuclear weapons and the resumption of nuclear weapons testing. The formal EIS process requires public involvement prior to the environmental analysis to develop the "scope" of the study, and follow up comment on a draft document. On December 20th, the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) released a revised Environmental Assessment and disclosed their schedule of public information sessions in Las Vegas, Salt Lake and St. George; but these sessions will not include a public hearing on the issue. Instead, NNSA officials said that the public sessions are basically open house meetings where people can look at informational posters and ask questions. "In the past, these meetings allowed public verbal input by citizens, allowing everyone present to hear a variety of views," said Deanna Taylor, Co-Coordinator of the Desert Greens. "The meetings as planned were nothing more than slick sales pitches." Given the decision of the United Nations Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination (UNCERD) last March urging the United States to "freeze", "desist" and "stop" actions being taken, or threatened to be taken, against the Western Shoshone Peoples of the Western Shoshone Nation, this is an egregious violation. The UNCERD decision referred to a number of actions and threats including ongoing weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site as well as efforts to build an unprecedented high-level nuclear waste repository at adjacent Yucca Mountain. "Are we a nation of laws or not?" said Eileen McCabe, former Associate Director of Shundahai Network and Desert Greens National Delegate (to the Green Party of the United States). "The United States selectively condemns nations that violate or are even suspected of violating treaties or UN resolutions, yet we ourselves flout the decision of the CERD committee in finding the US in clear violation of the treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863. This test, and in fact all tests at the Nevada Test site, are destructive acts of trespassing on Western Shoshone land, and should cease immediately." The purpose of Divine Strake, an explosion of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil that would be 50 times larger than the largest conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal has not been clarified. "Originally the Defense Department's budget documents identified Divine Strake as necessary to determine the smallest proper /nuclear/ yield necessary to destroy underground targets," said Eileen McCabe. "After questions were raised that information from the blast will aid in the design of new nuclear weapons, NNSA officials stepped back, claiming that there were no nuclear applications for the test." Groups remain unconvinced that it is conventional weapons that the U.S. would use on deeply buried targets and tunnels because the sheer mass of conventional explosives that would be needed (~0.6 kiloton, i.e. 600 tons of TNT) would be too large to be practical as a conventional weapon. "This test is another building block in the development of new weapons," said Chuck Tripp, 2006 Desert Greens candidate for Salt Lake County Council. "Although we decry even the suspicion of nuclear weapons development by other countries, we find loopholes in laws and refuse to ratify treaties to allow us to continue building new and more lethal weapons. Our continuing and escalating weapons development and testing activities send exactly the wrong message in an unstable world." Stop Divine Strake Coalition member groups in Utah and Nevada are hosting press events and protests to encourage citizen resistance and public participation before the February 7th deadline. Information: Eileen McCabe, Desert Greens (801) 201-0219 Office: PO Box 57065 Washington, D.C. 20037 Email: 202-319-7191 or toll-free (US): 866-41GREEN ***************************************************************** 66 [NukeNet] New nuclear plant hinges on fuel disposal Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:06:41 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61] X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61 X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/business/16451490.htm Posted on Sat, Jan. 13, 2007 14bf015d.jpg 14bf0169.jpg COMPANY'S PROPOSAL IN TEXAS AT STAKE New nuclear plant hinges on fuel disposal Exelon executive wants U.S. to build depository for spent fuel rods JIM POLSON Bloomberg News Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. owner of nuclear power plants, wants government assurance of a disposal site for spent fuel before it will proceed with the reactor it has proposed in Texas, Chief Executive John Rowe said Friday. "The government may have fooled me on 17 reactors that I currently run, but I'm the one who's being foolish if I build a new plant without knowing what they're going to do with the spent fuel," Rowe said in an interview in Chicago. Rowe, 61, said his preference would be for the federal government to step up and establish a permanent fuel depository, something it's been unable to do. However, he would not rule out the state of Texas creating its own site. Proposals to build new nuclear plants, including in the Carolinas, are gaining momentum as prices rise for coal-fired and natural-gas plants along with global-warming concerns. About 32 announcements have been made for new nuclear power plant licenses. No company has sought to build a new reactor in about 30 years. Exelon in September said it would seek regulatory approval for a nuclear-fueled plant in Texas, the largest power-consuming state. Lack of a permanent repository has forced Exelon and other nuclear-plant operators to store spent fuel at their plants, a strategy that's been criticized by environmental groups, partly on concern the sites may be terrorist targets. U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who became Senate Majority Leader this week, opposes the government's chosen site in that state's Yucca Mountain. The next new U.S. nuclear plant probably will be built in the U.S. South or Southeast, where economic growth is driving demand for so-called baseload plants, usually coal-fueled or nuclear plants designed to run at all hours and all seasons to provide basic power supply, Rowe said. Most of the pending nuclear-plant licenses are for sites in southeastern states and Texas. A few proposals have also been made in the state of New York and Maryland. Atlanta-based utility owner Southern Co. has won regulatory approval in Georgia to charge customers for the cost of licensing new nuclear plants, and Charlotte-based Duke Energy Corp. is seeking the same in North Carolina. That's a source of funding not available in Texas, where power-generation, power delivery and retail-power sales are separate businesses, Rowe said. No new reactor has been ordered in the U.S. since the 1979 accident at Three-Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pa. © 2007 Charlotte Observer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.charlotte.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs": Source: Arundhati Roy, "Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire," Molly Johnson 6290 Hawk Ridge Place San Miguel, CA 93451 Cell: 805 296-0524 The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://mail.energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net Attachment Converted: 14bf015d.jpg: 00000001,4d73eeeb,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 14bf0169.jpg: 00000001,4d73eeec,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 67 [NukeNet] Scotland:: Businesses dump 60% of all waste Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:06:10 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61] X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61 X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) NukeNet: Comment, Nuclear waste is the most lethal, toxic and longest lasting known. It certainly should not be recycled. So-called nuclear waste is the perfect killer being invisible, imperceptible until you get sick up to decades later. Cancer rates are now 1 in 2. Regards, Dennis F. Nester http://www.sundayherald.com/news/ heraldnews/display.var.1122049.0. businesses_dump_60_of_all_waste.php 14be88e7.jpg Businesses dump 60% of all waste TWO-THIRDS of the waste produced by Scottish businesses is still being dumped in landfill sites, swamping householders' efforts to recycle more of their rubbish. Although ministers have invested heavily in schemes to increase domestic recycling, they have been accused of failing to tackle the mountains of waste generated by factories, shops, hotels and restaurants. A survey for the government's green watchdog, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), reveals that nine million tonnes of rubbish a year is produced by commercial and industrial premises. Only 2.35 million tonnes of this is recycled, with six million tonnes ending up as landfill. As this rots it emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. The amount of business waste dwarfs that of ordinary households. In the year to March 2006, local councils collected 3.4 million tonnes of municipal waste, 2.5 million tonnes of which was landfilled and 0.83 million tonnes recycled. Sepa waste manager John Ferguson said more should be done to tackle the environmental effects of business waste. He said: "It is of concern that we remain so dependent on landfill in Scotland for the management of our commercial and industrial wastes. "Given the impact on climate change of methane from the breakdown of biodegradable waste in landfill, we will be focusing more attention on alternatives to landfill disposal for wastes from commercial and industrial sources." He suggested a framework for business waste being developed with the Scottish Executive would begin to address the problem. Some waste could be used to generate energy in biomass plants, he said, and increased recycling would improve business competitiveness. The survey provides the best estimate to date of Scotland's business waste. Based on information from 2004, it did not include waste from construction and demolition companies, which are thought to generate an additional seven million tonnes of rubbish a year. It showed two-thirds of the waste came from the commercial sector, with the wholesale and retail trade producing the most, followed by hotels and restaurants. Paper and cardboard accounted for almost a million tonnes of the waste. Only half of the companies surveyed knew how all their waste was managed, while three-quarters admitted producing waste that could be recycled but was not. The poll provoked a scathing response from environmental groups. "It is time to end this out of sight, out of mind' mentality," said Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland. "Commercial and industrial waste is more likely to cause harm to the environment, yet it has for the most part been completely ignored as a problem." McLaren called on ministers to learn from their success in improving household recycling: "They should set recycling and reduction targets for commercial and industrial waste and make available the resources for the infrastructure required." The call for more investment in recycling was echoed by Alan Mitchell, of the Confederation of British Industry in Scotland, who said: "Businesses are going to have to take waste issues more seriously than in the past. But they are going to need support, advice and guidance." An Executive spokeswoman pointed out that, under the "polluter pays" principle, businesses have to be responsible for disposing of their own waste. "Progressive increases in charges have been designed to encourage businesses to recycle," she said. Ministers funded the Scottish Waste Awareness Group to establish a directory of recycling facilities, and businesses of £2 million turnover which make or use more than 50 tonnes of packaging per year must recycle or recover a proportion, she added. "It is also important for businesses to reduce the amount of waste they produce. We support Envirowise and the Business Environment Partnership to provide free advice to businesses on waste minimisation." 9:00pm Saturday 13th January 2007 By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://mail.energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net Attachment Converted: 14be88e7.jpg: 00000001,085cf58b,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: "c:\program files\eudora\attach\sitelogo.gif" ***************************************************************** 68 What If This Were Nuclear Waste? Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:16:59 -0500 X-Sender-Host-Name: elasmtp-spurfowl.atl.sa.earthlink.net X-DSPAM-Result: mail; result="Innocent"; class="Innocent"; probability=0.0000; confidence=1.00; signature=N/A X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY I don't have time to search right now but I remember the DOE [ http://www.doe.gov ] stating that they expected something like 16 accidents a year, each year, for the duration of trucking nuclear waste out to Yucca Mountain from sites all across the USA. Does anyone have the specific data & if so can you please post it? And as most of us remember if they pull this shipping of waste out to Yucca, as soon as they're done they'll have just as much n-waste AGAIN to ship out to wherever. Sounds Sysiphysian and grossly criminal to me. These are the terrorists in ties and suits whom are accorded respect [like Herr Dr. Henry Kissinger]. Kill one person and you're a murderer, kill thousands or millions and you're a conquerer or hero. -Bill http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/us/16cnd-train.html?hp&ex=1169010000&en=60493332a0ef2726&ei=5094&partner=homepage Chemical Train Explosion Forces Evacuations Michael Clevenger, Courier-Journal via Associated Press The scene of a train derailment near Shepherdsville, Ky. a.. Sign In to E-Mail or Save This b.. Print c.. Reprints d.. Share a.. Digg b.. Facebook c.. Newsvine d.. Permalink By THEO EMERY Published: January 16, 2007 NASHVILLE, Jan. 16 - A train derailment south of Louisville, Ky., ignited an explosion today that forced the evacuation of area homes and a school, according to Kentucky emergency officials. The CSX train derailed about 9 a.m. in Brooks, Ky., bursting into flames that consumed 14 train cars and sent dense black clouds of smoke billowing into the air. Officials shut down more than 20 miles of nearby Interstate 65 and closed airspace over the fire as a precaution, said Yvette Smith, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management. State emergency officials ordered the evacuation of all homes within a mile radius of the fire and asked all residents of Bullitt County, which is directly south of Louisville, to stay inside, shut their windows and bring pets inside, Ms. Smith said. Maj. Lisa Rudzinski of the State Police said 11 people had sought medical attention. A few people were "reluctant" to evacuate, but complied, said Governor Ernie Fletcher at a televised news conference, after he and other state officials flew over the site to evaluate the situation. Early in the afternoon, a fire official said the danger of explosion had been reduced and that the fire was "winding down successfully." The source of the fire was the chemical cyclohexane, a highly flammable chemical and eye and skin irritant, Major Rudzinskisaid. The train also carried the chemical butadiene, which is hazardous if inhaled, but it was not clear whether that car had ruptured, Major Rudzinski said. Fifteen members of the National Guard were dispatched to the scene to aid in detecting chemical and hazardous materials. The cause of the derailment was under investigation, Major Rudzinski said. "At this point, we're making sure the public is safe," she said. School officials in Bullitt County evacuated Brooks Elementary School and sent the children to a district middle school. The evacuation was ordered over concern that the fire might snarl bus routes, not because of danger to the children, a school spokesman, John Roberts, said. A private school in the area, Micah Christian Academy, was also closed. The school's administrator, Jack Roberts, said that he could see the clouds from the wreck site, which he estimated to be about two miles away, and that the fire left a burning sensation in his mouth. He decided to close the school as precaution. "We're close enough to where we feel like it's necessary that we close," Mr. Roberts said. John Holusha contributed reporting from New York. ***************************************************************** 69 Sydney Morning Herald: Nuclear waste containers will not work, say scientists - www.smh.com.au Wendy Frew Environment Reporter January 17, 2007 CERAMIC containers developed to "immobilise" highly radioactive waste may not prove durable enough to prevent the toxic material leaching into the environment, research published in Nature has found. Certain kinds of nuclear waste stay highly toxic for tens of thousands of years, and scientists have sought ways of stabilising or capturing the radioactive elements long enough to allow the waste to degrade naturally. Researchers at Cambridge University directly measured the radiation damage from nuclear waste to the ceramic containers and found they degraded faster than had been expected. The research team, led by Dr Ian Farnan, found radioactive waste could turn zirconium silicate, which the nuclear industry had hoped could safely store radioactive waste, into a less reliable material after 1400 years instead of the desired 250,000 years. Some governments, including Australia's, have touted nuclear energy as a partial solution to climate change, but environmentalists and some scientists have argued the radioactive waste generated by nuclear power plants creates a new set of environmental problems. An Australian scientist said the significance of the British research was limited because it looked at only one kind of material. The senior principal research scientist at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Greg Lumpkin, said the organisation had moved beyond zircon by developing a titanium-based material called Synroc. "We left zircon behind years ago, but it has persisted as a model used by the industry," Dr Lumpkin said. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation had yet to commercialise Synroc but was pursuing partnerships with overseas organisations to have the technology adopted, he said. Sydney Morning Herald ***************************************************************** 70 ForUm: Ukraine puts very high demands to safety of nuclear fuel storage News / 16 January 2007 | 17:20 The Ukrainian government puts extremely high demands to safety of the construction and running the storage of waste nuclear fuel, Holtec International CEO Kris Singh said after a meeting with Ukrainian Minister for Fuel and Energy Yuriy Boyko. As he noted, on the request of the Ukrainian government Holtec will construct special high technological facilities. According to him, Holtec is in posses of the technology of complicated construction, which will be conveyed to Ukraine, “Cabinet press office” informs. "I'm glad that after the Chornobyl disaster the Ukrainian government is very exigent in nuclear matters and puts high demands to safety. Other countries do not put such drastic demands," Singh said. According to him, Holtec will involve best Ukrainian enterprises to co-participate in the project. The preliminary cost of the contract, which envisages the construction nuclear waste storage, is USD 160 M., which 90% will go as investments. "Holtec will take those profits, which Ukraine will gain from saving as a result of no need in fuel supply, as compensation," Singh went on. ForUm [Âåðñèÿ äëÿ ïå÷àòè] [Îòïðàâèòü ññûëêó äðóãó] Comments Gene (17:43 | 16 January,2007) While one would never wish Chornobyl on anyone, the benefit is that now the world is aware of the severe damage that can be caused with nuclear energy...and how long that damage lasts...and as such...how important safety and safeguards are. While I've never been a big supporter of nuclear energy, I have to believe that it might be a reasonable source of energy for countries wanting energy freedom from Russia and other high costs of energy. However, it is still important to search out other alternative forms of energy and to learn to be more efficient with the use of energy...and not wasteful. Only registered users can add comments. For registered users to enter e-mail and password. Be aware, Editorial staff may not share opinions and ideas of readers and commentators. All rights are reserved by © LTD. Inter-Media, ForUm 2001-2007 ***************************************************************** 71 AU ABC: Mayor welcomes uranium exploration plans Tuesday, 16 January 2007. 23:06 (AEDT)Tuesday, 16 January 2007. The Alice Springs Mayor has backed plans to explore for uranium on land 25 kilometres south of the town. More than 40 international uranium mining companies have applied to explore the area. Fran Kilgariff says the potential mine would be close enough for workers to live in the town and would help boost the local economy. She says exploration should go ahead despite sharing environment group concerns mining there could affect the town's water supply. "We obviously would need to exercise care that there's no pollutants into the town water supply," she said. "If there's an environmental impact statement, then I guess that's the sort of thing that they would address, but that certainly is an issue for the town. "It's a very good opportunity and we don't actually know exactly how it will be mined, and what sort of processes there will be and how they will affect the watertable. "So I think we go ahead and we have a look, and if it's safe, and it doesn't pollute the watertable then it would be very good I think for Alice Springs." ***************************************************************** 72 Salt Lake Tribune: Agency issues report on Utah's environmental quality Agency issues report on Utah's environmental quality Both successes and challenges are issued in sections on air, land, water and mercury By Judy Fahys The Salt Lake Tribune Article Last Updated: 01/15/2007 02:44:07 AM MST * The Utah Department of Environmental Quality has posted its report on Utah's environment and is inviting comment on it at www.deq.utah.gov/envrpt. The Utah Department of Environmental Quality released a new report Thursday that enumerates the state's accomplishments in improving the air, land and water. “By many measures, our environment is healthier today than it was in the 1970s,” says Department of Environmental Quality Director Dianne R. Neilson in an opening letter to the 40-page booklet. Packed with informational graphics and photos, the report focuses on bringing ordinary Utahns up to speed on the agency's wide-ranging responsibilities to “safeguard public health and our quality of life by protecting and enhancing our environment.” Both successes and challenges are described in separate sections on air, land, water and mercury, an environmental contaminant that has made prompted cautions for six duck and fish species in Utah waters. The report does not include mention of the state's efforts to outlaw higher levels of radioactive waste, the struggles over the Legacy Highway through Davis County and to address climate change. Nielson said the effort, the first of its kind for the state, does not paint too rosy of a picture of the state of the environment. The report also describes challenges ahead, such as keeping air quality on the Wasatch Front good enough to avoid additional regulations and possible restrictions on road funding, she said. Tim Wagner of the Sierra Club called the report good overall but questioned the lack of information on greenhouse gases, which are a major contributor to global warming. He also urged policymakers to use the information as a stepping stone, and not the justification for slowing environmental efforts. "With their help," he said, "we could see even better improvements." fahys@sltrib.com © Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 73 The Mercury - NRC: Dry casks not part of new 9/11 safeguards Evan Brandt, ebrandt@pottsmerc.com 01/14/2007 LIMERICK -- When it comes to building new nuclear power plants, the nuclear industry has asked that it be required to design plants that can withstand a 9/11-type attack by a hijacked jet. When it comes to dry cask storage facilities however, the industry, the federal government and even one of the nuclear industry’s harshest critics do not have the same concerns. One such dry cask storage facility is planned for Exelon Nuclear’s Limerick Generating Station. On Dec. 8, the Nuclear Energy Institute sent a widely referenced letter to Dale E. Klein, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The letter, as reported in The New York Times and the In a Dec. 25 Associated Press report, Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Scott Peterson said "if you need to change the design to accommodate greater security, particularly for large fires and explosions, you want to do that up front in the design process, not after you build the plant." Peterson also told the Associated Press that the threat from a hijacked airliner is not on the current list of threats against which a plant is required to be capable of defending itself. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the NRC did require existing plants to develop new, more stringent security procedures including ways to protect against an attack with an airplane. The specifics of those procedures, called the "design basis threat," are secret for obvious reasons. What the industry has asked for is for the design requirements for new plants to be more stringent. The Dec. 8 letter "asks nothing new or beyond what the NRC already has underway for new reactors," according to an NRC response released Jan. 4 which explained that the additional regulation the industry was requesting is part of a on-going process for new rules the NRC is considering. What neither the NRC or the industry addressed in the exchange, however, is whether standards for dry cask fuel storage facilities, such as the one planned for the Limerick plant, should also be upgraded to protect against a 9/11-type attack. Tony Pietrangelo, vice president of regulatory affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said there was no reason to address changes in the dry cask storage regulations because they are already adequate to protect against a 9/11-type attack. "What we were trying to address in our letter was for new regulations to address the new issues to be on the front end and not have changes being made after designs were finished or construction begun," said Pietrangelo. As for dry cask storage facilities, those regulations are newer and do not need to be updated, he said. "We know they’re safe," he said. NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said NRC also has addressed the issue. In a statement e-mailed to The Mercury, Sheehan wrote that a German manufacturer conducted tests on a particular dry cask design -- not the one to be used in Limerick -- which suggested the casks are resilient against an attack using hand-held missiles, particularly when the casks are surrounded by concrete. However he added that "the NRC has not reviewed the experimental procedures nor commented on the test." He said current NRC regulations must be able to "provide for the protection of public health and safety" against naturally occurring events including flying debris from tornadoes or hurricanes, floods and earthquakes. Additionally, Sheehan wrote, the NRC has "conducted a series of comprehensive vulnerability assessments for dry cask storage systems, including consideration of ground assaults using various weapons and aircraft impacts." He said the results of the assessments, conducted largely by using computer models, "indicate that it is unlikely that a significant release of radioactivity would occur from a ground assault or a large aircraft impact on a dry spent fuel storage cask." The same result occurred in a separate 2002 study conducted for the NEI by the Electric Power Research Institute, said NEI spokesman Mitch Singer. That study focused primarily on the standards for existing nuclear plant buildings, but also came to the same conclusion for steel dry casks. David Lochbaum is the director of the nuclear safety program for the Union of Concerned Scientists and a frequent critic of the nuclear industry’s safety record. Lochbaum said he does not consider dry storage casks to be the greatest risk at a nuclear plant under attack from a plane, although he does have some concerns. "Generally, they’re not anchored to the ground so they would be kind of like pins in a bowling alley and could get toppled or moved if a plane crashed there," Lochbaum said. However, more vulnerable, Lochbaum said, are the spent fuel pools located inside the reactor buildings. The dry cask storage facilities are erected once the spent fuel pool inside, used to cool the spent fuel for at least five years, nears capacity. Dry casks are currently considered a temporary solution by both the industry and the NRC until the national fuel storage facility at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is completed. Behind schedule, over-budget and opposed by Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the new senate majority leader, Yucca Mountain’s future is anything but certain however, Lochbaum said. Because the pools hold so much more spent fuel than the individual casks and because Lochbaum considers the walls that surround those pools to be more vulnerable to an attack with an airplane than the casks themselves, he said the pools are the greater risk. "The pools hold 1,000 tons of spent fuel but the casks hold only 10 to 20 tons," Lochbaum said. "If I’m a terrorist with a plane, I’m probably going to aim at the fuel pool instead of any casks." That is where the federal government should direct its preventative efforts he said. According to a position statement posted at the Union of Concerned Scientists site: "The 2005 Energy Bill contained potentially billions of federal subsidies for new nuclear reactors. But amid all the talk about building new nuclear power reactors, the majority of NRC’s Commissioners voted against requiring new reactor designs to explicitly consider intentional aircraft crashes. Thus, new reactor designs have been developed accounting for bad guys who arrive on foot or by boat, but not by aircraft. It’s as if the Wright Brothers never invented the aircraft or 9/11 never happened." Elizabeth Rapczynski, spokesperson for Exelon’s Limerick plant, disagreed with Lochbaum’s assessment. "We believe the technology used for both spent fuel pools and dry cask storage are equally safe and proven," she said. One of the nation’s newest nuclear plants, the Limerick facility received permission to erect its dry cask storage facility in July from the Limerick Board of Supervisors. The supervisors had jurisdiction over only the land development aspect of the concrete pad on which the casks will sit. All other regulation for the dry casks rests with the NRC. The NUHOM cask system Exelon has chosen for Limerick is pre-licensed by the NRC and no new permits were required for the project. The NRC violation issued last year against a Japanese steel plant where Limerick’s casks are being manufactured did not involve the casks that are being manufactured for Limerick. ©The Mercury 2007 ©2006 Pottstown Mercury - a Journal Register Property. All Rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 74 UNIAN: Ukraine to build nuclear waste storage [16.01.2007 10:39] Ukraine will start building a storage for spent fuel from nuclear power plants in 2008, Ukrainian Energy Minister Yury Boyko said following a meeting with the management of Holtec International, responsible for carrying out the project. The works were previously scheduled to start in 2007, according to RBC. In two weeks Holtec and the ministry will devise a new schedule of design and construction of a centralized storage of spent nuclear fuel. Boyko pointed out that Ukraine was interested in speeding up the construction, as it would allow the republic to save $800m in the first five years of the operation of the storage. Holtec will finance 90 percent of the project. The total cost of the project is estimated at $400m. The storage should be constructed within three years after the site is chosen. Ukraine`s Energoatom will pay back Holtec`s investment, with a 10-percent advance during the first year of construction works. © 2001 - 2007 UNIAN.NET All Right Protected. Created by Andrey Yackovlev, Sergey Koval ***************************************************************** 75 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: No consensus on rail shipment regulations - Terror on the tracks By Carl Prine TRIBUNE-REVIEW Monday, January 15, 2007 Last month, the proposed new regulations designed to force railroads to better protect their cargoes of deadly poisons and explosives. But critics in Congress and the chemical industry say the measures don't go far enough to safeguard cities from terrorists. And a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review probe of rail security across seven states published Sunday detailed ongoing failures with voluntary standards agreed to by the railroads and Homeland Security that already were supposed to guide anti-terrorism standards. A terrorist easily can reach millions of pounds of the most toxic or explosive substances on tracks inside America's largest city, according to the Trib's recent investigation, problems federal watchdogs agree are far too prevalent. If adopted, the reforms would require rail workers to inspect chemical tank cars for bombs. Documented "chain of command" handoffs would occur when a locomotive drops off hazardous materials with a customer, cutting the days deadly gases idle on unprotected rail sidings. Homeland Security would like to someday be able to track hazardous materials movements through 46 -- including Pittsburgh -- deemed likely ambush spots for terrorists. While more than 1.7 million railcars of hazardous materials are delivered annually, Homeland Security frets most about the 287 tankers of gases trundling daily down the nation's tracks. Chlorine gas, anhydrous ammonia and 195 other less common but potentially catastrophic chemicals become weapons of mass destruction when released. A in rural Graniteville, S.C., leaked only about 60 percent of a tank car's chlorine, but the ooze killed nine people and injured 630. Homeland Security fears the sudden rupture by terrorists of a toxic railcar -- often kept overnight, unguarded in major cities -- could trigger thousands of casualties. Click here to see a video of an LPG truck explosion, although a railcar explosion would be much larger. LPG is so flammable, a detonation of one rail car can cause second degree burns more than a mile away. "It would be irresponsible on our part if we continued to allow toxic materials sitting around for days on end in High Urban Threat Areas. That's not a risk we want to keep taking," said , the transportation sector administrator at the agency's Transportation Security Agency. Information now classified Homeland Security declined to speak to the Trib about the probe until it announced the security regulations. , however, were briefed about the Trib's findings more than a month before they unveiled the guidelines. Embedded within the new proposals was a rule forever classifying information related to a security inspection, keeping from public view the results of any review or audit of a rail hazmat shipper, including port facilities, railroads and chemical plants. Homeland Security officials had no comment on the timing of their new regulations or the Trib's probe, or their proposal to ban dissemination of much of the information the Trib used to prepare these reports -- information that's been available to the public for almost four decades. The agency's Transportation Security Administration instead wanted to focus on why they needed new powers to inspect rail yards, switching terminals and other places carriers stow lethal shipments. Critics doubt the proposed regulations will have an immediate impact on national security. "Security always has been light years away from where it should be," said John Tolman, legislative director of the 37,000-member . "Sometimes, we seem to really operate backwards. I'm worried that it will take a 9/11 type of disaster before we wake up to what we need to do." Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress have pledged to stiffen the proposed regulations while delving deeper into permanent solutions. On the table: Revamping the economic structure of the rail industry to speed delivery of sensitive shipments and prodding manufacturers to make "inherently safer" chemicals that won't tempt terrorists. "We have to look first at the small things. We have a lot of deficiencies in homeland security to fix, and we have to get started on stanching the bleeding first before we can start really fixing them systemically," said U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Delaware. "It's time for an awakening. We can't do this in a demagogic way. We must work closely with industry and the president and everyone else, but the time has come to roll up our sleeves and get to work fixing this." Take a ride on the Reading No initiative is more controversial than an offensive waged by chemical companies to restructure the . It allowed major freight carriers to shed unprofitable lines, trim payroll and merge assets to form regionally dominant carriers. Today, more than 90 percent of chemical freight is carried by only six carriers, down from almost 40 of the largest railroads two decades ago. While railroads revived, a revolution in just-in-time delivery and a tripling of imported goods on the tracks created more congestion. In 1993, the typical train traveled 23 miles per hour. Ten years later, it had slowed to 20 mph, according to the Association of American Railroads. To chemical manufacturers, refineries and nuclear plants, that time isn't just money, it's a security issue. They believe their tankers -- about 12 percent of rail cargo, second only to coal -- are stored too long because of congestion caused by little railroad reinvestment in infrastructure and poor service by monopolies. More competition in the industry might help, manufacturers say. But barring that, the rates they pay should be plowed back into track improvements and employee training before another Graniteville happens. While the act mandates "reasonable" service, shippers say they get little relief from the hearing their cases. "Those companies know just how bad service is, but how loudly should they complain? If they do that, will service get even worse? What they deserve is an effective partnership with the railroads that puts safety and security first. We don't have that now," said Marty Durbin, federal affairs director of the American Chemistry Council representing almost 150 of the largest manufacturers. The rail industry isn't buying it. "It has no merit in the area of security at all," said Ed Hamberger, president of the American Association of Railroads representing the largest national carriers. Smarter is safer Hamberger details achievements by the largest rail companies since 2001 to revamp security, including an intelligence center that coordinates closely with spy agencies and the military. Railroads have facilitated "swaps" of the deadliest cargoes between chemical makers and their customers, shortening the distances hazmat must travel. The major carriers also recently rolled out a new security training program for track workers. Federal law bars railroads from storing deadly hazmat in one spot for more than , but customers can buy leases on sidings and keep gases and explosives there indefinitely -- something the new federal regulations won't touch, critics say. A proposal to scrap the nation's fleet of toxic tankers for a larger model, believed by Hamberger to be as much as 60 percent safer, has met with lukewarm interest from chemical companies that would foot the bill -- estimated to cost $100,000 for each tanker, with possibly more than 60,000 cars slated for the scrap heap throughout the next decade, if the initiative gets the green light from government. As common carriers, railroads are legally required to haul deadly cargoes. According to Hamberger, more than half of his industry's insurance costs stem from delivering dangerous chemicals. With a $1 billion liability cap on a terrorist event, Hamberger says an attack could bankrupt a railroad. He's told Congress that chemical companies should quit making stuff terrorists want to attack and start producing safer substances. He's found friends in an environmental lobby that's championing legislation designed to phase out the deadliest toxics, if financially or scientifically feasible. "The day after a catastrophic attack on a chemical plant, or a railcar on a train, no one would argue against the elimination of these chemicals if there are cost-effective substitutes, and posterity will never forgive Congress if they don't do something about this in the next session," said federal affairs director Rick Hind. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has drafted legislation he plans to introduce this month that would push manufacturers to scrap the most toxic chemicals for safer substitutes. "Doing so would reduce the number of shipments of these toxic materials before they are ever placed in trains, and therefore would also reduce the number of potential terrorist targets and catastrophic accident scenarios," Markey said. "That also means less money that the industry needs to spend on guarding these railcars while they are unloaded." Chemical manufacturers estimate they have spent at least $3 billion guarding hazmat at the railhead since 2001. They say the ingredients in their vats should be decided by company scientists, not lawmakers, and too many important industries rely on materials that can't rapidly be substituted, such as the chlorine that disinfects water. They would rather the railroads simply get their products to their customers on time with as little exposure to terrorism as possible. "We work very closely with the railroads on a number of issues, so we think this isn't impossible," the American Chemistry Council's Durbin said. Carl Prine can be reached at or (412) 320-7826. from Tribune-Review Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 76 FPON: More uranium found Free Press on Namimbia Monday, January 15, 2007 - Web posted at 7:25:14 GMT BRIGITTE WEIDLICH NAMIBIA appears to have a radiant future in the mining sector with over 20 mining outfits doing uranium prospecting and exploration, mainly in the Erongo Region, and an Australian company announcing that it has found a promising deposit of the mineral north of the existing Roessing uranium mine. West Australian Metals (WME) on Thursday announced it had discovered rich deposits of the mineral at its Marenica Project in Erongo. "Sampling has revealed widespread, near surface mineralisation and identified possible extensions outside the main prospected area," the company said in a statement. Company officials said the Marenica uranium project has confirmed mineralisation in excess of 100 metres in width, but lower in grade than Roessing. WME said it has pumped in US$1,9 million into exploration. The firm did not indicate when it would move to commercially exploit the uranium deposits. NEW FRONTIER "The company is most encouraged by these latest results which follow the widespread areas of significant uranium mineralisation reported from phase one of our trench and pit sampling programme," said its technical director, Leon Reisgys. WME's positive findings also confirm Namibia as the Australian investors' new uranium frontier. Another Australian firm, Paladin Resources, commissioned its US$92 million Langer Heinrich Uranium mine on December 28, 2006. Australia controls a quarter of world uranium production. Uranium industry experts estimate global demand for the mineral to double in the next 25 years. This is fuelled by China's ambitious plan to increase nuclear energy capacity five-fold to 40 gigawatt by 2020, equalling Russia nuclear plans for 2030, and twice as large as India's ambitions. Japan intends to add 11 more nuclear power plants by 2010 and China 24 by 2020. The demand has seen uranium prices doubling last year - and increasing sixfold in the last five years - at US$72 per pound. Namibia has eight known uranium deposits - most in the Erongo Region - and produces approximately seven per cent of the world market needs. Two uranium mines, Roessing Uranium mine and Langer Heinrich Uranium, are currently operational. During the past six months the Namibian Government has awarded 15 uranium exploration licences while six more companies hope to prospect for uranium. According to the organisation Wise-Uranium they are Extract Resources, Kalahari Minerals, West Africa Gold Exploration, Forsys Metals Corporation, Westport Resources, Galahad Gold, UraMin, Namura Mineral Resources, Xemplar Energy, Australian United Gold, Bannerman Resources, Cheetah Minerals Exploitation, Corporate Resources Consultant, Etruscants Resources Namibia, the Chinese company Nam-China Minerals &Development, Namibia Mineral Mining Plants &Products, New Mining Company, Philco Twenty, Reptile Investment Four, Jaco Floris Smith and Nova Energy. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 442 nuclear power reactors operate worldwide in 30 countries, including South Africa. These reactors supply about 16 per cent of the world's electricity. This percentage has been roughly stable since 1986. To date, the use of nuclear power has been concentrated in industrialised countries. In terms of new construction, however, the pattern is different. Of the 29 new reactors under construction, 16 are in developing countries. South Africa has plans to increase its nuclear power-generating capacity and Algeria, Egypt and Nigeria have been expressing interest in nuclear power for electricity production and the desalination of seawater. The Namibian Government has joined the fray by investigating the possibility of building its own nuclear power plant. Meanwhile, Africa's first conference on nuclear energy's contribution to sustainable development last week declared that the continent should not be restricted in the use of peaceful nuclear technology. Ministers and officials from 45 countries pledged in a joint statement to promote the safe and accountable use of nuclear energy in Africa. The two-day meeting was held in Algiers, Algeria, and delegates discussed Africa's need for electricity from nuclear power stations and discussed how nu­clear radiation research may help advance health care, agriculture, industry and the environment. Africa has no nuclear weapons. Material on this site copyright The Free Press Of Namibia (Pty) Ltd PO Box 20783 - Windhoek - 42 John Meinert Street Tel: +264 (61) 279600 - Fax: +264 (61) 279602 ***************************************************************** 77 [NukeNet] Nevada Test Site Convergence Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:06:24 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61] X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61 X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) Dear members of Nukenet, Nevada Desert Experience is an interfaith nonprofit that has campaigned for an end to nuclear weapons testing since 1982. We are writing you because we know you share our concerns about the threats of nuclear weapons-related violence looming large in 2007. From the Bush Administration's threats of war on Iran, to political fallout from the North Korean nuclear test, to the Divine Strake chemical detonation at the Nevada Test Site, to the new Complex 2030 plan to spend $150 billion on new nuclear weapons, this is a crucial time for collective action. In response to the urgent threats of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, we are calling members of concerned groups to gather in the desert near the Nevada Test Site, site of nearly 1,000 nuclear weapons tests since 1951. We will be speaking out against nuclear proliferation at home and abroad and building momentum for nuclear abolition, which includes transforming the Test Site into a facility that serves human and environmental needs. Would you or your organization be willing to collaborate with us on this event? We need help ranging from partnering in the visioning and organizing work, to attending as speakers or participants, to passing on the word to your members, to endorsing the event on paper. We appreciate any help and input you are moved to give us in response to the present nuclear danger. Our "Many Faiths, One Heart" mobilization will take place on Sunday, April 1st, 2007. This rally will be the culmination of our annual 65-mile Sacred Peace Walk from Las Vegas to the Nevada Test Site, March 27 to April 1. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the rally will feature speakers and musicians from many faiths as well as our secular allies and will end with an optional, nonviolent direct action at the gates of the Test Site. The weekend will also be a chance for people to create a peace camp in the desert outside the Test Site. Mark your calendars and consider attending this gathering on April 1st at the entrance of the Nevada Test Site. Together let us speak the truth about those forces that are harming people, land and future through their wasteful nuclear development and war-making and forge a new way. Please let us know if you would like to be involved in this event. We would appreciate your responding by end of January 2007 so we can include you in our planning. Many thanks! In sincere gratitude for all that you do, Chelsea Collonge Nevada Desert Experience www.nevadadesertexperience.org 702-646-4814 _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://mail.energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 78 Gallup Independent: Doomsday Clock ticking - Monday, Jan. 15. By Kathy Helms Dine Bureau Gallup Independent WINDOW ROCK -- The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will move the minute hand of the "Doomsday Clock" on Jan. 17, the first such change to the clock since February 2002. The action reflects growing concerns about a "Second Nuclear Age," marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, as well as unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere. The continuing "launch-ready" status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks are other concerns. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project and were deeply concerned about the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. In 1947 the Bulletin introduced its clock to convey the perils posed by nuclear weapons through a simple design. The "Doomsday Clock" evoked both the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero). In 1949 Bulletin leaders realized that movement of the minute hand would signal the organization's assessment of world events. The decision to move the minute hand is made by the Bulletin's Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates. The Bulletin's "Doomsday Clock" has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to nuclear weapons and other threats. The clock now sits at seven minutes. The Jan. 17 event begins at 9:30 a.m. and will take place simultaneously in Washington D.C., at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and at 2:30 p.m. GMT in London at The Royal Society. A live, two-way satellite feed will connect the Washington, D.C., and London events. CLOCK'S TICKING News that the hand of the Doomsday Clock will be moved comes just 10 days before the 56th anniversary of the beginning of atomic testing at the Nevada Test Site, which spread radioactive fallout across the Navajo Nation and the continental United States. To date, few health studies have been conducted and few Navajos have been compensated for their illnesses. Downwinders United, which includes victim from Arizona, New Mexico and five other states, are charging that the detonation of Divine Strake scheduled for this spring at the Nevada Test Site is in all likelihood part of the Bush administration's desire to eventually resume testing. The test would detonate 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil to simulate blasts that may be able to destroy underground targets. According to Defense Department budget documents, the Divine Strake test is designed to identify the smallest nuclear yield necessary to destroy such targets. NEW NUKES? But after critics pointed out that Congress specifically eliminated funding for new nuclear weapons such as bunker busters and mini nukes, the Defense Department claimed that the inclusion of the word "Nuclear" was a mistake -- a claim downwinders aren't buying. Preston Truman of Downwinders United said, "In truth, they made an error that disclosed what they did not want the public to know -- that the test is indeed nuclear-related and that research in the development of nuclear bunker busters is still ongoing despite the wishes of Congress and the vast majority of downwind residents." Truman said the size of the blast itself far exceeds the capacity for delivering a conventional weapon of that size. "Bunker busters of that yield would have to be mini nukes," he said. "Does the Pentagon really think the American public, especially those downwind, are that slow on the uptake?" Truman said further evidence of the Bush Administration's plans to enter a new nuclear era were reflected in an exclusive report by William J. Broad in the New York Times. According to the article, the Bush administration is expected to announce a decision regarding the country's first new nuclear warhead in nearly 20 years. GROWING DISTRUST U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, who represents Utah Navajos, sent a letter this week to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency expressing disappointment with the public meetings held in Utah on Divine Strake. While they appreciate the efforts of the Department of Energy and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in conducting public meetings, they said, "We fully agree with the disappointment felt by many of our constituents over the lack of a plenary session, where a senior government expert would speak on the record and answer questions in front of all the meetings' attendees. "This is especially disconcerting since DTRA did make a commitment to us to conduct such a plenary session at the meetings." Hatch and Matheson also took issue with the format, which was similar to that used by the Office of Surface Mining during some of the Black Mesa Environmental Imact Statement public meetings. "The format used had important deficiencies," they said. Attendees were confused as to which of the 22 experts to ask a specific question and also stated that the answers they received were not consistent. "Of course, this only increases the much deserved distrust that many Utahns have toward statements made by the federal government regarding radiation and activities at the Nevada Test Site," they said. To correct the situation, "DOE and DTRA should conduct additional plenary sessions, where questions can be put to government experts on the record and the answers can be heard by all of the meetings' attendees," they said. Only three meetings were scheduled: two in Utah and one in Nevada. Downwinders have called for additional hearings on the Navajo Reservation and in several other states, including Arizona and New Mexico. For info: http://www.thebulletin.org ***************************************************************** 79 [NukeNet] Formal Protest Filed Over Livermore Lab Bid Rejection Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:38:46 -0800 X-Nohoney: yes white-hard - relay H=adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (192.energy-net.org) [63.203.231.61] X-Sender-Host-Address: 63.203.231.61 X-Sender-Host-Name: adsl-63-203-231-61.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) Hi -- Here is the latest news from the "green bid." Read on... Peace, Marylia for further information: Marylia Kelley (925) 443-7148 Jay Coghlan (505) 989-7342 for immediate release, Tuesday, January 16, 2007 Green Team Files Formal Protest Over Livermore Lab Bid Rejection; Federal Action Was "Factually Incorrect, Unsubstantiated, Biased, and Prejudicial" A team of organizations seeking to transform the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) into an environmental research facility today filed a formal protest with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for denying its management proposal. The fourteen-page document claims "improper and biased handling" of the group's bid. Livermore Lab GREEN, LLC charges that DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) acted improperly by rejecting the bid on grounds that were "factually incorrect, unsubstantiated, biased and prejudicial, contrary to regulations and/or easily corrected." The bidders seek legal relief in the form of "reinstatement" as an active competitor for the LLNL contract. The protest also requests a suspension of the NNSA's procurement process until the group is put back on equitable footing with other bidders. The protest was filed under provisions of Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR). "Our protest rests on the basic moral and legal principle of fair competition," explained Marylia Kelley, Executive Director of Tri-Valley CAREs and a leader of the bidding team. "Our bid was unfairly eliminated >from the competition because NNSA officials involved in the evaluation did not agree with its philosophical and political approach to attracting more civilian science to Livermore Lab and moving the facility away from classified nuclear weapons activities over time." The protest charges the NNSA: o Made factually-incorrect assertions in its grounds for rejecting the bid, including by claiming that information was missing from the bid package when it was there. o Made unsubstantiated allegations in its basis for rejecting the bid, including allegations that the bid would "inhibit NNSA from complying with the law" even though the bid closely aligned with congressional directives to remove weapons-usable plutonium from Livermore Lab before 2014. o Acted in a biased and prejudicial manner in its rejection of the bid by treating the Livermore Lab GREEN, LLC and its proposal differently than it treated competitors. o Used grounds in rejecting the bid that could easily have been corrected under the provisions of FAR, for example by rejecting the group's proposal because it provided the managing entity's board of directors list but not the lists for other partners. o Conducted a legally-deficient process in disallowing the GREEN, LLC bid, including by canceling a debriefing meeting as team members were calling in, and then refusing to reschedule it. The group also cited congressional disapproval of the NNSA's Livermore Lab bidding process. The GREEN LLC's protest includes Representative David Hobson's letter late last year as Chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee. Hobson wrote: "In mandating competition, it was the intent of Congress to attract the widest possible group of interested bidders... The Department of Energy has resisted moving in the direction of fair and open competitive processes. Unfortunately, the Department hasŠ telegraphed to the contractor community that innovative ideas and concepts would not be favorably received." "Congress is increasingly recognizing that DOE, particularly its nuclear weapons arm, makes up its own rules to suit itself," concluded Jay Coghlan, Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, another member of the bidding team. "Our proposal for transforming Lawrence Livermore must be reinstated so the U.S. can comply with its legal obligations to strengthen the global nonproliferation regime, and not undermine it with new nuclear weapons and expanding production." Under the Federal Acquisition Regulations, NNSA is required to provide for inexpensive, procedurally simple and expeditious resolution of the Livermore Lab GREEN, LLC protest. This process can include alternative dispute resolution, third party review and use of other agency's personnel. The Livermore lab GREEN, LLC's protest welcomes all these approaches. Moreover, it also requests that the NNSA establish an "independent review" for the protest, as allowed under FAR. "We are entitled to a process that is both timely and fair," commented Tri-Valley CAREs' Staff attorney, Loulena Miles. "As the protest makes clear, NNSA could put the 'green team' back on equitable footing with the other bidders expeditiously and avoid a potentially prolonged suspension." - - 3 0 - - A copy of the full GREEN, LLC protest letter is available by fax or email from Tri-Valley CAREs at (925) 443-7148 Marylia Kelley, Executive Director Tri-Valley CAREs 2582 Old First Street Livermore, CA 94551 Ph: (925) 443-7148 Fx: (925) 443-0177 Web: www.trivalleycares.org Email: marylia@trivalleycares.org or marylia@earthlink.net _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://mail.energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 80 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Radioactive animal carcasses reburied at Hanford [seattlepi.com] Tuesday, January 16, 2007 · Last updated 12:17 p.m. PT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS RICHLAND, Wash. -- Carcasses of animals used in radiological experiments at Hanford are among more than 40,000 tons of waste workers dug up and reburied on the nuclear reservation. Closure Hanford remediation manager Mark Buckmaster told the Hanford Advisory Board last week that up to 1,000 animals at a time were kept at a farm near F Reactor along the banks of the Columbia River. They included rodents, cats, dogs, cows, sheep, goats, pigs and alligators. No alligator carcasses were found, however. The remains and wastes were buried in large trenches. The waste was reburied at the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, a lined landfill for low-level radioactive waste on the nuclear reservation. The animal experiments started during World War II to learn the effect of radiation on people. Some were planned to learn about the health effects of radiation on workers, while others were for military purposes, Hanford records indicate. The farm continued to operate during the Cold War into the 1970s. [advertising] Buckmaster said about 95 percent of the waste dug up from trenches was manure, much of which was contaminated with radioactive strontium 90. Animal carcasses and sawdust also were recovered from the trenches. Only minimal radioactive contamination was found in the carcasses, he said. Richland historian Michele Gerber has said the experiments initially were done on fish, but other species were included after the animal testing program expanded in the 1950s. The largest testing program used sheep to determine the possible health effects of radioactive iodine released from Hanford stacks as irradiated fuel was processed to remove plutonium. Different concentrations of radioactive iodine were included in the sheep's feed during the program that lasted a decade, Gerber said. Dogs were used for a time to test the health effects of breathing radioactive particles. Another program used hairless pigs to determine what might happen to soldiers if they entered a nuclear battlefield, she said. Workers are doing the final cleanup of the animal farm trenches, which should be ready to backfill this summer, Buckmaster said. Information from: Tri-City Herald, http://www.tri-cityherald.com [advertising] Buy a link [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 ***************************************************************** 81 Tri-City Herald: DOE names PNNL scientist as director of isotope program Published Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer A new national role for Richland scientist Darrell Fisher could lead to more access to potentially life-saving treatments using medical isotopes. The Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy has named Fisher, of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the scientific director of the nation's isotope program. Under a new plan, DOE's Isotope Program would be managed by a contractor organization rather than federal officials in Washington, D.C. PNNL and at least one other national laboratory would manage the program with Fisher providing scientific leadership. An audit by the DOE Office of Inspector General in late 2005 found DOE was not providing research isotopes that could lead to breakthroughs for the diagnosis and treatment of cancers and other diseases. DOE had not produced isotopes as scheduled, had impaired research by its pricing policy and had spent scarce dollars to maintain facilities that were unused or underused rather than for production, the audit found. The main objective of reconstructing the National Isotope Program was to improve the match between the federal role in producing isotopes and the requests for isotopes for use, Fisher said. He leads the radioisotopes program at PNNL, and his work as a medical physicist and radioisotope scientist has led to advances in the use of radioisotopes for cancer treatment. "The most critical need is to develop a reliable supply of alpha-emitters," he said. Certain isotopes emit alpha radiation that is more powerful for treatment of some diseases than isotopes that emit beta radiation. The high energy released by the alpha particles, with their short range and short half-life, can destroy tumor cells with minimal damage to healthy tissues. They have shown promise for treating usually fatal diseases, including a lethal form of skin cancer, metastatic melanoma and bone cancers caused by the spread of breast or prostate cancer. Radioactive isotopes also recently have shown potential for killing the HIV cells that lead to AIDS. But researchers have complained that getting the isotopes needed for medical studies is difficult. In some cases research projects have been canceled because isotopes were unavailable or prohibitively expensive. At PNNL, researchers have been able to make a generator for an alpha-emitting isotope, bismuth 212, that is sent to researchers who produce the isotopes for their projects on site. Bismuth 212 has a half-life of about an hour, meaning half of it decays every hour. Not only does the DOE Isotope Program need to be responsive to requests for isotopes, but needs to support small businesses more than it has in the past, Fisher said. As the scientific director for the program, Fisher also will work to serve the needs of government agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, and industries in addition to medical that depend on radioactive isotopes. "I'm confident that a revitalized isotope program -- in collaboration with private industry and other federal agencies -- will improve DOE's ability to provide users with the variety and quality of isotopes they need," Fisher said in a statement. He will be responsible for developing a strategy for integrating isotope development and applications at five national laboratories. He will split his time between Richland and Washington, D.C. He received his doctorate in nuclear engineering sciences in 1978 from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a member of the American Nuclear Society, the Society of Nuclear Medicine and the Health Physics Society. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 82 ABQJOURNAL: State Says Sandia Lab Allowed To Do Work on Landfill Albuquerque Journal Tuesday, January 16, 2007 Associated Press An environmental group is complaining about work Sandia National Laboratories is doing to cover a toxic waste dump, but state Environment Department officials said Tuesday the work is allowed. Citizen Action — which filed a court challenge seeking the waste's removal — contended Sandia has begun constructing a dirt and vegetation cover for the dump at Kirtland Air Force Base although the New Mexico Environment Department did not approve it. James Bearzi, chief of the department's hazardous waste bureau, said the so-called subgrade work at Sandia was approved last September. "It's a narrow aspect of the preparation for building the cover'' that involves laying dirt to smooth over the landfill's surface to prevent water runoff, he said. "We didn't get any public comments on this aspect of the plan one way or the other,'' Bearzi said. "We also didn't have any concerns.'' Sandia officials have said the landfill doesn't contain enough waste to warrant a cleanup. The state rejected Sandia's overall plan last November because some parts needed clarification and others needed changing, Bearzi said. State officials currently are evaluating Sandia's responses, he said. Environmental covers have proved to be effective, particularly in climates like New Mexico's, Bearzi said. Sandia's current work does not impede its ability to monitor and do sampling at the site, said lab spokesman Will Keener. Environment Secretary Ron Curry said the monitoring system is working. "If groundwater or air were in danger of being contaminated by waste from the landfill, we would know about it,'' he said. Citizen Action has had a challenge before the state Court of Appeals since 2005 against Curry's decision to leave toxic and radioactive waste in the landfill. The group contends the waste poses a danger to Albuquerque's water and air, and wants it removed. Copyright ©2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This Copyright Albuquerque Journal ***************************************************************** 83 DOE: Notice of Availability of the Supplement to the Draft FR Doc E7-409 [Federal Register: January 16, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 9)] [ Notices] [Page 1710-1711] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr16ja07-30] Environmental Impact Statement for the Gilberton Coal-to-Clean Fuels and Power Project AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of availability. SUMMARY: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announces the availability for public comment of a Supplement to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Gilberton Coal-to-Clean Fuels and Power Project (DOE/ EIS-0357D-S1), prepared in response to comments on the original Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) issued in December 2005. This Supplement corrects information regarding carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the proposed Gilberton plant, provides information on the feasibility of carbon sequestration for the CO2 emissions from the Gilberton plant, and presents additional information regarding CO2-related cumulative impacts. It should be noted that the Supplement contains only those sections affected by comments related to CO2 emissions and sequestration, and DOE is inviting comments only on those sections. Comments on the original Draft EIS need not be resubmitted. DATES: DOE invites the public to comment on the Supplement to the Draft EIS during the public comment period, which ends February 27, 2007. DOE will consider all comments postmarked or received during the public comment period in preparing the Final EIS, and will consider late comments to the extent practicable. DOE will consider and respond to all comments submitted on the original Draft EIS in preparing the Final EIS. ADDRESSES: Requests for information about this Supplement to the Draft EIS or to receive a copy of the Supplement or the Draft EIS should be directed to: Janice L. Bell, NEPA Document Manager, U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory, M/S 58-247A, P.O. Box 10940, Pittsburgh, PA 15236. Additional information about the Supplement or the Draft EIS may also be requested by telephone at: (412) 386-4512, or toll-free at: 1-866-576-8240. The Supplement to the Draft EIS will be available at http:// www.eh.doe.gov/nepa. The original Draft EIS is available at the same Internet address. Copies of the Supplement to the Draft EIS are also available for review at the locations listed in the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section of this Notice. Written comments on the Supplement to the Draft EIS can be mailed to Janice L. Bell, NEPA Document Manager, at the address noted above. Written comments may also be submitted by fax to: (412) 386-4806, or submitted electronically to: jbell@netl.doe.gov. In addition, oral comments on the Supplement to the Draft EIS can be provided by calling the toll-free telephone number: 1- 866-576-8240. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For general information regarding the DOE NEPA process, please contact: Ms. Carol M. Borgstrom, Director, Office of NEPA Policy and Compliance (GC-20), U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585, Telephone: (202) 586-4600, or leave a message at: (800) 472-2756. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Background The Department prepared this Supplement to the Draft EIS in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.), the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations that implement the procedural provisions of NEPA (40 CFR parts 1500-1508), and the DOE procedures implementing NEPA (10 CFR part 1021). In the original Draft EIS, issued in December 2005, DOE's proposed action (and preferred alternative) is to provide cost-shared funding to design, construct, and operate a new plant to demonstrate coproduction of 41 MW of electricity, steam, and over 5,000 barrels-per-day of ultra-clean liquid hydrocarbon products (primarily diesel fuel and naphtha). The demonstration plant would use a gasifier to convert coal waste to synthesis gas, which would be conveyed to Fischer-Tropsch (F- T) liquefaction facilities for production of liquid fuels and to a combined-cycle power plant. The demonstration facilities, to be constructed in Gilberton, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, would process up to 4,700 tons per day of coal waste (anthracite culm). The potential environmental impacts of this action are evaluated in the Draft EIS. The Draft EIS also analyzed the No Action Alternative, under which DOE would not provide cost-shared funding to demonstrate the commercial-scale integration of coal gasification and F-T synthesis technology to produce electricity, steam and liquid fuels. Under the No-Action Alternative, it is reasonably foreseeable that no new activity would occur. Among the public comments received on the Draft EIS were those from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) regarding how the Draft EIS addressed CO2 emissions. The NRDC comments expressed concern about the potential impacts on global warming and questioned the accuracy of the annual rate of CO2 emissions reported in the Draft EIS. The comments also requested DOE to enhance the analysis of potential CO2-related cumulative impacts, further explore the feasibility of CO2 sequestration, and provide a public comment opportunity on the revised sections of the EIS. DOE also received similar comments on CO2 emissions and carbon sequestration from other organizations and individuals: the Coalition of Concerned Coal Region Citizens; the Mid-Atlantic Environmental Law Center; the Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future; Mike Ewall; Edward and Helen Sluzis; and James Kotcon. In considering the comments received on the Draft EIS, DOE determined that the annual rate of CO2 emissions reported in the Draft EIS included only the quantity of CO2 that would be emitted directly. The reported quantity did not include a larger quantity of CO2 in a concentrated stream exiting the gas cleanup system. While it was previously anticipated that the concentrated CO2 stream would be sold as a byproduct, the industrial participant has informed DOE that the commercial sale of the CO2 would not occur in the foreseeable future. Therefore, all of the CO2 would be emitted to the atmosphere. DOE has prepared the Supplement to clarify the total emissions rate accordingly. DOE has also enhanced the discussion of cumulative impacts and the feasibility of carbon sequestration. Availability of the Supplement to the Draft EIS Copies of this Supplement to the Draft EIS have been distributed to Members of Congress, Federal, State, and local officials, and agencies, organizations and individuals who may be interested or affected. To obtain copies of the Supplement and the original Draft EIS, see ADDRESSES above. The Supplement and the Draft EIS are also available in the public reading rooms of the following public libraries: Frackville Free Public Library, 56 N. Lehigh [[Page 1711]] Avenue, Frackville, PA 17931; Mahanoy City Public Library, 17-19 West Mahanoy Avenue, Mahanoy City, PA 17948; and the Pottsville Free Library, 215 West Market Street, Pottsville, PA 17901. It should be noted that the Supplement contains only those sections affected by comments related to CO2 emissions and sequestration, and DOE is inviting comments only on those sections. Comments on the original Draft EIS need not be resubmitted. Issued in Washington, DC, on January 9, 2007. Mark J. Matarrese, Director, Office of Environment, Security, Safety and Health, Office of Fossil Energy. [FR Doc. E7-409 Filed 1-12-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 84 DOE: Notice of availability with request for public comment. [Docket No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2006-0957] FR Doc 07-118 [Federal Register: January 16, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 9)] [ Notices] [Page 1708-1709] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr16ja07-28] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ®MDBU¯*ERR01*®MDNM¯Multi-Agency Radiation Survey and Assessment of Materials and Equipment Manual AGENCY: Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: SUMMARY: The Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Energy (DOE), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are announcing for public comment the availability of a draft document, entitled the ``Multi-Agency Radiation Survey and Assessment of Materials and Equipment Manual'' (MARSAME). MARSAME provides information on planning, conducting, evaluating, and documenting radiological surveys for demonstrating compliance with measurable action levels. MARSAME, when finalized, will be a multi- agency consensus document. The agencies are seeking public comment in order to receive feedback from the widest range of interested parties and to ensure that all information relevant to developing the document is received. The agencies will review public comments received on the draft MARSAME as well as comments from a concurrent, independent, scientific peer review. Suggested changes will be incorporated, where appropriate, in response to those comments. DATES: The comment period closes on April 16, 2007. Comments received after that date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but no assurance can be given for consideration of late comments. ADDRESSES: Submit your comments by one of the methods: Follow the on-line instructions for submitting comments. Follow the on-line instructions for submitting comments. Mail: Air and Radiation Docket and Information Center, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Mail Code 6102T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW., Washington, DC 20460 or Chief, Rulemaking, Directives and Editing Branch, Division of Administrative Services, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Hand Delivery: Air and Radiation Docket and Information Center, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Ave., NW., Washington, DC. Such deliveries are only accepted during the Docket's normal hours of operation, and special arrangements must be made for deliveries of boxed information. Copies of all comments received by one agency will be periodically copied and sent to the others. Copies of the draft MARSAME and all comments received may be examined or copied for a fee electronically in , or in hard copy at the HQ EPA Docket Public Reading Room, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Room 3334, Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2006-0957, 1301 Constitution Ave., NW., Washington, DC 20460, and the NRC Public Document Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852-2747. The HQ EPA Docket Public Reading Room is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding legal holidays. The telephone number for the EPA HQ Docket Public Reading Room is (202) 566-1744. DOE, EPA, and NRC each have a publication number for MARSAME. They are: for DOE, DOE/EH-707; for EPA, EPA 402-R-06-002; for NRC, NUREG-1575, Sup. 1. A free single copy of the draft MARSAME may be requested by writing to: the Distribution and Mail Services Section, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001 or by fax to (301) 415-2289. The document is also available through the Internet at: . Instructions for Using the EPA Docket: Direct your comments to Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2006-0957. EPA's policy is that all comments received will be included in the public docket without change and may be made available online at , including any personal information provided, unless the comment includes information claimed to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Do not submit information that you consider to be CBI or otherwise protected through . The www.regulations.gov Web site is an ``anonymous access'' system, which means EPA will not know your identity or contact information unless you provide it in the body of your comment. If you submit an electronic comment, EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment and with any disk or CD-ROM you submit. If EPA cannot read your comment due to technical difficulties and cannot contact you for clarification, EPA may not be able to consider your comment. Electronic files should avoid the use of special characters, any form of encryption, and be free of any defects or viruses. All documents in the docket are listed in the index. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, e.g., CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, will be publicly available only in hard copy. Instructions for Using the MARSAME comment Web site: Alternatively, you may submit a comment via the comment system without going through . Users of the MARSAME comment Web site will be asked for their name and e-mail address, and then will receive a username and password at the e-mail address that was submitted. User's names and e-mail address will not appear in any public document or database. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Any of the following points of contact for each agency for technical information (See ADDRESSES section above for directions on obtaining a copy of the draft MARSAME.): DoD: Steven Doremus, Phone: (757) 887-7745, U.S. Navy, NAVSEADET RASO, NWS, PO Drawer 260, Yorktown, VA 23691-0260; DOE: W. Alexander Williams, Phone: (301) 903-8149, U.S. Department of Energy (EM-23), 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585; EPA: Kathryn Snead; Phone: (202) 343-9228, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Mail Stop 6608J, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20460-1000; NRC: Robert A. Meck, Phone: (301) 415-6205, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Mail Stop T9-C39, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Questions concerning the multi- agency document development [[Page 1709]] project should be addressed to CAPT Colleen Petullo, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/U.S. Public Health Service, OSWER/ERT, PO Box 93478, Las Vegas, NV 89193-3478, (702) 784-8004. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: MARSAME provides information on planning, conducting, evaluating, and documenting environmental radiological surveys for demonstrating compliance with measurable action levels applied to materials and equipment. MARSAME, when finalized, will be a multi-agency consensus document and a supplement to the Multi-Agency Radiation Survey and Site Investigation Manual (MARSSIM). MARSAME was developed collaboratively over the past five years by the technical staffs of the four Federal agencies having authority for control of radioactive materials: DoD, DOE, EPA, and NRC (60 FR 12555; March 7, 1995). For a time, staff from the Department of Homeland Security participated in the development of MARSAME. Contractors to the DOE, EPA, and NRC, and members of the public have been present during the open meetings of the MARSAME work group. MARSAME's objective is to describe standardized and consistent approaches for surveys, which provide a high degree of assurance that established action levels can be measured and an appropriate disposition of materials or equipment can be technically defended. The techniques, methodologies, and philosophies that form the bases of this manual were developed to be consistent with current Federal limits, guidelines, and procedures. Although Federal agency personnel are involved in the preparation of this document, the manual does not represent the official position of any participating agency at this time. An earlier draft of the document has been reviewed within the Federal agencies. Comments were received and comments from the review that reflected a technical error or flaw in logic or information flow were addressed. The other comments from the Federal agencies will be addressed along with the public comments. The public review is a necessary step in the development of a final multi-agency consensus document. The document will also receive formal technical peer review. The draft has not been approved by the participating agencies for use in part or in whole and should not be used, cited, or quoted except for the purposes of providing comments as requested. Reviewers are requested to focus on technical accuracy, and understandability. Reviewers are also requested to address five questions while reviewing MARSAME: (1) Does MARSAME provide a practical and implementable approach to performing radiation measurements of materials and equipment? Are there any major drawbacks to the proposed methods? (2) Is MARSAME technically accurate? (3) Does MARSAME provide benefits that are not available using current methods? What is the value of MARSAME in comparison with other currently available alternatives? (4) What are the costs associated with MARSAME in comparison with other currently available alternatives? (5) Is the information in MARSAME understandable and presented in a logical sequence? How can the presentation of material be modified to improve the understandability of the manual? Comments may be submitted as proposed modified text, or as a discussion. Comments should be accompanied by supporting bases, rationale, or data. To ensure efficient and complete comment resolution, commenters are requested to reference the page number and the line number of MARSAME to which the comment applies. Enter only the beginning page and line number, even if your comment applies to a number of pages or lines to follow. Comments corresponding to an entire chapter, an entire section, or an entire table should be referenced to the line number for the title of the chapter (always line number 1), section, or table. Comments on footnotes should be referenced to the line in the main text where the footnote is indicated. Comments on figures should be referenced to the page on which the figure appears. Figures do not have line numbers. The figure number should be included in the text of the comment. Comments on the entire manual should be referenced to the title page. Title: Draft Multi-Agency Radiation Survey and Assessment of Materials and Equipment Manual. For the Department of Defense, dated this 19th day of December, 2006. Alex Beehler, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Environment, Safety and Occupational Health). For the U.S. Department of Energy, dated this 1st day of January 2007. Andrew C. Lawrence, Director, Office of Nuclear Safety and Environment, Office of Health, Safety and Security. For the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, dated this 19th day of December 2006. Elizabeth Cotsworth, Director, Office of Radiation and Indoor Air. For the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, dated this 28th day of December 2006. James T. Wiggins, Acting Director, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research. [FR Doc. 07-118 Filed 1-12-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 85 Tracy Press: Site 300 radiation rise miniscule In his Jan. 9 commentary, Uranium a big threat to Tracy (a response to my letter of Dec. 27) Marion Fulk makes several statements that warrant a response. Fulk says that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratorys Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement states that planned activities at Site 300 will increase the surrounding communitys exposure to radiation nearly fourfold, from 2.5 person-rem per year to 9.8 person-rem per year. This statement, taken in isolation, might sound like a matter of great concern to those who are not familiar with the subjects of radiation risk assessment and collective dose. That is why it is so important to set the record straight. First, the 9.8 person-rem collective dose is the hypothetical total radiation dose (from Site 300 operations) projected to be received by all the people living within a 50-mile radius of Site 300. This is not the dose that would be received by each individual. To put this additional collective dose in perspective, consider that the collective dose to the same population from natural background radiation is about 2 million person-rem each year. Thus, an increase in collective dose from 2.5 person-rem per year to 9.8 person-rem per year is only an increase of from about 0.0001 percent to 0.0005 percent of the dose already being received by all Tracy residents from the natural background radiation that is all around us everyday. It is difficult to understand how one can claim that such a minuscule increase in radiation dose is a very real health risk. The hypothetical dose received by an imaginary person assumed to be living at the Site 300 boundary is more than 5,000 times lower than the dose we all receive each year from natural background radiation. For additional perspective, this hypothetical site-boundary dose is 10 times less than the internal radiation dose we all receive each year from the uranium which is naturally present in the environment, and is about 100 times less than the dose a person receives from a cross-country plane flight or from a typical chest X-ray. And since no one actually lives at the site boundary, the doses received by any real person would be far less than these calculated hypothetical doses. This is why the environmental impact statement (and all the regulatory agencies that have reviewed that document) have concluded that releases of radioactive materials from Site 300 operations do not present any significant additional risks to members of the public. Not one regulatory agency has voiced concern over this proposal. In his commentary, Fulk implies that he is familiar with the Livermore lab and nuclear materials because he has conducted experiments with radioactive elements for the Department of Energy and worked at the lab for 18 years. Readers should realize there is a big difference between the levels of expertise required for simply working with radioactive materials and for radiation safety scientists like myself who have spent their entire career specializing in calculating radiation doses from intakes of radioactive materials and doing associated risk assessments. Finally, I am a member of this community and have a deep sense of responsibility for the health and safety of not only lab workers but also members of the public. I have friends and colleagues who live in Tracy, and my family and I live within a couple of miles of the lab. The hypothetical additional radiation doses from Site 300 releases are trivial in every sense of the word and are tiny, tiny fractions of the radiation dose we all receive each year from natural background radiation. As a radiation safety expert, I do not believe there is any technical or scientific cause for concern about the releases of radioactive materials used in explosive tests at Site 300. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************