***************************************************************** 01/31/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.25 ***************************************************************** 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 BBC: US money is 'squandered' in Iraq 2 America poised to strike at Irans nuclear sites 3 Europeans fear US attack on Iran as nuclear row intensifies 4 AFP: US takes new steps to isolate Iran 5 UPI: Bush: No plans for Iran invasion 6 Guardian Unlimited: Report: Iran Years From Nuclear Weapons 7 Guardian Unlimited: Senators Warn Against War With Iran 8 Guardian Unlimited: Europeans fear US attack on Iran as nuclear row 9 AFP: Iran two to three years from nuclear weapon - think tank - 10 AFP: Iran nuclear negotiator lukewarm on proposed 'timeout' 11 AFP: EU resisting US calls to up financial pressure on Iran 12 UPI: Seoul seeks written pledge from North 13 Guardian Unlimited: South Korea Stays Cautious Over N. Korea 14 AFP: North Korean nukes 'threat' to Russia: negotiator 15 Hankyoreh: Negroponte says N.K. sanctions serve as leverage, leaves 16 Interfax: Tougher measures may be taken if North Korea conducts more 17 YONHAP NEWS: U.S.-N.K financial talks not focused on immediate actio 18 Xinhua: S. Korea expects joint document adopted in six-party talks 19 Reuters: N.Korea eyes 2nd test if dispute not resolved 20 Korea Times: Seoul Wants Written Accord From Nuke Talks 21 Korea Times: New Chapter in Old Talks 22 AFP: Russia warns North Korea over nukes 'threat' NUCLEAR REACTORS 23 nuke power not the answer to climate change: Straightgoods 24 barrow in furness: Nuke facility two years away 25 Sydney Morning Herald: A nuclear water bargain hot enough to melt th 26 Sydney Morning Herald: No time for never-never solutions - 27 Sydney Morning Herald: Future is coal and nuclear, Howard says - 28 AU ABC: MP rejects suggested south coast nuclear sites 29 AU ABC: Mackay council plays down nuclear site listing 30 AU ABC: Townsville Mayor rejects nuclear push 31 AU ABC: Coastal region sites touted for nuclear plants 32 AU ABC: Portland named as potential nuclear site 33 Daily Yomiuri: Revelations of problems at N-plants disturbing 34 US: North County Times: Nuclear safety up in the air - 35 US: NRC: NRC Proposes $3,250 Civil Penalty for Mount Laurel, N.J., F 36 Interfax: Talks on sale of nuclear reactor to North Korea premature 37 India Defence: India to Build Four Fast Breeder Nuclear Reactors 38 World Nuclear News: WEC studies nuclear's role in Europe 39 World Nuclear News: Irregular control rod movements at Balakovo 40 US: NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste to Meet in Rockvill 41 US: World Nuclear News: DoE awards over $10m for GNEP siting studies 42 US: Aiken Today: Two local companies receive energy grants 43 US: ScienceNOW: A Congressman Brandishes His Gavel -- 44 RIA Novosti: First power unit at Balakovo NPP back online 45 Platts: WEC recommends more European nuclear power 46 Daily Yomiuri: TEPCO admits to 199 irregularities at N-plants 47 US: NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) Subcommitte 48 US: NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) Subcommitte 49 People's Daily Online: World energy council highlights nuclear power 50 Kommersant Moscow: Mishap at Nuclear Plant in Central Russia 51 US: Los Angeles Times: Climate is changing, politically - 52 Japan Times: Sumitomo eyes Westinghouse stake 53 US: Cape Cod Times: NRC to Pilgrim: Check reactor casing 54 AU ABC: Greens criticise 'self-serving' climate change report. 55 AU: ABC: Govt told to bin 'absurd' energy report. 56 AU: ABC: Australia ignoring solar power, says pioneer 57 US: KNDO/KNDU: Hanford Receives Money for GNEP Grant 58 US: REA: Nuclear Power Is Not A "Renewable Source of Energy" NUCLEAR SECURITY 59 US: Platts: US congressman says NRC security rule was 'industry infl 60 US: NRC: NRC to Meet with Public to Discuss Revisions, Additions to NUCLEAR SAFETY 61 US: PSR Alert: Protect those who are most at risk! 62 US: Las Vegas SUN: Federal judge in Las Vegas sets new hearing on 'D 63 US: SLO Trib: Potassium iodide pills’ shelf life extended by two yea 64 US: TND: Nanostructured Material Offers Environmentally Safe (DU) 65 US: Hanford News: Downwinders mark nuclear test day 66 SANA: British Expert unveils Israel use of enriched Uranium in lates 67 US: Spectrum: Divine Strake hearing transcript released 68 US: Boise Weekly: Proposed nuclear blasts stir old fears 69 US: Tracy Press: Fulk's depleted uranium facts are sound 70 US: Pittsburg Channel: Former NUMEC Workers Blame Company For Cancer 71 US: Salt Lake City Weekly: Same Old Bomb 72 US: Huliq: Novel Ames Lab composite may replace depleted uranium 73 US: PittsburghLIVE.com: Former Numec nuclear workers and survivors c 74 SA: Business Day: No radiation sickness in Pelindaba workers NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 75 reviewjournal.com: Agencies to spend $25 million retracing key Yucca 76 Las Vegas SUN: House trims Yucca Mountain budget as Nev. lawmakers p 77 US: Aiken Today: 'Modern Marvels' to feature waste facility 78 US: Aiken Today: Attempt to stall MOX in Congress fails 79 IEEE Spectrum: Nuclear Wasteland 80 KOLO: House Trims Yucca Mountain Budget 81 US: Platts: Uranium spot price tops $75/pound, Ux Consulting says 82 US: amarillo.com: Agency recognizes Pantex for pollution prevention 83 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Expansionist moguls 84 US: Carlsbad Current-Argus: WIPP acceleration funds no more PEACE 85 [NYTr] Cuba Calls for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons US DEPT. OF ENERGY 86 [DU-WATCH] Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab's Executioners Ready 87 [NukeNet] Sen. Domenici's Nuclear Lab Earmarks 88 KnoxNews: New Union leader at Oak Ridge vows to improve communicatio 89 The State: House vote might delay SRS funding 90 Tri-City Herald: DOE gives TRIDEC $1 million to study recycling fuel 91 Hanford News: Hanford budget part of appropriations measure: House l 92 Hanford News: Washington Closure names new chief - Charles Spencer n 93 Hanford News: DOE gives TRIDEC $1 million to study recycling fuel 94 Hanford News: Heart of America bill blasted 95 Carlsbad Current-Argus: Energy alliance to receive $1.59 million 96 Inside Bay Area: Legislators fed up with lab slip-ups 97 Idaho Press-Tribune: Poll finds support for renewable energy in Idah 98 Knox News: Expert urges 'feebates' to promote energy efficiency 99 lamonitor.com: Committee fumes, wants money back 100 lamonitor.com: Budget favors labs 101 WAVE 3 TV: Three months remain for Paducah to prove it is suitable f ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 BBC: US money is 'squandered' in Iraq Last Updated: Wednesday, 31 January 2007 [Enlarging the fresh water treatment plant near Baghdad] Iraqi reconstruction has seen limited progress, the audit says Millions of dollars in US rebuilding funds have been wasted in Iraq, US auditors say in a report which warns corruption in the country is rife. A never-used camp in Baghdad for police trainers with an Olympic-size swimming pool is one of the examples highlighted in the quarterly audit. Billions of budgeted dollars meanwhile remain unspent by Iraq's government. The report comes as President Bush is urging Congress to approve $1.2bn (£600m) in further reconstruction aid. The audit by Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction (Sigir), is the latest in a regular series of updates to Congress. Budgeting problems "The security situation continue to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors and threatening the overall reconstruction effort," says his 579-page report, which is due to be released later on Wednesday. Among the wide-ranging findings, the audit says that corruption continues to plague Iraq and infrastructure security remains vulnerable. Auditors express "significant concern" about the Iraqi government's record in managing and spending budgets. Billions of dollars budgeted for capital projects remained unspent at the end of 2006, the report says. Vague invoices As well as not spending funds, the audit also highlights ways in which money has been used either improperly or wastefully. US FUNDS IN IRAQ Security and justice 34% Electricity 23% Water 12% Economic, societal development 12% Oil and gas 9% Transport, communications4% Health care 4% Source: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction One case involved a payment by the US State Department of $43.8m to a contractor, DynCorp International, for a residential camp for police trainers outside the Adnan Palace grounds in Baghdad. The camp has never been used. The Iraqi Interior Ministry ordered $4.2m of work there, never authorised by the State Department, that included 20 trailers for important visitors and an Olympic-size swimming pool. The State Department has said that it is working to improve controls. Another example cited in the report is $36.4m spent by US officials on armoured vehicles, body armour and communications equipment that cannot be accounted for because invoices were vague and there was no back-up documentation. [n Iraqi passes by stacks of generators in a marketplace in Baghdad, Iraq] Generator sales have boomed given Baghdad's frequent power cuts Contracts have been awarded for virtually all of the $21bn earmarked by the US government for Iraqi reconstruction, and some 80% has been spent. Democrats, who now control the US Congress, have expressed concern at the prospect of devoting more funds to rebuilding efforts in Iraq. Rep Henry Waxman is planning in-depth hearings next week into charges of waste and fraud in Iraq. Since 2003, the way reconstruction aid is used has changed, with money originally destined for infrastructure programmes cut and more spent on areas like security and democracy projects. Electricity output remains below pre-war levels, while funds initially earmarked for water and sewerage have been cut by 50%, the audit says. Investigations The report also points to continuing high unemployment, put at 18% but widely believed to be under-reported, as a contributing factor in the insurgency. It concludes that the Iraqi government's "most significant challenge" continues to be strengthening the judiciary, prisons and the police. "The United States has spent billions of dollars in this area, with limited success to date." Mr Bowen's audit office began operations in March 2004 and is currently conducting 78 investigations, of which 23 have been referred to the US Department of Justice. There have so far been four convictions. His office, which was nearly closed down last year by Republicans, is now due to carry on its oversight work through 2008. ***************************************************************** 2 America poised to strike at Irans nuclear sites Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 12:57:20 -0600 (CST) January 28, 2007 Sunday Herald (Scotland) America 'poised to strike at Iran's nuclear sites' from bases in Bulgaria and Romania Report suggest that 'US defensive ring' may be new front in war on terror. By Gabriel Ronay PRESIDENT BUSH is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of April and the US Air Force's new bases in Bulgaria and Romania would be used as back-up in the onslaught, according to an official report from Sofia. "American forces could be using their two USAF bases in Bulgaria and one at Romania's Black Sea coast to launch an attack on Iran in April," the Bulgarian news agency Novinite said. The American build-up along the Black Sea, coupled with the recent positioning of two US aircraft carrier battle groups off the Straits of Hormuz, appears to indicate president Bush has run out of patience with Tehran's nuclear misrepresentation and non-compliance with the UN Security Council's resolution. President Ahmeninejad of Iran has further ratcheted up tension in the region by putting on show his newly purchased state of the art Russian TOR-Ml anti-missile defence system. Whether the Bulgarian news report is a tactical feint or a strategic event is hard to gauge at this stage. But, in conjunction with the beefing up of America's Italian bases and the acquisition of anti-missile defence bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, the Balkan developments seem to indicate a new phase in Bush's global war on terror. Sofia's news of advanced war preparations along the Black Sea is backed up by some chilling details. One is the setting up of new refuelling places for US Stealth bombers, which would spearhead an attack on Iran. "The USAF's positioning of vital refuelling facilities for its B-2 bombers in unusual places, including Bulgaria, falls within the perspective of such an attack." Novinite named colonel Sam Gardiner, "a US secret service officer stationed in Bulgaria", as the source of this revelation. Curiously, the report noted that although Tony Blair, Bush's main ally in the global war on terror, would be leaving office, the president had opted to press on with his attack on Iran in April. Before the end of March, 3000 US military personnel are scheduled to arrive "on a rotating basis" at America's Bulgarian bases. Under the US-Bulgarian military co-operation accord, signed in April, 2006, an airbase at Bezmer, a second airfield at Graf Ignitievo and a shooting range at Novo Selo were leased to America. Significantly, last year's bases negotiations had at one point run into difficulties due to Sofia's demand "for advance warning if Washington intends to use Bulgarian soil for attacks against other nations, particularly Iran". Romania, the other Black Sea host to the US military, is enjoying a dollar bonanza as its Mihail Kogalniceanu base at Constanta is being transformed into an American "place d'arme". It is also vital to the Iran scenario. Last week, the Bucharest daily Evenimentual Zilei revealed the USAF is to site several flights of F-l5, F-l6 and Al0 aircraft at the Kogalniceanu base. Admiral Gheorghe Marin, Romania's chief of staff, confirmed "up to 2000 American military personnel will be temporarily stationed in Romania". In Central Europe, the Czech Republic and Poland have also found themselves in the Pentagon's strategic focus. Last week, Mirek Topolanek, the Czech prime minister, and the country's national security council agreed to the siting of a US anti-missile radar defence system at Nepolisy. Poland has also agreed to having a US anti-missile missile base and interceptor aircraft stationed in the country. Russia, however, does not see the chain of new US bases on its doorstep as a "defensive ring". Russia's defence chief has branded the planned US anti-missile missile sites on Czech and Polish soil as "an open threat to Russia". SergeyIvanov, Russia's defence minister, spoke more circumspectly while emphasising Moscow's concern. He said: "Russia is not worried. Its strategic nuclear forces can assure in any circumstance its safety. Since neither Tehran, nor Pyongyang possess intercontinental missiles capable of threatening the USA, from whom is this new missile shield supposed to protect the West? All it actually amounts to is that Prague and Warsaw want to demonstrate their loyalty to Washington." Bush's Iran attack plan has brought into sharp focus the possible costs to Central and Eastern Europe of being "pillars of Pax Americana". ========= ***************************************************************** 3 Europeans fear US attack on Iran as nuclear row intensifies Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:18:26 -0600 (CST) Wednesday January 31, 2007 The Guardian www.guardian.co.uk Europeans fear US attack on Iran as nuclear row intensifies Transatlantic rift emerges over how to handle crisis America builds up its naval forces in the Gulf By Ian Traynor in Brussels and Jonathan Steele Senior European policy-makers are increasingly worried that the US administration will resort to air strikes against Iran to try to destroy its suspect nuclear programme. As transatlantic friction over how to deal with the Iranian impasse intensifies, there are fears in European capitals that the nuclear crisis could come to a head this year because of US frustration with Russian stalling tactics at the UN security council. "The clock is ticking," said one European official. "Military action has come back on to the table more seriously than before. The language in the US has changed." As the Americans continue their biggest naval build-up in the Gulf since the start of the Iraq war four years ago, a transatlantic rift is opening up on several important aspects of the Iran dispute. The Bush administration will shortly publish a dossier of charges of alleged Iranian subversion in Iraq. "Iran has steadily ramped up its activity in Iraq in the last three to four months. This applies to the scope and pace of their operations. You could call these brazen activities," a senior US official said in London yesterday. Although the Iranians were primarily in Shia areas, they were not confined to them, the US source said, implying that they had formed links with Sunni insurgents and were helping them with booby-trap bombs aimed at Iraqi and US forces, new versions of the "improvised explosive devices". Senior members of the US Congress have raised concerns that the US will attack Iran in retaliation for its alleged activities in Iraq. The official said there were no plans for "cross-border operations" from Iraq to Iran. But he said: "We don't want a progressively more confident and bolder Iran . The perception that Iran is ascendant in the region and that there are no limits to what Iran can do - that's what is destabilising." The Americans and Europeans have sought to maintain a common front on the nuclear issue for the past 30 months, with the European troika of Britain, France and Germany running failed negotiations with the Iranians and the Americans tacitly supporting them. But diplomats in Brussels and those dealing with the dispute in Vienna say a fissure has opened up between the US and western Europe on three crucial aspects - the military option; how and how quickly to hit Iran with economic sanctions already decreed by the UN security council; and how to deal with Russian opposition to action against Iran through the security council. "There's anxiety everywhere you turn," said a diplomat familiar with the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. "The Europeans are very concerned the shit could hit the fan." A US navy battle group of seven vessels was steaming towards the Gulf yesterday from the Red Sea, part of a deployment of 50 US ships, including two aircraft carriers, expected in the area in weeks. "No path is envisaged by the EU other than the UN path," the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, told the Guardian yesterday. "The priority for all of us is that Iran complies with UN security council resolutions." The IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, called at the weekend for a "timeout" in the worsening confrontation in an attempt to enable both sides to save face and climb down. But the Americans rejected the proposal and European officials involved in the dispute also believe the Iranians cannot be trusted to stick to a deal. Despite recurring tensions on the Middle East between the US and France, the French are the most hawkish of the Europeans on Iran and are said to back a US drive to tighten the noose on Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The populist and recalcitrant leader is perceived to have been weakened recently, in part because of a mishandling of the nuclear row. "One group of western countries thinks it's a good time to step up the pressure on Ahmadinejad. All options are on the table. Others are worried we might be stumbling into a war," said another diplomat familiar with the dispute. ======= http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2002329,00.html ======= ***************************************************************** 4 AFP: US takes new steps to isolate Iran by Jim Mannion Tue Jan 30, 7:47 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States took new steps to isolate Iran , announcing a freeze on the sale of all F-14 fighter parts and warning that an attempt by Tehran to block the flow of Gulf oil could be turned against it. President George W. Bush reiterated in a television interview that the US had no plans to invade Iran, but will step up diplomatic pressure to convince it to abandon its nuclear program. "And the best way to do so is to continue rallying other nations to join us and expressing ourselves very clear to the Iranians that 'You will be isolated, that you won't be able to achieve your greatness, that you'll hurt your people economically if you continue to insist upon a nuclear weapon,'" he told ABC News. Countering Iran has emerged as a prime objective of US policy as Washington struggles to stabilize Iraq and regain its footing in a region rife with both anti-American and sectarian tensions. Admiral William Fallon, Bush's nominee to replace General John Abizaid as commander of US forces in the Middle East, said Iran appeared to be developing military means to deny US forces access to the oil-rich Gulf. "But I would note this is not a one-sided game, or a one-sided situation, in that Iran is, I believe, critically dependent on its export of petroleum products for its economic vitality," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee . "And those exports go through the same Straits of Hormuz that they would potentially seek to deny us access to," he said. About a quarter of the world's oil goes through the straits, which are bordered by Iran on one side and Oman and the United Arab Emirates on the other. Experts say the closure of the straits would send oil prices soaring. Fallon's appointment, which the US Senate is expected to confirm, coincides with Bush's ordering a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Gulf. The arrival of the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis would raise the US naval presence in the region to its highest level since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Fallon said Bush had not asked him to update war plans for Iran and said he was not aware of any such plans at the US Central Command, which is responsible for US forces in the Gulf. "It seems to me in the entire approach to Iraq that we'll be looking for help from the region and ... at the full range of options that are open to us, diplomatically and every other way," he said. In Iraq, Bush confirmed last week that he has authorized the US military to kill or capture Iranian agents plotting attacks on US forces. "We'll deal with it by finding their supply chains and their agents and ... arresting them, getting them out of harm's way. In other words, we're going to protect our troops," Bush told ABC News. "It's not tough talk to say that the commander-in-chief expects our troops to be protected," he said. The Pentagon , meanwhile, froze the sales of all spare parts for F-14 fighter aircraft because of concerns they could be transferred to Iran, which bought F-14s from the United States before the 1979 Iranian revolution, a Defense Department spokeswoman said. The Defense Logistics Agency ordered the freeze January 26 "given the current situation in Iran," said Dawn Dearden, the agency's spokesman. The Pentagon had already suspended the sale of spare parts that either were specific to the F-14 or that could be used in other aircraft. The DLA said the parts sales are now the subject of a comprehensive review. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 5 UPI: Bush: No plans for Iran invasion United Press International - NewsTrack - 1/30/2007 8:55:00 PM -0500 WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- President Bush says he may have been misunderstood about defending against Iranians in Iraq -- the United States has no intention of invading Iran. In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Bush said an invasion was off the table. "We are going to protect our troops," he told ABC. "It is not tough talk to say the commander-in-chief expects our troops to be protected. That is common sense it seems to me. Some are trying to take my words and say what he is really trying to do is go invade Iran. Nobody is talking about that." The president said he wants to go after those who would harm U.S. troops in Iraq. "We'll deal with it by finding their supply chains and their agents and ... arresting them, getting them out of harm's way. In other words, we're going to protect our troops," Bush told ABC. "It's not tough talk to say that the commander in chief expects our troops to be protected." In addition, Bush is trying to diplomacy get the Iranians not to develop nuclear weapons. The president said the Iraqi government must go after "killers," whether they are Shiites or Sunni. "Unfortunately, extremists and killers have put in jeopardy this new government. And I made the judgment that they needed our help to secure their capital," Bush told ABC. He also appeared to be more open to the idea of global warming, saying it was time new technologies are used to combat it. The president's comments came as he began a trip to the Midwest to tout new economic figures. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 Guardian Unlimited: Report: Iran Years From Nuclear Weapons From the Associated Press [UP] Wednesday January 31, 2007 6:16 PM By RAPHAEL G. SATTER Associated Press Writer LONDON (AP) - Iran is two to three years away from having the capacity to build a nuclear weapon, a leading security think tank said Wednesday. But the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said domestic opposition to outspoken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could still help put the brakes on its nuclear development efforts. ``There are signs that political and economic pressure is having an impact in Tehran,'' said John Chipman, the institute's chief executive, speaking at the launch of the its annual publication, ``The Military Balance.'' Although Chipman said Iran could be as little as two years away from a bomb, other authorities say it could take Tehran significantly longer to reach that point. Both John Negroponte, the head of national intelligence for the U.S., and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, have said Iran is perhaps four years from the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. While Iran could conceivably build a bomb in two years, a three-year time frame was more likely, said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nonproliferation expert at the institute. He said estimates floated by U.S. intelligence were conservative - a likely result of its chastening experience in Iraq. ``The CIA is being extra cautious these days,'' he said. Chipman said Wednesday that Iran was on track to complete its goal of producing 3,000 centrifuges for producing highly-enriched uranium by the end of March or shortly thereafter. Many centrifuges had been obtained from the black market, he said. Iran ultimately plans to expand its program to 54,000 centrifuges, which spin uranium hexaflouride gas into enriched uranium, a metal. Iran says it aims to produce nuclear fuel to generate electricity. But if Iran chose, it could use the massive array of centrifuges to make enough weapons-grade material for dozens of nuclear warheads a year. Diplomats briefed on the IAEA's findings said this month that the Iranians recently finished pre-assembly work at its enrichment facility at Natanz, in central Iran, which has been built underground as protection against attack. In enrichment plants, centrifuges are linked by pipes in what are called cascades, which cycle the gas as it is processed. For now, the only known assembled centrifuge cascades in Iran are above ground at Natanz, consisting of two linked chains of 164 machines each and two smaller setups. The two larger cascades have been running only sporadically to produce small quantities of non-weapons grade enriched uranium, while the smaller assemblies have been underground ``dry testing'' since November, IAEA inspectors have reported. The U.N. on Dec. 23 imposed sanctions on Iran for pursuing enrichment efforts, and gave it 60 days to suspend the program. A diplomat knowledgeable about Iran's enrichment program said last week that Tehran may not be technologically advanced enough to put together thousands of centrifuges in series - work that would take months even for more developed countries. Chipman on Wednesday agreed. ``Getting the centrifuge cascades to function properly is then another task of an entirely different order of magnitude'' from installing the centrifuges, he said, adding that this process could take at least a year. Once Iran's planned 3,000-centrifuge cascade was operational, the institute predicted it would take another nine to 11 months to produce about 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium, enough for a single weapon, he said. Chipman also said it was possible that growing disquiet within Iran over Ahmadinejad's leadership - and the economic troubles linked to possible sanctions - may open a debate in the country on the wisdom of pursuing the nuclear program. ``Whether the internal debate will lead to a suspension in the enrichment program that would provide the basis for resumed negotiations remains to be seen,'' he said. The institute is widely considered the most important security think tank outside the United States. --- On the Net: International Institute for Strategic Studies: http://www.iiss.org/ Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: Senators Warn Against War With Iran From the Associated Press [UP] Wednesday January 31, 2007 3:16 AM AP Photo WCAP119 By ANNE GEARAN AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican and Democratic senators warned Tuesday against a drift toward war with an emboldened Iran and suggested the Bush administration was missing a chance to engage its longtime adversary in potentially helpful talks over next-door Iraq. ``What I think many of us are concerned about is that we stumble into active hostilities with Iran without having aggressively pursued diplomatic approaches, without the American people understanding exactly what's taking place,'' Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told John Negroponte, who is in line to become the nation's No. 2 diplomat as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's deputy. Obama, a candidate for president in 2008, warned during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that senators of both parties will demand ``clarity and transparency in terms of U.S. policy so that we don't repeat some of the mistakes that have been made in the past,'' a reference to the faulty intelligence underlying the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a possible presidential candidate, asked Negroponte if he thinks the United States is edging toward a military confrontation with Tehran. In response, Negroponte repeated President Bush's oft-stated preference for diplomacy, although he later added, ``We don't rule out other possibilities.'' Separately, the Navy admiral poised to lead American forces in the Middle East said Iran wants to limit America's influence in the region. ``They have not been helpful in Iraq,'' Adm. William Fallon told the Senate Armed Services Committee. ``It seems to me that in the region, as they grow their military capabilities, we're going to have to pay close attention to what they do and what they may bring to the table.'' The Bush administration has increased rhetorical, diplomatic, military and economic pressure on Iran over the past few months, in response to Iran's alleged deadly help for extremists fighting U.S. troops in Iraq and the long-running dispute over Iran's nuclear program. Bush said Tuesday the United States ``will deal with it'' if Iran escalates military action inside Iraq and endangers American forces. But, in an interview with ABC News, Bush emphasized this talk signals no intention of invading Iran itself. A day earlier, the president acknowledged skepticism concerning U.S. intelligence about Iran, because Washington was wrong in accusing Iraq of harboring weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. ``I'm like a lot of Americans that say, 'Well, if it wasn't right in Iraq, how do you know it's right in Iran,''' the president said. Washington accuses Iran of arming and training Shiite Muslim extremists in Iraq. U.S. troops have responded by arresting Iranian diplomats in Iraq, and the White House has said Bush has authorized U.S. troops to kill or capture Iranians inside Iraq. The United States also accuses Iran of secretly developing atomic weapons - an allegation Tehran denies. Iran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment lead the U.N. Security Council to impose limited economic sanctions. Senators including Hagel, George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., sounded frustrated with the administration's decision not to engage Iran and fellow outcast Syria in efforts to reduce sectarian violence in Iraq. Negroponte, a career diplomat who is leaving a higher-ranked job as the nation's top intelligence official, gave only a mild endorsement of the administration's diplomatic hands-off policy toward Damascus and Tehran. Negroponte would lead the department's Iraq policy if confirmed, as expected. He said Syria is letting 40 to 75 foreign fighters cross its border into Iraq each month and repeated the charge that Iran is providing lethal help to insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. Iran and Syria are not helping promote stability and peace in Iraq and understand what the United States and other nation expect of them. ``I would never want to say never with respect to initiating a high-level dialogue with either of these two countries, but that's the position, as I understand it, at this time,'' Negroponte said. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to approve Negroponte quickly for a job vacant since July. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 8 Guardian Unlimited: Europeans fear US attack on Iran as nuclear row intensifies Ian Traynor in Brussels and Jonathan Steele Wednesday January 31, 2007 The Guardian [Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Photograph: AP Senior European policy-makers are increasingly worried that the US administration will resort to air strikes against Iran to try to destroy its suspect nuclear programme. As transatlantic friction over how to deal with the Iranian impasse intensifies, there are fears in European capitals that the nuclear crisis could come to a head this year because of US frustration with Russian stalling tactics at the UN security council. "The clock is ticking," said one European official. "Military action has come back on to the table more seriously than before. The language in the US has changed." As the Americans continue their biggest naval build-up in the Gulf since the start of the Iraq war four years ago, a transatlantic rift is opening up on several important aspects of the Iran dispute. The Bush administration will shortly publish a dossier of charges of alleged Iranian subversion in Iraq. "Iran has steadily ramped up its activity in Iraq in the last three to four months. This applies to the scope and pace of their operations. You could call these brazen activities," a senior US official said in London yesterday. Although the Iranians were primarily in Shia areas, they were not confined to them, the US source said, implying that they had formed links with Sunni insurgents and were helping them with booby-trap bombs aimed at Iraqi and US forces, new versions of the "improvised explosive devices". Senior members of the US Congress have raised concerns that the US will attack Iran in retaliation for its alleged activities in Iraq. The official said there were no plans for "cross-border operations" from Iraq to Iran. But he said: "We don't want a progressively more confident and bolder Iran ... The perception that Iran is ascendant in the region and that there are no limits to what Iran can do - that's what is destabilising." The Americans and Europeans have sought to maintain a common front on the nuclear issue for the past 30 months, with the European troika of Britain, France and Germany running failed negotiations with the Iranians and the Americans tacitly supporting them. But diplomats in Brussels and those dealing with the dispute in Vienna say a fissure has opened up between the US and western Europe on three crucial aspects - the military option; how and how quickly to hit Iran with economic sanctions already decreed by the UN security council; and how to deal with Russian opposition to action against Iran through the security council. "There's anxiety everywhere you turn," said a diplomat familiar with the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. "The Europeans are very concerned the shit could hit the fan." A US navy battle group of seven vessels was steaming towards the Gulf yesterday from the Red Sea, part of a deployment of 50 US ships, including two aircraft carriers, expected in the area in weeks. "No path is envisaged by the EU other than the UN path," the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, told the Guardian yesterday. "The priority for all of us is that Iran complies with UN security council resolutions." The IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, called at the weekend for a "timeout" in the worsening confrontation in an attempt to enable both sides to save face and climb down. But the Americans rejected the proposal and European officials involved in the dispute also believe the Iranians cannot be trusted to stick to a deal. Despite recurring tensions on the Middle East between the US and France, the French are the most hawkish of the Europeans on Iran and are said to back a US drive to tighten the noose on Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The populist and recalcitrant leader is perceived to have been weakened recently, in part because of a mishandling of the nuclear row. "One group of western countries thinks it's a good time to step up the pressure on Ahmadinejad. All options are on the table. Others are worried we might be stumbling into a war," said another diplomat familiar with the dispute. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 9 AFP: Iran two to three years from nuclear weapon - think tank - News by Katherine Haddon Wed Jan 31, 4:58 PM ET LONDON (AFP) - Iran " /> Irancould be only two or three years away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon, the head of a leading international security think tank in London said. John Chipman, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said Iran had stockpiled 250 tonnes of uranium hexafluoride (UF6), which, when enriched, would be enough for 30 to 50 weapons. But he stressed that Iran still faced other obstacles before it could build a weapon. While Iran is "probably" on track to hit a target of producing 3,000 centrifuges -- the machines which enrich uranium -- at its nuclear facility in Natanz by the end of March, installing them and making them function properly would be complicated, Chipman said. "If and when Iran does have 3,000 centrifuges operating smoothly, the IISS estimates it would take an additional nine to 11 months to produce 25 kilogrammes (55 pounds) of highly enriched uranium, enough for one implosion-type weapon. "That day is still two to three years away at the earliest," he said. Launching the IISS's annual report assessing global military capability, Chipman added that the "main bottleneck" for producing weapons was learning how to run UF6 through linked cascades for long periods. "If Iran overcomes the technical hurdles, the possibility of military options to stop the programme will increase," he added. Although US President George W. Bush " /> President George W. Bushhas said the United States has no plans to invade Iran, Washington is isolating the Iranian regime over nuclear suspicions and allegations of complicity in attacks on US troops in Iraq " /> Iraq. In December, the United Nations " /> United NationsSecurity Council adopted a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran for its repeated refusal to freeze enrichment work. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime insists it only wants to use nuclear technology to generate energy, despite fears that it could be used to build an atomic bomb. Chipman said that the sheer volume of centrifuges was "a political act, designed to demonstrate technological achievement at home and defiance abroad." He added that having such a high number in place could provide Iran with a bargaining chip if international negotiations resume. "Having more centrifuges in place -- even if not operating -- would also put the programme at a higher plateau in the event negotiations resumed and Iran made an offer to cap the size," he added. Iran kicks off 10 days of celebrations Thursday marking the anniversary of its 1979 Islamic revolution, during which it is thought officials may announce the start of phase one of nuclear fuel production for industrial purposes. But it could face further sanctions later this month when Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency " /> International Atomic Energy Agency, submits a compliance report to the UN Security Council. Elsewhere in his speech, Chipman lent his voice to those criticising Bush's troop surge to Iraq, which will see an extra 21,500 military personnel deployed mainly to Baghdad. "Simply flooding one area of Iraq, in this case parts of Baghdad, with troops, neglects the subtler aspects of counter-insurgency doctrine," he said. "For a surge in troops to be sustainable, it has to be married with the second stage of the process." This meant building up administrative capacity and establishing the rule of law, he added. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 10 AFP: Iran nuclear negotiator lukewarm on proposed 'timeout' Wed Jan 31, 10:38 AM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran Iran's top nuclear negotiator has said he believes in the UN atomic watchdog chief's proposed "timeout" in the nuclear standoff but signalled no change in Iran's enrichment activities, state media have said. "We had a phone conversation with Mr. (Mohamed) ElBaradei on Monday. He said his proposal underlined that negotiations should start on Iran's nuclear issue and that the problem should be resolved by talks," Ali Larijani was quoted as saying by the IRNA news agency on Wednesday. "We believe in Mr. ElBaradei's position and think the nuclear issue should be resolved through negotiations," Larijani said in a joint news conference with Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi, who was on a surprise visit to Tehran. ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency International Atomic Energy Agency, suggested last week that Iran halt its controversial nuclear enrichment programme while the international community held off imposing UN endorsed sanctions. But Larijani said Iran would not "change its way", when asked whether the Islamic republic would suspend uranium enrichment as demanded in ElBaradei's proposal. The United States and its Western allies were dismissive of the call for a halt on both sides in order to stem tensions but Iranian ally and trading partner Russia expressed optimism that it could lead to a political solution of the crisis. Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Wednesday urged a resumption of talks without pre-conditions in a meeting with German ambassador to Tehran, Herbert Honosowitz. "The Islamic republic does not seek atomic weapons and the West should understand that," he said, according to the ISNA student news agency. "Resuming talks without pre-conditions is the best way to resolve the problem as nobody will benefit from tension." In December, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran for its repeated refusal to freeze enrichment work. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 11 AFP: EU resisting US calls to up financial pressure on Iran by Sylvie Lanteaume Wed Jan 31, 1:08 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - US demands to toughen financial sanctions against Iran " /> are opening fault lines in the US-European stand to punish Tehran for defying calls to rein its suspect nuclear program. Although European countries have agreed with the United States to impose sanctions on Iran in line with a UN resolution adopted in December, they are resisting US calls to go even further and force global financial institutions to sever all ties with the Islamic Republic. US Under Secretary in charge of fighting terrorist funding, Stuart Levey, has made several whirlwind trips to Europe over the past months to try to persuade European multinationals and banks to stop investing in Iran. But so far he has run into a brick wall, with European countries maintaining they are not ready to cut off banking links with Iranian companies, arguing that such a move goes beyond the spirit of the UN resolution. "We are going to do the utmost to apply the content of the resolution. We are not going to go beyond what is in the resolution as states," a senior European official told AFP. The stand is beginning to frustrate the US administration of President George W. Bush " /> which has accused Tehran of making a covert grab for nuclear weapons under the guise of its civilian atomic energy program. Iran has scoffed at the suggestions saying its program is merely for peaceful purposes, and has refused to stop its controversial uranium enrichment process despite the UN sanctions. Iranian officials are even promising to unveil a major advance in its nuclear drive this week as part of the celebrations to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. US officials this week gave vent to their mounting frustration, which comes as Bush has accused Iranian leaders of helping to foment the mounting sectarian violence in Iraq " /> , fuelling fears that the US could be preparing some kind of military response against Tehran. "The European response on the economic side has been pretty weak," one unnamed senior US official said quoted in The New York Times in an article headlined "Europe Resists US Push to Curb Iran Ties." "We are telling the Europeans that they need to go way beyond what they've done to maximize pressure on Iran," he added. However, this position does not seem to completely reflect the view of the US administration. "I think that the concerns that European governments are expressing have to do with their legal requirements. They have a set of legal requirements that they have to abide by," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "And I'm not sure I would call that resistance to discussing or cooperating on these various measures." European Union " /> foreign ministers last week agreed to implement the full raft of UN sanctions against Tehran and deplored "Iran's failure to take the steps repeatedly required by the IAEA board of governors and the United Nations " /> Security Council." A new EU meeting is planned in mid-February to put in place European regulations on the Iran sanctions which suspend all exports of material and technology to the Islamic Republic. The UN resolution also freezes Iranian assets abroad and restricts foreign travel by Iranians deemed to be involved in the suspect programs. Earlier this month the US Treasury Department " /> blacklisted Iran's fifth largest state-owned bank, Bank Sepah, alleging it had helped finance weapons proliferation. That measure came after another of Iran's largest banks was blacklisted in September because of its "support for terrorism." "Bank Saderat facilitates Iran's transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations each year," Levey said then. However, neither of the two banks figure on the lists of organizations and people targeted by UN resolution 1737, and Bush had to use a presidential decree to prohibit their financial activities in the US. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 12 UPI: Seoul seeks written pledge from North United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 1/31/2007 7:42:00 AM -0500 SEOUL, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- South Korea is seeking a written pledge from North Korea to dismantle its nuclear drive in upcoming talks, Seoul's diplomatic chief said Wednesday. But it would be a long process, Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said, cautioning against hopes for a breakthrough in the near future. The six-nation talks on ending the North's nuclear programs are to resume on Feb. 8 in China, following ongoing bilateral meetings between North Korea and the United States over financial sanctions on the communist country. "It is just a beginning. We cannot agree and implement all at one time," Song told a press briefing. "If we say (such an agreement) is a mountain, we have to reach a ridge where we have never been before." Seoul has been nervous over the Korean peninsula's security following its northern neighbor's nuclear missile tests last year and hopes the six-party negotiations -- comprising of the two Koreas, United States, Russia, Japan and China -- would succeed in ending the North's nuclear weapons drive in return for financial and economic assistance to the impoverished country. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 13 Guardian Unlimited: South Korea Stays Cautious Over N. Korea From the Associated Press [UP] Wednesday January 31, 2007 5:01 PM AP Photo SEL101 By KWANG-TAE KIM Associated Press Writer SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea's foreign minister sounded a note of caution ahead of six-nation talks on freezing the North's nuclear program, saying Wednesday there is far to go before a final agreement is reached. The negotiations - which involve the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan - are set to resume Feb. 8 in Beijing. ``We hope for a joint written document, but it remains to be seen whether the countries will reach an agreement,'' Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said at his regular briefing. His comments came as a U.S. Treasury envoy said his agency's suspicions of illegal financial activity involving North Korean-linked bank accounts had been ``vindicated'' in talks with Pyongyang officials. ``I think we are now in a position after a very lengthy investigation ... to start moving forward and trying to bring some resolution to this matter,'' said Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser, although he would not specify what type of resolution. John Negroponte, nominated by President Bush to serve in the No. 2 post in the State Department, said in Washington there were grounds for optimism due to continued international pressure on Pyongyang. U.S. efforts to isolate the North from the international financial system for alleged counterfeiting and money laundering, he said, ``can provide a bit of leverage'' at the six-nation talks. Washington has blacklisted a Macau bank it claims was complicit in North Korea's alleged illicit activities, making other institutions cautious of dealing with the North for fear of losing access to the U.S. market. North Korea has denied wrongdoing. The dispute led the North to walk out of the nuclear talks for more than a year. In October, while still boycotting the talks, North Korea conducted its first-ever nuclear weapon test. Arms negotiations resumed in December, but no progress was made due to the financial issue. Song said he expected the bank dispute to be resolved this week. But, he cautioned: ``It is just the beginning.'' ``We have a long way to go before we adopt a written agreement,'' he told reporters. Russia's envoy to the talks said he didn't expect immediate results from next week's talks, although those negotiations could lay the groundwork for a future agreement, the Interfax news agency reported. ``I think that there are unlikely to be any concrete or significant agreements resulting from these negotiations but we should be able to establish quite clearly the route to reaching them in subsequent meetings,'' Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said, according to Interfax. In unusually harsh language, Losyukov warned that North Korea's nuclear ambitions threatened Russia's Far East, which shares a border with the isolated Communist state. ``The population of the Far East is worried at the rise of this nuclear threat right on their doorstep,'' Losyukov told Interfax. He also warned North Korea not to stage more nuclear tests, saying this would bring a harsh international response. Wu Dawei, China's representative to the talks, expressed hopes the six nations can reach an agreement after three or four days, but added that ``this requires diligent efforts by all sides.'' South Korea's chief nuclear envoy said any new deal would call for disarmament over a short period, unlike a previous U.S.-North Korea agreement in 1994 that fell apart in late 2002, triggering the latest nuclear crisis. ``This is not a plan for that long of a term,'' Chun Yung-woo told reporters Wednesday, before leaving for Moscow to consult with Russian officials. ``This will have to be short-term.'' North Korea, meanwhile, kept up its harsh rhetoric against the United States. The North's official Korean Central News Agency accused Washington of conducting more than 110 reconnaissance flights over its territory in January, and accused South Korea of carrying out more than 70 similar spy flights. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 14 AFP: North Korean nukes 'threat' to Russia: negotiator January 31, 10:20 PM MOSCOW (AFP) - North Korea's nuclear weapons capability poses a threat to Russian interests, the chief Russian negotiator at international talks with Pyongyang has said. "If the absence of a nuclear weapon on the Korean peninsula is in our interests, and one of the countries located there declares that it has become a nuclear power, it means that our interests are put under threat," Alexander Losyukov was quoted as saying Wednesday by the Interfax news agency. Losyukov, who is due in Beijing for six-nation talks on February 8 over North Korea's nuclear programme, said that the process was not yielding the results the international community wanted. "I will not publicly judge how far this work has gone with North Korea, but the fact that they are not going in the direction that Russia and other negotiating partners would like is obvious," he said, Interfax reported. On Monday, Losyukov had expressed "cautious optimism," saying that "simply the agreement to hold a new round shows that encouraging signs have appeared regarding the movement of different participants' positions." The last round of talks in China in December ended in deadlock after Pyongyang demanded the lifting of US sanctions imposed for alleged money laundering and counterfeiting. The talks, which also include the United States, Japan and South Korea, have been on and off since 2003, but gained new urgency when North Korea conducted an atomic test in October last year. Copyright © 2007 AFP. All rights reserved. All information ***************************************************************** 15 Hankyoreh: Negroponte says N.K. sanctions serve as leverage, leaves open Hill's N.K. visit A top U.S. intelligence official endorsed sanctions against North Korea, saying Tuesday they serve as leverage and helped persuade Pyongyang's leaders to reconsider their nuclear gambit. John Negroponte, nominated as deputy secretary of state, did not rule out the possibility of the U.S. chief nuclear negotiator going to North Korea, depending on diplomatic developments. Testifying at his nomination hearing, Negroponte said the main focus for North Korea is to get the country to commit to freezing its nuclear program and subjecting it to international inspections. "I wouldn't want to raise false hopes here," Negroponte told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "But I do think there's some grounds for optimism that we can move that issue forward." Now the national intelligence director, Negroponte is expected to take over the Asia portfolio when he moves to the State Department. Six nations -- South and North Korea, the U.S. China, Russia and Japan -- have come together to work out a denuclearization process by which Pyongyang would give up its atomic weapons and programs. Other members, in turn, would provide various incentives to help bring the isolated Pyongyang regime into international diplomatic and financial systems. The six-party talks were jeopardized when the U.S. Treasury designated Macau's Banco Delta Asia as a primary money laundering concern abetting North Korea's illicit activities. North Korea has since insisted that the sanctions be lifted before discussing denuclearization. But Negroponte said the sanctions serve a purpose. While some might argue that they are disruptive, he said, "I think others might make the case, perhaps even equally or more plausibly, that those kinds of sanctions can provide a bit of leverage in these discussions." The sanctions, including those by the United Nations following an Oct. 9 nuclear test by Pyongyang, most likely prompted the North to change its thinking, he said. "The fact that the Security Council adopted a unanimous resolution, which placed North Korea for the first time at odds with their traditional friend China, must have given them pause about the situation that they have created for themselves," the nominee said. A visit to North Korea by Christopher Hill, chief U.S. delegate to the six-party talks, would require a tactical decision, taking into consideration the diplomatic developments at that particular time, he said. "I certainly wouldn't rule it out," he said. North Korea had invited Hill to Pyongyang in the past, but its refusal to freeze its nuclear activities during his visit there had thwarted the plans. Washington, Jan. 30 (Yonhap News) Posted on : Jan.31,2007 21:20 KST © 2006 The Hankyoreh Media Company. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 Interfax: Tougher measures may be taken if North Korea conducts more nuclear tests - diplomat Interfax.com Site map Jan 31 2007 2:00PM MOSCOW. Jan 31 (Interfax) - The international community could take tougher measures against Pyongyang, if North Korea conducts more nuclear tests, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said. "I believe that, in case of new tests, there will be a very negative response from the international community, and perhaps tougher measures will be taken. I don't know if our North Korean partners need this," Losyukov told Interfax on Wednesday. Losyukov heads the Russian delegation at the six-sided talks on settling the North Korea nuclear problem. © 1991-2007 Interfax All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 17 YONHAP NEWS: U.S.-N.K financial talks not focused on immediate actions - Casey Wednesday, January 31, 2007 The Korea Times By Park Song-wu Staff Reporter Seoul wants to see the upcoming six-party talks produce a written accord under which Pyongyang pledges to implement first-step measures designed to denuclearize North Korea, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Song Min-soon said Wednesday. But he was not fully optimistic about reaching the accord during the talks that are planned to begin in Beijing on Feb. 8. ``Even though lots of words have been exchanged among parties to move forward with the talks, there is still long way to go before adopting a joint document on the first-step measures,'' Song said at a weekly press briefing in Seoul. His remarks came as U.S. Treasury officials held their second meeting with their North Korean counterparts in Beijing on Washington's financial restrictions against Pyongyang. In September 2005, Washington designated Banco Delta Asia, a bank in Macau, as a ``primary money-laundering concern'' for its suspected role in helping the North conduct illicit transactions. Pyongyang returned to the six-party talks in December 2006 _ two months after conducting an underground nuclear test _ only after the United States agreed to address the financial issue on the sidelines of the six-party talks. But the talks ended with no tangible results because the North Korean delegation declined to discuss denuclearization measures unless the United States lifted financial sanctions on Pyongyang. Song admitted that financial discussions and the six-party talks affect each other indirectly. But he evaded questions on what kind of impact the financial meeting's result could have on the upcoming disarmament talks. ``The two separate events are taking place successively, so I think it would be better to say what kind of impact it would have after watching the conclusion of the two events,'' Song said. In a related development, John Negroponte, who has been nominated as U.S. deputy secretary of state, said in Washington on Tuesday that international sanctions against North Korea serve as leverage and helped persuade Pyongyang's leaders to reconsider their nuclear gambit. ``The fact that the U.N. Security Council adopted a unanimous resolution, which placed North Korea for the first time at odds with their traditional friend China, must have caused them to pause and think about the situation they have created for themselves,'' he testified at his nomination hearing. Negroponte did not rule out the possibility of Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. nuclear negotiator, visiting North Korea. But he said it would require a tactical decision taking into consideration the diplomatic developments at that particular time. im@koreatimes.co.kr01-31-2007 17:38 ***************************************************************** 21 Korea Times: New Chapter in Old Talks Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Opinion Long Journey Starts With Single Step Cautious optimism appears to prevail in regional capitals prior to the resumption of multilateral denuclearization talks in Beijing next Thursday. The United States and North Korea are holding financial talks to remove a major stumbling block, but reports say a positive outcome is all but assured. If anything, Washington and Pyongyang are showing greater willingness than ever to compromise by taking the first steps agreed on in September 2005. With some luck, the six-way talks may at long last enter into a new stage. Most promising is a change in Washington¡¯s stance. Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, said the upcoming round might be able to attain results comparable to the Agreed Framework of 1994, which promised Pyongyang economic aid and political security in return for the latter¡¯s freeze of nuclear weapons programs. This marks a welcome about-face in the Bush administration¡¯s North Korea policy, which started by denying his predecessor¡¯s accomplishment. But it also means they have wasted 13 long years. Anyway, better late than never. It is good that all involved parties, and the two archrivals in particular, have agreed to lower their target levels, accepting the realistic approach of phased progress that Seoul and Beijing have persistently pursued. Time seems to be pressing for both President George W. Bush and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, albeit for different reasons. Those involved will have to produce a tangible outcome the next week or so, because of the month-long lunar New Year holidays that take place in China. To make up for the lost time, the U.S. will likely push for dismantling the North Korean nuclear weapons, if there are any, instead of merely freezing programs. That may also be necessary to persuade the hawks in Washington, who have made little secret of their wish to change the Stalinist regime or even facilitate its collapse. Pyongyang should accept that much. In return, however, the U.S. should make clear what it would give, such as the maximal lifting of its financial sanctions. Come to think of it, however, it has been long clear what Pyongyang wants from Washington _ the strategic and reciprocal co-existence of the two countries in the long run. The U.S. also must have known this too well, but either pretended not to or stuck to improving the relationship only on its own terms. The bottom line, however, was the presumed nuclear arsenal in the North or at least its considerable amount of atomic bomb materials. It¡¯s also time for Washington to decide what it really wants. Foreign Minister Song Min soon said the forthcoming talks will be like Scene 1 of Act 2 in disarmament talks, referring to the stage to put the Sept 19, 2005 agreement into action. Koreans will be crossing their fingers that Song proves to be right. 01-31-2007 18:09 ***************************************************************** 22 AFP: Russia warns North Korea over nukes 'threat' by Sebastian Smith Wed Jan 31, 2:49 PM ET MOSCOW (AFP) - North Korea " /> 's nuclear weapons capability threatens Russian interests, Moscow's chief negotiator at international talks with Pyongyang said Wednesday, warning the country against carrying out another military test. "Our interests are under threat," Alexander Losyukov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency, also cautioning North Korea against a repeat of last October's atomic bomb test. "I think a very negative reaction would follow another test and that tougher measures would probably be taken," he said. Analysts said Losyukov's statement marked a hardening of the Russian position on North Korea ahead of February 8 talks in Beijing -- involving China, Japan, South and North Korea, Russia and the United States -- to try to persuade Pyongyang to give up its military nuclear programme. According to Losyukov, "concrete" results are unlikely in Beijing, but "it could be possible to lay out quite precisely the route toward achieving them." Reflecting the growing flurry of diplomatic activity ahead of next week's negotiations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov talked by telephone with his South Korean counterpart Song Min-Soon to discuss "resolving the nuclear problem on the Korean peninsula," Interfax reported. South Korea " /> 's negotiator to the six-nation talks, Deputy Minister Chun Young-Woo, was due to meet with Losyukov in Moscow on Thursday to discuss a "road map" plan on the issue. The last round of talks in China in December ended in deadlock after Pyongyang demanded the lifting of US sanctions imposed for alleged money laundering and counterfeiting. The talks have continued intermittently since 2003, but gained new urgency when North Korea conducted its atomic test. Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director at the USA-Canada think tank, said that Losyukov's message indicated that Russia was cutting back on longtime diplomatic support for North Korea. "Russia's position has shifted and that could help push North Korea into a deal. They will see that no one is fighting for them," he said. Another analyst, Anatoly Dyakov, head of the Centre for Study of Disarmament, Energy, and Ecology, said that Russia was right to toughen its stance. "If Korea continues its nuclear programme, that will push the region out of control. Japan will be next, then Taiwan, and so on. Russia and China are worried." Earlier this week Losyukov expressed "cautious optimism," saying that "simply the agreement to hold a new round shows that encouraging signs have appeared regarding the movement of different participants' positions." He repeated this Wednesday, adding that both North Korea and the United States, the two countries most at loggerheads, were "now coming out with the biggest optimism." However he tempered this with warnings about the effect of negotiations dragging on for too long with too little result. "I personally think that this (weapon) test very much complicated the situation in the region and set back the process of the six-sided talks. The result is that we lose time and the process of nuclearisation on the peninsula goes further." Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 nuke power not the answer to climate change: Straightgoods Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:52:35 -0600 (CST) from: http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature7.cfm?REF=68 Five minutes to midnight Climate change one reason the Bulletin moved Doomsday Clock hands. Dateline: Saturday, January 27, 2007 from the Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists [Editor's note: When the Board moved the hands on the Doomsday Clock from 7 to 5 minutes to midnight, they cited US-Iran tension as one reason. But they also cited the push to use nuclear-generated energy as a way to reduce greenhouse gases.] The prospect of civilian nuclear power development in countries around the world raises further concerns about the availability of nuclear materials. Growth in nuclear power is anticipated to be especially high in Asia, where Japan is planning to bring on line five new plants by 2010 and China intends to build 30 nuclear reactors by 2020. Over the next five years, some two-dozen nuclear power plants are scheduled to be refurbished or rebuilt worldwide, and countries as diverse as Nigeria, Poland and Vietnam have expressed interest in nuclear energy. In November 2006, the IAEA announced that four Middle Eastern nations Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia had declared their intentions to embark on nuclear energy programs. Several factors are driving the turn to nuclear power aging nuclear reactors, rising energy demands, a desire to diversify energy portfolios and reduce reliance on fossil fuels and the need to reduce carbon emissions that cause climate change. Yet expansion of nuclear power increases the risks of nuclear proliferation. Enrichment facilities that produce low-enriched uranium for reactor fuel can be easily modified to produce weapons-usable, highly enriched uranium. Moreover, spent plutonium fuel from reactors is weapons-usable after reprocessing. It does not require much nuclear material to construct a fissile weapon: 1 to 3 kilograms of plutonium or 5 to 10 kilograms of highly enriched uranium is all that is needed for a single bomb. The international community faces a dilemma: How to mitigate climate change without increasing the dangers of nuclear materials proliferation..... http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature7.cfm?REF=68 Penney Kome, author and journalist http://penneykome.ca Editor, Straight Goods, http://straightgoods.com ***************************************************************** 24 barrow in furness: Nuke facility two years away Published on 31/01/2007 WEST Cumbria’s £20m nuclear research facility will be built within the next two years. The centre is expected to attract interest from top international scientists and corporations and could lead to a total investment topping £50m. The multi-million-pound Dalton Cumbria Facility, at Westlakes Science and Technology Park, near Whitehaven, is being jointly funded by The University of Manchester’s Dalton Nuclear Institute and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, over seven years. The money will provide specialist research equipment and facilities and to drive forward research into radiation sciences and engineering decommissioning. Dr Ian Hudson, head of technology and skills at the NDA, said he expected planning permission to be secured within a year and the building could be up and running a year later. He said: “The facility is probably about two years away but you will see some changes in the local area sooner than that.†He said Professor Simon Pimblott, drafted in from America to head up research into radiation science, would begin building a team to work in West Cumbria, ahead of the centre’s opening. Headhunters are already looking for nuclear experts from around the world to come to the area. Copeland MP Jamie Reed, said: “It is an exceptionally exciting time.†“This is going to be one of the foremost nuclear research facilities in the world. “It will shift aspirations, not just of people but of business and industry.†He said he believed the project was vital to the future of West Cumbria, as it would become a centre of excellence and help the area enhance itself as being at the heart of the nuclear industry. Prof Richard Clegg, director of the Dalton Nuclear Institute at The University of Manchester, said the research centre would present a significant opportunity to secure total funds, nationally and internationally, of more than £50m. He said the facility would forge strong links with nuclear specialists in America, China, South Africa and France. ***************************************************************** 25 Sydney Morning Herald: A nuclear water bargain hot enough to melt the taps - www.smh.com.au Richard Macey January 31, 2007 FOR sale - 10 tonnes of water, just one owner, but no longer needed. However, even with the drought, Sydneysiders would not want to use it on their gardens. For years it has cooled the ageing Lucas Heights nuclear research reactor. But when the 49-year-old facility was shut down yesterday, the "heavy" water became surplus and is now for sale. With new heavy water - similar to ordinary water but with extra neutrons - worth about $1 million a tonne, the Lucas Heights stock may be the hot bargain of 2007. "Hot being the operative word," conceded Greg Storr, general manager of reactor operations at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. After years cooling the reactor, the water, Dr Storr said, was now "radioactive enough to be extremely careful when you are working near it. You wouldn't want to get it on your skin". But with heavy water being so expensive, there is a world market for used stocks. "We are in negotiation with potential buyers," Dr Storr said. The price would probably depend upon the water's radioactivity. Even if it was not sold, it would still have to be shipped overseas for storage. With the new $400 million Open Pool Australian Light-water reactor now running, the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, yesterday pushed a small red button, dropping six cadmium control rods into the old High Flux Australian Reactor's core, stopping the chain reaction and starting a 10-year process to dismantle the building. Over the next few weeks almost 3.5 kilograms of uranium will be removed. It will eventually be shipped to the United States. Nuclear opponents said yesterday the old reactor could be dangerous forever. "The public needs to be aware that the site may never be made safe," said the Greens senator, Kerry Nettle. The Democrats science spokeswoman, Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, warned the cost of the new reactor would be higher than the official price tag, "once the need to manage the highly toxic waste for hundreds of years is taken into account". Agreement| Copyright © 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 26 Sydney Morning Herald: No time for never-never solutions - Opinion - smh.com.au Mike Archer February 1, 2007 It was suggested recently that if everyone on the planet started gorging themselves on fatty foods, the amount of carbon sequestered could reverse global warming as long as no one did a stitch of exercise other than to produce more butterball humans. It's a tasteless idea, but it does raise some important themes that bear thinking about as scientists gather for the latest diagnosis of the state of the Earth's climate. It seems pretty clear that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will tell us the patient is far worse than we thought and that her condition is deteriorating far faster than we thought when it releases its latest report tomorrow. Naysayers and sceptics can argue all they like about how much of this change is "natural" and how much is the result of human activity: the bottom line, in terms of treating the patient, is that the hotter she gets the less time we have to fix her up. Likewise, our options become more and more limited the longer we stand around like stunned mullets. We need to take action, now. The trouble is that most of the major solutions being suggested to Australians are of the never-never kind. Whatever the relative merits of carbon sequestration and nuclear energy, for example, they will take decades to develop and decades more to have any serious impact on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Worse still, these prescriptions carry an in-built assumption that we have the luxury of time in which to administer them. We don't. More disturbingly, we now have plenty of evidence to suggest that swings in the global climate can happen faster than we previously believed. Much faster. The US National Academy of Sciences' 2002 report Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises noted, for example, that although general global warming and a glacial meltdown began about 15,000 years ago, the process came to an abrupt halt about 3000 years later in the span of a couple of decades. Known as the Younger Dryas event, it featured a rapid, steep drop in global temperature and an abrupt return to full-on glacial conditions for about 500 years. It ended even more abruptly than it began, with a return to global warming that took perhaps as little as one decade. The Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow began with a climatologist lecturing thick-headed US politicians about the vital message of the Younger Dryas event that abrupt climate change could happen again just as quickly, with awesome consequences. For example, if the Greenland and Antarctica icesheets melt (which they are doing in spectacular fashion), sea levels could rise, as they have done many times in the past, by 100 metres. If that were to happen, forget the metre-in-a-century mantra, and forget half of Sydney, along with most of the world's coastal populations. Why climates swing so violently is less relevant than the consequences when they do. As a palaeontologist and geologist who has studied the history of climate change and its effects on life, it's clear to me from Earth's fossil record that major swings in climate have had massive consequences for living things. Extinctions are the most common outcome. In short, if we don't want these consequences, we don't have the luxury of time to dither. We must respond now. I don't have all the answers, but I remind everyone of the 2001 Amsterdam Declaration on Global Change, put together by an eminent group of scientists from four international global change research programs. It pointed out that the dynamics of global systems "are characterised by critical thresholds and abrupt changes" and that "human activities could inadvertently trigger such changes with severe consequences for Earth's environment and inhabitants". Those changes could be irreversible and will be far less hospitable to human life. The broader message here is that we shouldn't focus on climate change as the only threat looming on the horizon. We need to look as well to the other ways humans are increasingly modifying the planet for their own purposes and question whether we're at risk of crossing other thresholds that may lead, faster than expected, to ugly outcomes. As the Amsterdam declaration noted, the planet behaves as a single, self-regulating system, with complex interactions and feedback between its component parts. Humans are influencing environments in many ways, not just the atmosphere but the oceans, fresh water, biological systems and so on. All the signals coming back are that the way we live as a species is not sustainable. While some might take comfort in the thought that "ugly" will not happen in their lifetime, new studies of thresholds and accelerating rates of change suggest these are problems that will challenge all generations now living on the planet. The Prime Minister has rightly acknowledged that our way of managing the Murray-Darling Basin has passed its use-by date. That's a step in the right direction. Next, we all have to acknowledge that the same is true of our overall environmental management. We must invest now in environmentally friendly technologies, such as solar hydrogen to produce energy that won't cost the world. Sooner or later, we're all going to have to cease our collective state of denial and accept that business and technology as usual is not an option. We simply can't keep gorging ourselves on the world's resources (even if 6 billion obese, inactive humans would sequester a lot of carbon). Civilisations exist by the grace of Earth, subject to change without notice. Let's hope we all realise that in time. Mike Archer is dean of science at the University of NSW. uSydney Morning Herald 2007-02-01 ***************************************************************** 27 Sydney Morning Herald: Future is coal and nuclear, Howard says - www.smh.com.au January 31, 2007 - 7:16PM Prime Minister John Howard has backed a new energy report which supports his push for nuclear power as a way to combat climate change. The Energy Supply Association of Australia (ESAA) said that substantial greenhouse gas emission reductions were possible by the year 2030 but it would cost $75 billion. It also says nuclear power, cleaner coal and gas would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but renewable energy such as wind and solar power would not be cost effective. "The answer is a greater emphasis on clean coal and nuclear power," Mr Howard told reporters. "It (the report) recognises that while renewables such as solar and wind have a role to play, and we have always argued that, they will not provide the fundamental answer. "It's just simply not feasible to run power stations in this country on solar and wind energy." The ESAA, which represents more than 40 electricity and downstream gas businesses, says the increasing pressure to restrict emissions from power stations means families will inevitably face higher costs for domestic power bills. Without expensive new technology, up to 100 per cent of brown coal power stations would have to be shut down by 2030 just to stabilise emissions at 2000 levels, the report says. Around two thirds of existing black coal power stations - which currently generate about 60 per cent of Australia's electricity - within current technology would have to close by then as well. Under the most severe scenario, cleaning up emissions under the expanded requirements of the year 2030 would require an investment of $75 billion. The federal government has a policy of pouring large sums of money into supporting research into and trials of clean coal technologies. The ESAA says advanced fossil-fuel technologies, including carbon capture and storage (CCS), are not likely to be commercially available until at least 2020. But for emissions cuts to be achieved and in a least-cost manner, the widest possible range of generation technologies will be needed, including some not proven or commercially available as yet. The report said around 15-20 per cent of Australia's energy supplies by 2030 could be contributed to by nuclear reactors. ESAA chief executive Brad Page said a price on carbon emissions was inevitable. Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane rejected the suggestion that adoption of a price on carbon emissions should be done without delay. "We have put in place the prime minister's task group on emissions trading and we will give an answer on that as we look through the real issues in relation to carbon trading," he told ABC radio. Australian Coal Association executive director Mark O'Neill said the ACA had long held that it was critical that Australia invest in the research and development effort to quickly get new technologies into the marketplace. "Every analysis that's out there ... has concluded that it's a way of significantly reducing the cost of achieving any kind of target in this area," he said. The Greens said the ESAA report was self-serving, arguing for the nation to put its hopes in CCS while ignoring the potential gains from energy efficiency. "It is in the interests of the fossil fuel industry to claim that renewable energy and energy efficiency are no solution to climate change and that we must rely instead on an experimental and costly technology," Greens senator Christine Milne said. Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the report's claim that Australia could cut greenhouse emissions by 30 per cent without resorting to nuclear power showed it underestimated the potential for alternative, low and zero emission technologies. AAP 2007-01-31 ***************************************************************** 28 AU ABC: MP rejects suggested south coast nuclear sites ABC Illawarra NSW | Local News | Story Wednesday, 31 January 2007. 12:00 (AEDT)Wednesday, 31 January The federal Member for Cunningham, Sharon Bird, has demanded the Federal Government rule out the construction of nuclear power plants on the New South Wales south coast. Port Kembla and Sussex Inlet have been named as two of 19 possible sites for a nuclear reactor in Australia. Ms Bird has called on Liberal-based Senator Concetta Fierravanti Wells to make it clear whether she supports the construction of a nuclear reactor at Port Kembla. The ALP candidate for the south coast, Michelle Moran, has called on the Member for Gilmore, Joanna Gash to stand up and fight against any proposal for the south coast. Ms Moran says the Australia Institute has suggested there is not a lot of public support for nuclear power plants. "Two thirds of Australians don't support nuclear power plants in their local areas and secondly, whilst [Prime Minister] John Howard you can have a debate about nuclear power plants without identifying sites, the Australian Institute has said quite clearly that can't happen," she said. ***************************************************************** 29 AU ABC: Mackay council plays down nuclear site listing ABC Tropical Queensland | Local News | Story Wednesday, 31 January 2007. 12:06 (AEDT)Wednesday, 31 January The Mackay council says the city is no closer to becoming home to a nuclear power plant, despite a report naming the region as a possible site. The Australia Institute has named Mackay as one of 19 Australian regions that is suitable for a reactor, because of its access to water and the electricity grid. Council chief executive Ken Gouldthorpe says the debate on nuclear power in Australia is still in the early stages and the report means very little. "I don't believe we actually have been shortlisted, I mean a press release has been put out by the Australia Institute proposing 19 perspective sites on the basis of a number of criteria," he said. "That's a far sight from being shortlisted for any proposal." Green groups say there is no need to assess where nuclear power plants should be built because there is no need to adopt the technology. Robin Taubenfeld from the Queensland Nuclear Free Alliance says other power generation options should be considered first. "There's no justification for exploring the nuclear path when we have solar, the potential for wind, geothermal energy," she said. "The Government itself, and the Queensland Government, have already developed clean energy scenarios for this country." ***************************************************************** 30 AU ABC: Townsville Mayor rejects nuclear push ABC North Qld | Local News | Story Wednesday, 31 January 2007. 12:35 (AEDT)Wednesday, 31 January The Mayor of Townsville says nuclear energy has had too many universal problems to be accepted in regional Australia. Townsville has been named in a study by the Australia Institute as an ideal location for a nuclear power plant to be built. Mayor Tony Mooney says it is a concept he cannot support. "Anyone [in] my age group, the baby boomer age group, has grown up against the background of some pretty significant nuclear disasters around the world," he said. Environmentalists say the report means much less than a statement from the Federal Government on where it is considering building nuclear power plants. Robin Taubenfeld from the Queensland Nuclear Free Alliance says the public is still waiting to hear where the Prime Minister's nuclear task force believes the plants should go. "We find it extremely irresponsible as a Government to put forward a position and a potential 25 nuclear reactors without examining or naming a single site." ***************************************************************** 31 AU ABC: Coastal region sites touted for nuclear plants ABC South East SA | Local News | Story Wednesday, 31 January 2007. 13:15 (AEDT)Wednesday, 31 January Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Mount Gambier and Millicent have been identified as possible sites for a nuclear power plant. An independent research centre, The Australia Institute, named the centres among 17 possible locations around Australia. Andrew Macintosh from the institute says the sites were chosen because of their proximity to the coast, transport links and electricity supply. But he says the proposed sites are simply a starting ground for debate. "That area is an ideal site for nuclear power plants in terms of the basic criteria. "Whether it actually ends up being an ideal site will depend on whether it has suitable geology and a couple of other factors which we haven't been able to determine conclusively," he said. ***************************************************************** 32 AU ABC: Portland named as potential nuclear site ABC Ballarat | Local News | Story Wednesday, 31 January 2007. 15:03 (AEDT)Wednesday, 31 January An independent think tank is again identifying Portland as a possible site for a nuclear power station. A Federal Government task force has indicated as many as 25 nuclear power plants could be built in Australia by 2050. The research body, The Australia Institute, says Portland's proximity to the electricity grid, transport routes and large amounts of water make it an ideal site. The institute's Andrew McIntosh says the town has a low earthquake risk, but some obstacles do exist. "There are ecological and heritage sites in the area that need to be taken into account," he said. "For example, Discovery Bay coastal park, would local people in the community support putting a nuclear plant anywhere near the park?" he said. "But really in the end, Portland does fit the criteria quite well." The federal Member for Wannon, David Hawker, says talk of possible sites anywhere in Australia is scare mongering. He says no decision has been made to build a nuclear power station anywhere. "Yes let's have the debate, but let's not get sidetracked into thinking about sites and so on," he said. "The question whether or not in the future Australia should move to nuclear power is one that we should be debating, but not getting sidetracked." The Australian Greens party says it remains opposed to nuclear power plants being developed in Australia. Despite the Government's renewed interest in nuclear energy, Greens' leader Senator Bob Brown says he does not accept Australia is any closer to adopting nuclear power. "It's about the worst option Australia could take up. It isn't greenhouse neutral," he said. "There's an enormous amount of energy goes into producing the fuel and establishing the nuclear reactors. "The danger of it is enormous. We live in a world where nuclear reactors are terrorist targets inevitably." ***************************************************************** 33 Daily Yomiuri: Revelations of problems at N-plants disturbing : Editorial : The Yomiuri Shimbun It is shocking to learn that irregularities were rampant at nuclear power plants, even though such problems occurred in the past. An in-house investigation by Tokyo Electric Power Co. revealed that there were many wrongdoings in the past, including the falsification of data concerning equipment inspections--something closely related to the safety of nuclear facilities--at TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture and its Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear plants in Fukushima Prefecture. Voices asking how such irregularities could have occurred likely will be raised. In 2002, the then chairman and the president of TEPCO were forced to resign to take responsibility for multiple cases of data manipulation at TEPCO nuclear facilities. This time, following the revelation of the falsification of inspection data for dams by electric power companies, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ordered each electric power company to conduct a survey of its facilities. TEPCO's investigation found 199 cases at three nuclear power plants that possibly violated related laws and ordinances. The number of cases that violated its internal regulations likely was huge. Among them, an egregious example of data manipulation was found. Although, in 1992, a pump for emergency use was broken at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa No.1 reactor, TEPCO covered up the malfunction and passed the state inspection. === Safety principles flouted The three principles to ensure the safety of a nuclear power plant when a problem occurs are halting operations, cooling the reactor and confining radiation. The pump in question is designed to cool the reactor core in an emergency. TEPCO finagled the government inspection to make it appear that the pump was working normally, and the reactor was kept in operation after the inspection. The company deserves to be severely criticized for its cavalier attitude toward safety. The government inspections also were riddled with flaws. However, each case mentioned above happened before the 2002 data manipulation cases. It is likely that these irregularities were overlooked because at that time the government inspections attached more importance to examining documents than interviewing employees of electric power companies. According to TEPCO's in-house investigation, the broken equipment in question was repaired, and data have not been manipulated recently. Therefore, the safety of the facilities has not been compromised, according to TEPCO. But TEPCO should thoroughly examine why it committed such irregularities, breaking laws and ordinances in the process, and learn a lesson from the experience. Since the 2002 cases, TEPCO's inspection system has been largely reformed. The system to check plant operations and the preservation of records has been strengthened, and it is difficult for irregularities to happen under the new system. In addition, the government inspection system also was renewed so specialized inspectors can make surprise inspection. === Inspections must be stringent Wrongdoing cannot easily be committed under the present circumstances. But if the safety-first attitude weakens, even the new inspection systems will not fulfill their purposes. Both TEPCO and the government should redouble their resolve to protect safety. Under the current inspection system, an electric power company must suspend operations of its nuclear power plants every 13 months and check specified items. But the government is considering a European-type system, in which the state decides the operational period and inspection items for each nuclear plant individually because experience suggests that with that system, power companies can operate nuclear power plants more flexibly and maintain safety at a higher level. However, the plan will not work unless a strict inspection system is in place. TEPCO should leave behind once and for all a corporate culture that condones falsifying inspection data. (From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Feb. 1, 2007) (Feb. 1, 2007) © The Yomiuri Shimbun. ***************************************************************** 34 North County Times: Nuclear safety up in the air - / The Californian - Editorials . Last modified Tuesday, January 30, 2007 10:21 PM PST By: North County Times Opinion Staff - Our view: New rules for nuke plants don't adequately address 9/11's threat from above On Monday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission attempted to soothe our nuclear nightmare fears. But living in the shadow of San Onofre's reactors and radioactive pools for spent fuel, we're still not resting easy. With secrecy still a vital part of any defense strategy, we're left with assurances that fail to reassure. Perhaps more hope lies with Congress, which still has a chance to demand standards that better reflect the post-9/11 world. On Monday, the federal nuclear regulators issued new defense standards for the nation's 101 nuclear plants. This update was meant to incorporate the lessons of the 9/11 terror attacks, and it's clear the new "Design Basis Threat" does offer some modest improvements over past planning. For instance, the commission will now require nuclear plant operators to plan for would-be attackers who would risk or even welcome their own deaths. The new guidelines also ask plant operators to prepare for coordinated attacks that could come from multiple directions, including the sea and even cyberspace. So far, so good. And we don't pretend to know everything; our security clearances aren't that good. The details of the standards adopted Monday were kept from public scrutiny, as they must be. But what we do know isn't all that comforting. While the new standards require protection from land, sea and Internet, they don't require nuclear-plant operators to address one very real, very 9/11 threat: that posed by a commercial airliner converted into a jet-powered weapon. For North County, especially, this is a major concern: The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is directly below one of the busiest air corridors in the nation. The commission deferred to "other federal agencies, including the military," the responsibility for defending against such airborne attacks. Those who remember the belatedly scrambled fighter jets on 9/11 can't help but hope that our response time has vastly improved since then. Perhaps San Onofre, on the northern edge of Camp Pendleton, is better prepared to fend off aerial assaults than is readily apparent. Again, we sincerely hope so. Among the proposals for air defense that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission dismissed Monday was something called "Beamhenge," which isn't as loopy as it sounds. Essentially a steel-and-cable cage surrounding the nuclear plant, this proposal gained the support of eight state attorneys general and promised an impact-absorbing buffer around the reactors and spent-fuel pools. We don't know if it would have worked, frankly, but an ounce of prevention -- even a very expensive ounce, in this case -- can be worth a ton of nuclear catastrophe "cure." Still, the commission sounds too confident for our comfort in after-the-fact responses in a worst-case scenario. "Even in the unlikely event of a radiological release due to a terrorist use of a large aircraft against a nuclear power plant, the studies indicate that there would be time to implement the required onsite mitigating actions," reads the commission's unclassified summary. It's hard to overstate this point: Any successful attack on San Onofre is not something we can afford to "mitigate." San Onofre's primary owner, Southern California Edison, touts the significant funds it has sunk into security since 9/11 -- more than $80 million, a spokesman told reporter Gig Conaughton. You can see some results when you're driving into Orange County on Interstate 5: new fences, steel-encased guard posts and concrete barriers. Less visible are the aboveground concrete buildings wherein lie the radioactive fuel rods generated as waste by the plant's operation. More than 1,000 metric tons of this "spent" fuel sits in pools -- which are far more vulnerable than the concrete-encased nuclear reactors themselves -- cooling before it can be stored in safer, dry casks. That waste isn't going anywhere anytime soon, as political opposition seems to have all but killed the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada. The federal regulators say the new Design Basis Threat plans are but one part of a comprehensive overhaul of nuclear power plant security; more revisions are on the way. Furthermore, the commission can expect some hard questioning from Sen. Barbara Boxer, the new chairwoman of the Senate committee that oversees the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On Friday, Boxer specifically asked the commission to require protections against threats from above. Now, she and other leaders have a chance to demand better answers. We pray San Onofre's defenses are up to any challenge. Congress has a chance to improve upon the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's good start in helping us rest easier. Randy wrote on January 31, 2007 2:00 AM:"If nuclear power plants cannot protect themselves from attack, quit building new plants and quickly dismantle currently operating plants!" Green Nuclear Butterfly wrote on January 31, 2007 4:22 AM:"As someone living within three miles of the aging, brittle, dying reactors known as Indian Point here in New York, this decision concerns me. The NRC is doing anything and everything it can to eliminate any problems that would keep these facilities up and operating. It is no longer a question of IF, but when A BIG INCIDENT wipes out one of our cities...question is, which of us will it be? Your readers might want to visit our blog today, and sign on to our letter to Greenpeace...a part of it calls for a Congressional law ordering a independent safety and security assessment of every nuclear facility in America. ..." Bob wrote on January 31, 2007 7:18 PM:"The reactions to the article are exactly what you in the media want them to be - alarmist! Do you really think that the NRC and the labs and research organizations that they employ haven't analyzed aircraft impacts on nuclear plants and the dry spent fuel storage modules (called buildings in the article)? It is a fact that they have. And while the results of these evaluations are kept away from public view, as they should be (why should we help the terrorists identify any weak link?), unless you believe that the NRC is a corrupt organization, then you must believe that the results are not alarming and thus don't warrant an alarmist reaction. It is easy to create fear. Quit doing it solely for the sake of selling newspapers and advertising space. It is a disservice to the public!" webmaster@nctimes.com © 1997-2007 North County Times – Lee Enterprises editor@nctimes.com ***************************************************************** 35 NRC: NRC Proposes $3,250 Civil Penalty for Mount Laurel, N.J., Firm Over Theft of Nuclear Gauge from Pennsylvania Site News Release - Region I - 2007-00 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I No. I-07-005 January 31, 2007 CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov fine for a firm based in Mount Laurel, N.J., for a violation of agency requirements that contributed to a theft of a nuclear gauge in Pennsylvania last year. Owned by TRC Engineers, Inc. (formerly SITE-Blauvelt Engineering, Inc.), the gauge contains radioactive material and is used for such industrial purposes as measuring the density of soil at construction sites. TRC Engineers notified the NRC that the gauge had been stolen from a storage shed used by the company in Stroudsburg (Monroe County), Pa., either on the night of Aug. 29, 2006 or on the morning of Aug. 30, 2006. In response to the theft, NRC staff performed a special inspection in September 2006 at the companys Mount Laurel office and at the Stroudsburg location. The inspectors determined that there was only one tangible barrier in place to prevent someone from taking the gauge. While the gauge was locked in a portable box, the only barrier preventing its unauthorized removal was a locked toolshed door. The NRC is citing TRC Engineers for a failure to use a minimum of two independent physical controls to prevent unauthorized removal of a licensed nuclear gauge when the device is not under the direct control and constant surveillance of a company employee(s). Although the portable gauge was locked in a box inside a locked storage shed providing one barrier, a second independent barrier did not exist in accordance with the regulations, NRC Region I Administrator Samuel J. Collins wrote in a letter to the company regarding the enforcement action. To date, the gauge has not been recovered. As long as the sources are in the shielded position, the gauge would present no hazard to the public. However, any attempt to tamper with the radioactive sources in the device could subject the person to radiation exposure. TRC Engineers discussed the violation with NRC staff during a predecisional enforcement conference on Dec. 20, 2006, held in the NRCs Region I Office in King of Prussia, Pa. During that meeting, the company stated that it takes the security of licensed radioactive material and compliance with NRC requirements very seriously. The company also reviewed its efforts to recover the stolen gauge including notifying authorities and offering a reward -- and described steps it had taken to prevent a recurrence. The company is required to provide the NRC with a written reply within 30 days. 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 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 ***************************************************************** 36 Interfax: Talks on sale of nuclear reactor to North Korea premature - Interfax.com Site map Jan 31 2007 2:38PM Losyukov MOSCOW. Jan 31 (Interfax) - Russia is not prepared to discuss the possibility of selling a light water nuclear reactor to North Korea. "It would be premature to discuss this issue now," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told Interfax on Wednesday. "We have such technical possibilities. However, it would be too bold to say today that we will deliver a reactor to Pyongyang," he said. Losyukov leads Russia's delegation at the six-sided talks on the nuclear problem on the Korean peninsula, which are due to resume in Beijing on February 8. © 1991-2007 Interfax ***************************************************************** 37 India Defence: India to Build Four Fast Breeder Nuclear Reactors INDIADEFENCE Dated 31/1/2007 The Department of Atomic Energy(DAE) will simultaneously construct four more breeder reactors of 500 MWe each including two at Kalpakkam, said Baldev Raj, Director of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam. The site for the other two reactors had not been firmed up yet. A Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) of 500 MWe was already under construction at Kalpakkam "and we stand by our commitment to commission the PFBR in September 2010," he said. The electricity generated from the PFBR would be sold to the State Electricity Boards at Rs.3.22 a unit. The pre-project activities for the construction of the second and third breeder reactors at Kalpakkam would begin in 2010 and they would go critical in 2017. The tariff for the electricity generated from these would be Rs.2.50 a unit. The Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI), a public sector undertaking of the DAE, would build all the breeder reactors in India. The four new breeder reactors would cost Rs.2,500 crore each. The new breeders would first use mixed uranium-plutonium oxide as fuel and later switch over to metallic fuel. "We can breed much faster with the metallic fuel. By 2020, the technology of making the metallic fuel will be ready," the IGCAR Director said. The IGCAR has fathered the breeder reactor technology in India. Dr. Baldev Raj was speaking to reporters at the end of a one-day awareness workshop on research and career opportunities for physicists and chemists held at the Queen Mary's College by the IGCAR. "By 2020, we will have totally five breeder reactors and we will be the world leader in breeder technology," he asserted. The civil construction of the PFBR at Kalpakkam "had reached a high level" and the building of the reactor containment vault was nearing completion. The safety vessel, the main vessel and the inner vessel were under an advanced stage of fabrication. The safety vessel would be lowered into the reactor vault by April 2007. Most of the clearances for the PFBR had been obtained from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and "there will be no major difficulty in commissioning this reactor by 2010," Dr. Baldev Raj said. The IGCAR's efforts were to ensure that its facilities were fully used by researchers and scientists and he was "amazed" by the number of students who were keen on pursuing a career in science. The IGCAR was a constituent unit of the Homi Bhabha National University and the IGCAR had 15 Ph.D. students working on `separation science and technology,' virtual reality, sensors, structural mechanics and so on. P.V. Ramalingam, Director, Reactor Operation and Maintenance Group, IGCAR, said the Fast Breeder Test Reactor at Kalpakkam, which had completed 20 years of operation, could be operated for another 20 years with modifications. These modifications would cost Rs.40 crore. The capacity of the FBTR, which is a forerunner to the PFBR, would be stepped up to 20 MWt in a year's time. The FBTR's total capacity is 40 MWt. Prof. Eugenie Pinto, Principal, Queen Mary's College, wanted the IGCAR to set up a centre in the field of material science which would be available to students and researchers from Chennai. indepthcoverage Copyright © 2007 India Defence | All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 38 World Nuclear News: WEC studies nuclear's role in Europe 31 January 2007 A World Energy Council (WEC) working group has concluded that nuclear power has an important part to play in achieving sustainability as well as good levels of energy availbility. The group, consisting of 29 experts from Europes electricity industry, led by Mr Alessandro Clerici, senior consultant to the chair of ABB, have been investigating the role that nuclear power production currently plays within the European energy scene. Their report provides an analysis of the role nuclear needs to play in Europes future. The one-year study resulted in The Role of Nuclear Power in Europe, a 135-page report, which aims to clarify the conditions nuclear energy should meet to be re-integrated into the European electricity market. Today, nuclear power accounts for nearly 30% of the total electricity supply in Europe. However, a large number of European power plants will be retired between 2010 and 2030. The WEC study demonstrates that many European countries are showing a keen interest in nuclear power as a way to meet future energy demand and cut emissions. The report points out that there are solid economic reasons to support the development of nuclear power in Europe. It says, "For existing plants the economics behind nuclear power look particularly attractive considering that planned lifetime extensions, capacity increases and licence renewals can further reduce costs." "If carbon dioxide emissions were ever penalized, nuclear would be a particularly competitive alternative. As nuclear power generation does not produce greenhouse gases and emissions& it would undoubtedly help tackle growing environmental concerns," the study says. With regards to nuclear waste, "the actual amount of spent fuel produced globally every year is approximately 12,000 tonnes. Therefore, compared to the 25 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas released annually from fossil fuels directly into the atmosphere, the amount of waste is relatively small. Were spent fuel to be reprocessed, the figure would be even lower." The report highlights the need for added support for nuclear research and development with a special focus on Generation-IV technologies, which are estimated to be available on the market between 2030 and 2040. Public support is essential, the report says, in launching a new generation of nuclear power plants. "Nuclear energy has long been viewed with unease and there is, without doubt, concern over safety, proliferation and waste. More accessible and accurate information is needed to ensure that consumers understand that nuclear power is one realistic option for electricity production in Europe today." Gerald Doucet, Secretary General of WEC, said that the organization "champions all forms of energy; our belief is that all energy options must be kept open if we are to attain the sustainable supply and use of energy. Nuclear power has an important role in the energy mix if we are to achieve sustainability and improve global accessibility, acceptability and availability of modern energy services." ***************************************************************** 39 World Nuclear News: Irregular control rod movements at Balakovo 31 January 2007 Russia's Balakovo 1 underwent a sudden shutdown late on 29 January as control rods were found to be in an irregular position. The VVER-1000 pressurised water reactor (PWR) was operating at 1030 MWe when control rods spontaneously changed position. Operators followed procedure and shut the plant down for checks at 23h15. An event report from Rosenergoatom, the operator of all Russia's nuclear power plants, said that the loss of power to one of the circuits supplying electricity to a control system initated the event. Control rods regulate the power of reactors by absorbing the neutrons that cause uranium-235 atoms to split in a chain reaction. In a PWR they are suspended above the reactor core in such a way that loss of power to their control mechanisms would result in the rods dropping under gravity to safe positions in the core that would cause a shutdown. Rosenergoatom reported that the cause of the event was identified before applying for permission to restart the reactor. Balakovo 1 was reconnected to the grid just before 02h52. ***************************************************************** 40 NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste to Meet in Rockville, Maryland, Feb. 13-15 News Release - 2007-01 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 07-016 January 31, 2007 Nuclear Waste (ACNW) will meet Feb. 13-15 in Rockville, Md., to be briefed on, among other items, a workshop held last year on cement-like materials used for waste treatment, disposal, remediation and decommissioning. The first two days of the meeting will be devoted to the Working Group on the Igneous Activity White Paper. The working group meeting will include discussions on the nature and probability of the kind of activities described in the paper and their consequences related to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository for high-level radioactive waste. The committee reports to and advises the Commission on all aspects of nuclear waste management. The meeting will be held in Room T-2B3 of the agencys Two White Flint North Building, at 11545 Rockville Pike, and the session on Tuesday will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; the session on Wednesday will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., and Thursdays session will run from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. A portion of Thursdays meeting from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. may be closed to the public to discuss confidential information. Anyone requiring the use of video teleconferencing to observe the meeting should contact Theron Brown, at 301-415-8066 to ensure availability. A complete agenda is available on the NRCs Web site at this address: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acnw/agenda/2007/. Individuals interested in making statements or those seeking more information should contact Antonio Dias at 301-415-6805. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 ***************************************************************** 41 World Nuclear News: DoE awards over $10m for GNEP siting studies 31 January 2007 The US Department of Energy (DoE) has awarded more than $10 million to 11 commercial and public consortia selected to conduct detailed siting studies for integrated used fuel recycling facilities. The consortia have until 30 May to submit their reports. President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) initiative proposes private-public-international partnerships to develop advanced technologies to recycle used nuclear fuel, reduce wastes, and avoid misuse of nuclear materials. DoE is considering a two-track approach to demonstrate technologies under GNEP. The first track involves deployment of commercial-scale facilities that may be ready for deployment now or in the near future. The second track would focus on further research and development on transmutation fuels technologies. These facilities will enable us to effectively recycle spent nuclear fuel in a safe and proliferation-resistant manner. They will set the technological standard and allow us to influence energy policy abroad while increasing energy security here at home, DoE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon said. With the negotiations complete, we are ready to proceed from an initial phase to one where actual studies can explore sites for GNEP-related facilities. Award recipients, announced in November 2006, will carry out siting studies to determine the possibility of hosting the Consolidated Fuel Treatment Centre (CFTC) and/or an Advanced Burner Reactor (ABR). Recipients will have until 30 May to complete detailed site characterization studies of the sites and submit a Site Characterization Report to DoE. Of the 11 sites, six are currently owned and operated by DoE. Information generated from the detailed siting studies of non-DoE sites is expected to address a variety of site-related matters, including site and nearby land uses; demographics; ecological and habitat assessment; threatened or endangered species; historical, archaeological and cultural resources; geology and seismology; weather and climate; and regulatory and permitting requirements. Information requirements for the DoE sites are more limited due to the availability of previous studies. SITES, LEAD AWARD RECIPIENTS, AND AWARD AMOUNTS ARE AS FOLLOWS: Proposed site location Teaming consortia Award amounts Proposed site location Teaming consortia Award amounts Atomic City, Idaho Energy Solutions, LLC $915,448 Barnwell , South Carolina Energy Solutions, LLC $963,151 Hanford Site, Washington Tri-City Industrial Development Council/ Columbia Basin Consulting Group $1,020,000 Hobbs , New Mexico Eddy Lea Energy Alliance $1,590,016 Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Regional Development Alliance, Inc $648,745 Morris , Illinois General Electric Co $1,484,875 Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee $894,704 Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Kentucky Paducah Uranium Plant Asset Utilization, Inc $664,600 Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Ohio Piketon Initiative for Nuclear Independence, LLC $673,761 Roswell , New Mexico Energy Solutions, LLC $1,134,522 Savannah River National Laboratory, South Carolina Economic Development Partnership of Aiken and Edgefield Counties $468,420 TOTAL: $10,458,242 ***************************************************************** 42 Aiken Today: Two local companies receive energy grants Wed, Jan 31, 2007 By PHILIP LORD Senior writer Approximately $1.43 million is headed to this region for two competing companies to develop detailed plans showing how they propose to create power in the future. Savannah River National Laboratory, which is partnered with the Economic Development Partnership of Aiken and Edgefield counties, and EnergySolutions will each receive a part of the $10 million in Global Nuclear Energy Partnership grants to allow for detailed studies of the plant presented. All told, a total of 11 GNEP proposals will receive funding under the first phase of the program, which is seeking to identify integrated spent fuel recycling facilities that will help to power America by recycling nuclear materials. SRNL proposes its program to be located at the Savannah River Site, while EnergySolutions plans to build its proposed plant at the high-level waste facility in Barnwell County. "These facilities will enable us to effectively recycle spent nuclear fuel in a safe and proliferation-resistant manner. They will set the technological standard and allow us to influence energy policy abroad while increasing energy security here at home," DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon said. "With the negotiations complete, we are ready to proceed from an initial phase to one where actual studies can explore sites for GNEP-related facilities." Award recipients, announced in November, will carry out siting studies to determine the possibility of hosting an advanced nuclear fuel recycling center and/or an advanced recycling reactor, Spurgeon said. Beginning today, recipients will conduct detailed site characterization studies of the sites which were proposed in their Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) responses. Recipients will have 90-days to complete these studies and submit a Site Characterization Report to DOE on May 30. Under the figures released by DOE Tuesday, SRNL's project will receive $468,420 and EnergySolutions will receive $963,151 for its Barnwell project. "One of the appeals to the Savannah River Site is so much of the land is already characterized," said Jack Herrmann, a spokesman for Washington Government, which is the parent company of Washington Savannah River Company. "There are a lot of aspects of our characterization that don't have to be done." He added, "A lot of the work that the other sites will have to do with the money has already been done at Savannah River." Looking at SRS, Herrmann said the existing infrastructure at SRS makes the site a logical and economical location for establishing a GNEP project. "Clearly SRS is an appealing site for the GNEP facilities thanks to the work our people there have already done to get it in shape for a variety future missions," said E. Preston Rahe, president of Washington Group's Energy &Environment business unit from his office in Aiken. "A lot is already known about the suitability of the site," Rahe said. "A lot is already known about the quality of the people and existing infrastructure there. That's why the total dollars set aside for the site was lower than the other 10 candidate sites which are less well understood." Rahe added, "This is an important project, particularly now that the nation is turning more and more towards nuclear power as an energy option. These facilities will help the nation deal with used nuclear fuel cycle while at the same time reducing the volume of waste and reduce proliferation concerns. And as a company that is heavily involved in both government and commercial nuclear business that's encouraging." In addition to the Barnwell site, EnergySolutions has received first phase funding for projects in Roswell, N.M., and Atomic City, Idaho. An advanced nuclear fuel recycling center contains facilities where usable uranium and transuranics are separated from spent light water reactor fuel then produced into new fuel (or "transmutation fuel") which then could be reused in an advanced recycling reactor. This advanced recycling reactor is a fast reactor that would demonstrate the ability to reuse and consume materials recovered from spent nuclear fuel, including long-lived elements that would otherwise be disposed of in a geologic repository. Contact Philip Lord at plord@aikenstandard.com List of award winners: 1. Atomic City, Idaho, EnergySolutions, LLC $915,448 2. Barnwell, EnergySolutions, LLC $963,151 3. Hanford Site, Wash., Tri-City Industrial Development Council/Columbia Basin Consulting Group $1,020,000 4. Hobbs, N.M., Eddy Lead Energy Alliance $1,590,016 5. Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho, Regional Development Alliance, Inc $648,745 6. Morris, Ill., General Electric Company $1,484,875 7. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tenn., Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee $894,704 8. Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Ky., Paducah Uranium Plant Asset Utilization, Inc. $664,600 9. Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Ohio, Piketon Initiative for Nuclear Independence, LLC $673,761 10. Roswell, N.M., EnergySolutions, LLC $1,134,522 11. Savannah River National Laboratory, Economic Development Partnership of Aiken and Edgefield Counties $468,420 TOTAL: $10,458,242 © 2005 The AikenStandard. All Rights ***************************************************************** 43 ScienceNOW: A Congressman Brandishes His Gavel -- Kintisch 2007 (130): 3 > 30 January Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) says his staff has found evidence that science was manipulated for political ends. Credit: Ken Lambert / Washington Times via Newsmakers A Congressman Brandishes His Gavel By Eli Kintisch ScienceNOW Daily News 30 January 2007 WASHINGTON, D.C.-- In an indication of Democratic eagerness to investigate whether the Bush administration has interfered with federal global warming research, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) today charged the White House with "an orchestrated effort to mislead the public." Waxman, who this month became chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, says his staff has found evidence that scientific reports were manipulated for political ends despite efforts by the Administration to block recent requests for information. Nonprofit groups and a prominent whistleblower have alleged for several years that White House political appointees have distorted federally funded climate science. The whistleblower, former Administration climate change program official Rick Piltz, said in 2005 that former White House Council on Environmental Quality chief of staff Philip Cooney manufactured doubt and uncertainty in a number of reports by the Administration. A number of the incidents have been reported previously. A call to the White House was unreturned at press time. At the hearing, Waxman cited several White House documents in support of his allegations. Last July, Waxman joined then-committee chair Tom Davis (R-VA) in requesting memos, letters, and notes related to climate science reports. Yesterday, the White House released nine of the 39 requested documents, although Waxman said only some of the papers related to his request. We've "received virtually nothing from this Administration," he said. White House officials allowed Waxman's staff to see the other documents but not keep copies, citing concerns about the release of diplomatic correspondence and other "deliberative" documents. Among those documents, Waxman said, was evidence showing efforts by political officials including Cooney to delete discussion of human impacts by climate change, remove mention of specific carbon emission levels, and remove statements connecting human activities to warming trends. The documents related to a 2002 Climate Action report to the United Nations, a draft of the 2003 State of the Environment report by the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Asia-Pacific partnership the Administration led in 2005. "The political gatekeepers would step in" to alter findings and create doubt, Piltz testified. In one edit Waxman's staff says they saw, Cooney had removed a reference to the 2001 National Research Council report on the human contribution to warming. Elsewhere, he had added that "satellite data disputes global warming," a statement NASA climate researcher Drew Shindell of Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City told the committee was wrong. Another witness, University of Colorado environmental studies professor Roger Pielke Jr., described what he called "heavy-handed Bush Administration information management" on a number of climate policy issues. But Pielke said past Administrations had acted in a similar fashion, citing among other things poor scientific evidence by the Clinton Administration to justify missile strikes in 1998 on the Al-Shifa factory in Sudan. Waxman plans to hold follow-up hearings, but no date has been set. + Today's letter from Representatives Waxman and Davis to James Connaughton, director of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality copy; 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 44 RIA Novosti: First power unit at Balakovo NPP back online 31/ 01/ 2007 MOSCOW, January 31 (RIA Novosti) - Power generation has resumed at the first power unit of the Balakovo nuclear power plant in southern Russia's Saratov Region after a fault was corrected, the press service of the NPP's operator said Wednesday. The power unit was taken off-line after an emergency shutdown January 29. Radiation levels at the plant and surrounding areas were normal. Earlier reports said the cause of the shutdown was a problem with the safety system. Built in the late 1980s through the early 1990s, the Balakovo NPP is Russia's main nuclear generator of electric energy. It puts out over 28 billion kWh of power a year, accounting for a quarter of the electricity produced in the Volga Federal District and one-fifth of the electricity produced by Russia's 10 nuclear power plants. The NPP is equipped with four VVER-1000 reactors with a total capacity of 4,000 MW. A fifth main power-generating unit is scheduled to come on stream in 2010. © 2005 RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 45 Platts: WEC recommends more European nuclear power London (Platts)--30Jan2007 Europe needs more nuclear power in its future, according to a World Energy Council report released January 30. More than 80% of Europe's installed capacity will be more than 30 years old by 2020, said Alessandro Clerici, a senior consultant to the chairman of ABB. Clerici, who led the WEC working group that produced the report, said a large number of European power plants will be retired between 2010 and 2030, and nuclear's role in replacement of that capacity depended the most on public opinion, which is "the key issue." The WEC report points out the "solid economic reasons" to support new nuclear power, the cost of which could be around 40 Euros per megawatt hour, Clerici said. The report is available online (http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/global/downloads/nuclear/WEC _Nuclear_Ful l_Report.pdf). Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 46 Daily Yomiuri: TEPCO admits to 199 irregularities at N-plants The Yomiuri Shimbun Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday there were 199 cases of data falsifications or irregularities at 13 of the 17 reactors of its three nuclear power plants in Fukushima and Niigata prefectures, including the manipulation of data, to hide problems from government inspectors. According to TEPCO, although part of the emergency core cooling system was defective at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa No. 1 reactor in Niigata Prefecture, the company falsified the inspection data, which is directly related to the safety of nuclear facilities, to cover up the problem. TEPCO presented the report of its in-house investigation to the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. The agency will discuss what kinds of administrative punishment it will impose on TEPCO after examining the report. Following the revelation of data falsification by Chugoku Electric Power Co. in December, TEPCO has been surveying its facilities at the direction of the agency. In one of the three emergency cooling systems at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa No. 1 reactor, an emergency pump to cool down a reactor core in the event of an accident broke down one day before a regular government inspection in May 1992, according to TEPCO. But on the day of the inspection, it improperly operated the display system at the central control room and made it look as if the pump was working normally. The condition of the passage of the inspection was that all the three cooling systems at the reactor were in perfect working order. TEPCO operated the reactor without repairing the defected pump and finished mending it two days after the restart of operations, TEPCO said. (Feb. 1, 2007) © The Yomiuri Shimbun. ***************************************************************** 47 NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) Subcommittee FR Doc E7-1541 [Federal Register: January 31, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 20)] [Notices] [Page 4537] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr31ja07-96] Meeting on Thermal-Hydraulic Phenomena; Notice of Meeting The ACRS Subcommittee on Thermal-Hydraulic Phenomena will hold a meeting on February 28, 2007, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland in Room T-2B3. The entire meeting will be open to public attendance. The agenda for the subject meeting shall be as follows: Wednesday, February 28, 2007--8:30 a.m. Until the Conclusion of Business The Subcommittee will review the new SRP Section 15.9, ``BWR Stability,'' and Section 15.0, ``Accident Analyses--Introduction.'' 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. Ralph Caruso (Telephone: 301-415-8065) five days prior to the meeting, if possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be made. Electronic recordings will be permitted. Further information regarding this meeting can be obtained by contacting the Designated Federal Official between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. (ET). Persons planning to attend this meeting are urged to contact the above named individual at least two working days prior to the meeting to be advised of any potential changes to the agenda. Dated: January 25, 2007. Eric A. Thornsbury, Acting Branch Chief, ACRS/ACNW. [FR Doc. E7-1541 Filed 1-30-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 48 NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) Subcommittee FR Doc E7-1543 [Federal Register: January 31, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 20)] [Notices] [Page 4537] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr31ja07-97] Meeting on Materials, Metallurgy, and Reactor Fuels; Notice of Meeting The ACRS Subcommittee on Materials, Metallurgy, and Reactor Fuels will hold a meeting on February 22, 2007, Room T-2B3, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The entire meeting will be open to public attendance. The agenda for the subject meeting shall be as follows: Thursday, February 22, 2007--8:30 a.m. Until the Conclusion of Business The Subcommittee will review the NRC staff's proposed Revisions to SRP Section 4.2, ``Fuel Designs.'' The Subcommittee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff, their contractors, representatives of the nuclear industry, and other interested persons regarding this matter. The Subcommittee will gather information, analyze relevant issues and facts, and formulate proposed positions and actions, as appropriate, for deliberation by the full Committee. Members of the public desiring to provide oral statements and/or written comments should notify the Designated Federal Official, Mr. Ralph Caruso (telephone 301/415-8065) five days prior to the meeting, if possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be made. Electronic recordings will be permitted. Further information regarding this meeting can be obtained by contacting the Designated Federal Official between 7:15 a.m. and 5 p.m. (ET). Persons planning to attend this meeting are urged to contact the above named individual at least two working days prior to the meeting to be advised of any potential changes to the agenda. Dated: January 25, 2007. Eric A. Thornsbury, Acting Branch Chief, ACRS/ACNW. [FR Doc. E7-1543 Filed 1-30-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 49 People's Daily Online: World energy council highlights nuclear power in Europe UPDATED: 08:47, January 31, 2007 World Energy Council (WEC), the world's multi-energy organization, released a report on Tuesday in London, highlighting the role of nuclear power development in Europe. The 135-page report titled "Role of Nuclear Power in Europe" is the result of a one-year study aiming to clarify the conditions nuclear energy should meet to be re-integrated into the European electricity market. It dwells on the future of energy supplies, the economic competitiveness of energy sources and the associated environmental impacts, which are people's major concerns. With the world population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, WEC forecast that global energy consumption will double every year while demand for electricity is to triple. However, the report points out, there are solid economic reasons to support the development of nuclear power in Europe. " For existing plants the economics behind nuclear power look particularly attractive considering that planned lifetime extensions, capacity increases and license renewals can further reduce costs." What is more, nuclear power can offer environmental advantages. "If carbon dioxide emissions were ever penalized, nuclear would be a particularly competitive alternative," said the report. As for waste management, which seems to cause most of the controversy, the report said, "The actual amount of spent nuclear fuel produced globally every year is approximately 12,000 tons. Therefore, compared to the 25 billion tons of greenhouse gas released annually from fossil fuels directly into the atmosphere, the amount of waste is relatively small. Were spent fuel to be reprocessed, the figure would be even lower." Alessandro Clerici, chairman of the study, emphasized the importance of public support in launching a new generation of nuclear power plants. "Nuclear energy has long been viewed with unease and there is concern over safety, proliferation and waste. More accessible and accurate information is needed to ensure that consumers understand that nuclear power is one realistic option for electricity production in Europe today," he added. Source: Xinhua Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 50 Kommersant Moscow: Mishap at Nuclear Plant in Central Russia The protection control system at the first power generating unit of the Balakovo nuclear power plant in Saratov Region switched on around 11 pm on Monday. www.balaes.ru Jan. 31, 2007 A safety problem prompted an emergency shutdown at the Balakovo nuclear power plant, officials reported Tuesday. The atomic station insists that that the power generating unit was shut down by an operator “in accordance to technical regulations”. The protection control system at the first power generating unit of the Balakovo nuclear power plant in switched on around 11 pm Monday, a source at the plant told . Later on, the unit was disconnected from the net, causing the shutdown of the reactor. In their official statements, the Energy Ministry and the plant denied that the situation was an emergency, saying that the unit was shut down “in accordance with technical regulations”. Ravil Kamalutdinov, the Balakovo plant’s spokesperson, said work was under way all Tuesday to fix the malfunction. Mr. Kamalutdinov assured that this mishap did not increase radiation levels in the region which do no exceed the permissible limit in the plant and the town of Balakovo. Experts note that the automatic protection system switches on every time there is any minor malfunction at an energy unit. Similar incidents happened at the Balakovo plant twice last year. www.kommersant.com © 1991-2007 ZAO "Kommersant. Publishing House". All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 51 Los Angeles Times: Climate is changing, politically - 10:12 PM PST, January 31, 2007 Weather Traffic New attention from presidential hopefuls and others shows that global warming is not just the Democrats' issue anymore. By Janet Hook and Richard Simon, Times Staff Writers Curbing greenhouse emissions WASHINGTON  All of a sudden, global warming is hot. After years of languishing on Capitol Hill, efforts to curb global warming have picked up momentum, powered by a growing bipartisan belief that climate change can no longer be ignored. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has declared it a top priority for the House. Presidential candidates from both parties call it one of the biggest issues faced by the next occupant of the White House. Even President Bush, long a skeptic, is sounding the alarm. That's an abrupt break from the past, when many politicians shrugged off the issue. Especially among Republicans, it was regarded as an untested theory or an alarmist fantasy. Polls show that most Americans believe the studies that show pollution is a cause of climate change. And politicians now are scrambling to keep up with science and public opinion. Legislation to curb global warming is still a long shot in Congress, because there is no consensus on a solution. But almost all of the candidates who want to succeed Bush  including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.)  are far ahead of him in proposing ways to reduce carbon emissions. "There has been a sea change in this issue over the last year," said Cathy Duvall, the Sierra Club's national political director. "It went from a back-burner issue to something people understand is a problem. Now they are looking for leaders to take action." The U.S. is the leading emitter of carbon dioxide, responsible for about one-quarter of the worldwide total. About 80% comes from fossil fuels, with power plants and vehicles as the leading culprits. Presidential politics and legislative debate came together Tuesday when McCain and several other candidates discussed their climate-change legislation at a Senate hearing. "The number of individuals in Washington who reject the clear evidence of global warming appears to be shrinking as its dramatic manifestations mount," McCain said. "We are no longer just talking about how climate change will affect our children's and grandchildren's lives, as we did just a few years ago, but we now are talking about how it is already impacting the world." McCain, considered a front-runner for his party's presidential nomination, has introduced a bill to impose mandatory limits on the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. His cosponsors include two leading Democratic presidential contenders, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois. Other candidates have their own proposals. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, touts his efforts to get his state to generate more electricity from cleaner sources, such as solar and wind power. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) recently introduced a resolution calling for the U.S. to return to international negotiations on climate change that Bush spurned. Edwards, who ranks global warming as one of his top three issues, recently pointed out that he had given up his sport utility vehicle for a hybrid one. Even the very conservative Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) mentioned the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in announcing his candidacy. The issue's prominence is rising for a variety of reasons. There is mounting scientific evidence that pollution plays a significant role in global warming. Climate scientists who advise the United Nations are meeting in Paris this week and are expected to issue a report on how warming is likely to affect sea levels. The Oscar-nominated documentary featuring Al Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth," that raised awareness of the issue, vividly depicting the consequences of a warmer planet. Some states, including California, are acting on their own, causing influential business leaders to call for federal regulation to avoid a patchwork of state and local laws. Most important, Democrats who want action on the issue now control the House and the Senate, and the party's leaders have moved it to center stage. Pelosi has asked committees to produce legislation by July 4 and has moved to establish a special global warming committee to bypass Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), an auto industry ally who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He is seen as a potential obstacle to legislation, including new limits on tailpipe emissions. Among those leading the Senate's efforts is Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who has called climate change "the greatest challenge of our generation." Boxer inherited the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee from Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who bowed out with a hearing that showcased his belief that human-caused climate change was a hoax. Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 52 Japan Times: Sumitomo eyes Westinghouse stake Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007 Trading house Sumitomo Corp. may buy a stake in Westinghouse Electric Co., a major U.S. nuclear reactor builder that Toshiba Corp. took control of last year, industry sources said Tuesday. Sumitomo is expected to decide by the end of March whether to acquire 5 percent of the stake in Westinghouse held by Toshiba, which now owns 77 percent of the U.S. firm, they said. A 5 percent stake would cost more than 30 billion yen. Marubeni Corp., another trading company, has dropped plans to acquire a 20 percent stake in Westinghouse due to the massive cost, estimated at more than 100 billion yen. Through the possible capital alliance with Westinghouse, the sources said, Sumitomo expects to expand its nuclear energy business through sales of uranium and related equipment to power companies using Westinghouse reactors. Toshiba, for its part, is willing to reduce the burden of its investment in the U.S. firm and take advantage of the trading house's business network to explore new opportunities and better serve its customers, they said. The Japan Times (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 53 Cape Cod Times: NRC to Pilgrim: Check reactor casing (January 31, 2007) By STEPHANIE VOSK STAFF WRITER PLYMOUTH - To address a potential safety hazard, plant owners need to make sure the first barrier surrounding the nuclear reactor at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is in good condition. Inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission are questioning whether there has been corrosion in the plant's drywell, a steel casing surrounding the reactor, from nearly 40 years of plant operation. In the event of an accident, the drywell would prevent radioactive steam from leaking out of the reactor, NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said last night. While NRC officials found no evidence of corrosion during a safety inspection in the fall, water found on the floor below the drywell and a faulty switch led them to call for further inspections, senior inspector Glenn Meyer said. Officials from Entergy Nuclear Operations, which owns the plant, promised at a public hearing on the safety findings last night to conduct corrosion tests on the drywell before the plant's license is renewed. The station's 40-year operating license runs out in 2012, and the NRC inspections are part of the review for the 20-year license renewal the plant is seeking. The Pilgrim plant produces nearly 700 megawatts of power at any one time and provides electricity to about 670,000 homes. The safety inspection conducted by a regional NRC team in the fall looked at aging systems and structures at the plant, as well as the plant's plan for managing the systems. While seven other problems were identified, including a lack of proper borders between safety and nonsafety equipment, those deficiencies have been cleared up, officials said. But Mary Lampert, head of the Duxbury-based citizens group Pilgrim Watch, said the fall inspection was not thorough enough because it focused too much on the plan to fix the equipment instead of scrutinizing the dangers the equipment may pose. ''One could say you see what you looked for,'' Lampert said after last night's meeting. The only reason inspectors did not just ''rubber stamp'' the drywell issue, she said, was because citizens in New Jersey raised awareness about a similar problem at the Oyster Creek Generating Station, the oldest operating nuclear power plant in the country. The Oyster Creek plant was found to have drywell corrosion in the 1980s. Though the problem has since been resolved, Oyster Creek, which has also applied for a renewal of its license, has vowed to perform another inspection before its current license expires in 2009. NRC officials said last night that all plants, including Pilgrim, were instructed to inspect their drywells after the problem surfaced at Oyster Creek. Drywell inspections were also conducted at Pilgrim in 1999 and 2001, and no corrosion was found, Meyer said. The regional safety inspection is only one piece of a larger safety review being conducted on the Plymouth plant. An advisory committee made up of industry and academic specialists, separate from the NRC but appointed by NRC officials, will conduct a hearing in April on the safety of the plant and report to the commission. NRC officials said they hope to release a final safety report on Pilgrim in July, about the same time that the final draft of an environmental impact report is expected. While the NRC could renew the plant's operating license before a follow-up test is taken on the drywell, plant operators would still have to test the coating before the renewal goes into effect. A decision could come on the license renewal as early as November, NRC officials said. Stephanie Vosk can be reached at svosk@capecodonline.com. (Published: January 31, 2007) Copyright © 2007 Cape Cod Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 54 AU ABC: Greens criticise 'self-serving' climate change report. 31/01/2007. ABC News Online The Greens say renewable energy is more cost-effective in the long-term. (ABC TV) The Australian Greens have labelled a report on climate change commissioned by the Energy Supply Association as self-serving. The report says the cheapest way to cut greenhouse gas emissions by a third in the next 30 years is by using clean coal, gas and nuclear technologies. But Greens Senator Christine Milne says renewable energy is ready to go and, in the long-term, more cost-effective. "The only reason they're more expensive than coal at the moment is the coal industry has had 100 years of polluting the atmosphere for free," she said. "Let's put a price on carbon, let's have a national reduction emissions target, introduce a greenhouse gas trading scheme and then we'll see on a level playing field the renewables really surge." Senator Milne says renewable energy investment is being driven offshore because the Federal Government is focusing on coal and nuclear power. She says renewables need to be embraced before investment dries up. "This is the coal and gas industry telling us the coal and gas industry is the answer to dealing with climate change," she said. "We cannot afford to wait for untested technology like carbon capture and storage. "We have renewable energy technology ready to go now; they're being driven out of the country because of Howard's failed policies in relation to global warming." ***************************************************************** 55 AU: ABC: Govt told to bin 'absurd' energy report. 31/01/2007. ABC News Online The ESAA report says the cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is by using clean coal, gas and nuclear technologies. The Federal Government has been urged to give little weight to a report by the power-generating industry that warns of a huge jump in the cost of electricity. The study predicts power would become twice as expensive if greenhouse gas emissions are cut by a third in the next 25 years. The report, commissioned by the Energy Supply Association of Australia (ESAA), says the cheapest way to reduce emissions is by using clean coal, gas and nuclear technologies. But Dr Mark Diesendorf, a senior lecturer in environmental studies at the University of New South Wales, says the findings reflect the vested interests of the association's members, who own most of Australia's coal-fired power stations. "The ESAA model has several very absurd assumptions," he said. "For example, it assumes a very high growth in the demand for electricity. "It assumes a very limited role for efficient energy use, which is the most cost-effective and the fastest kind of greenhouse response strategy." The Greens agree the report is self-serving. Greens Senator Christine Milne says renewable energy is ready to go and more cost-effective in the long-term. "The only reason they're more expensive than coal at the moment is the coal industry has had 100 years of polluting the atmosphere for free," she said. "Let's put a price on carbon, let's have a national reduction emissions target, introduce a greenhouse gas trading scheme and then we'll see on a level playing field the renewables really surge." Senator Milne says renewable energy needs to be embraced before investment dries up. ***************************************************************** 56 AU: ABC: Australia ignoring solar power, says pioneer 31/01/2007: Australian Broadcasting Corporation 7.30 Report Reporter: Matt Peacock KERRY O’BRIEN: Australia's main energy suppliers have released a study today supporting the Federal Government's expressed view that clean coal, if and when it is economically feasible, backed by nuclear power is the nation's best hope for reducing future greenhouse gas emissions. The study puts solar power and other renewables down the list. Coincidentally, Australia's leading solar power innovator leaves the country tomorrow because big American investors want to put his technology to far greater use in California. Professor David Mills, a Canadian expatriate who has made Australia home and carved out a reputation here as a world pioneer in solar research, has developed solar technology that, he believes, could power Australia. The frustrated scientist believes this country can't see past its rich coal and uranium reserves and recognise that the sun is Australia's richest energy resource of all. Matt Peacock reports. MATT PEACOCK: Solar power in NSW coal country, where Macquarie Generation’s Liddell power station is topping up its dirty coal power with this clean, green solar plant. DAVID MILLS, CHAIRMAN, SOLAR HEAT AND POWER (2004): Eventually this field will be 135,000 square metres. At the moment it is 1 per cent of that size and what will happen is that sunlight on a clear day like this strikes those mirrors and is gathered up onto the tower, and there is an absorber underneath that tower. In that absorber there are steam pipes and water and water is simply boiled there and that steam is drawn off and taken to the application. In this case, the application will be spliced into the power station that already exists. MATT PEACOCK: Professor David Mills is a world leader in solar research and his company, Solar Heat and Power, has no doubt about the potential of this plant. DAVID MILLS: Our solar technology can probably run the biggest size turbines today of any solar technology. MATT PEACOCK: So what you are saying is that you could power Sydney? DAVID MILLS: Yes, we could power Sydney, but we can power Australia on it. MATT PEACOCK: But a study released today by the Energy Supply Association of Australia's CEO, Brad Page, rates clean coal, nuclear and gas far ahead of solar in the race to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. BRAD PAGE, ENERGY SUPPLY ASSOC OF AUSTRALIA: Solar and wind remain relatively low on the list because we don't see that their cost is going to come down to competitive levels. DAVID MILLS: We've never been in contact with them about this technology. But what I will say is that when we look at our situation in the United States for a coal plant built in the United States, and the building of such a plant would not be significantly different in cost than in Australia, our construction cost for a large plant would come within the range of present coal plants - not in the mid range, but we don't have fuel costs. MATT PEACOCK: Today, like a string of other Australian solar researchers before him, David Mills is packing his bags to move overseas. DAVID MILLS: For 30 years, I've been trying to develop a solar industry in Australia. So I think that's a good effort. I've given it a good go. I'm happy, because I think the planet needs this technology. It's not just Australia that needs this technology. MATT PEACOCK: Mills and his company headquarters are moving to California, the world's seventh-largest economy, where in a biapartisan move Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to cut greenhouse emissions by a massive 80 per cent over the next 45 years. Now the race is on. ARNOLD SCWARZENEGGER: Our goal is we have to roll it back to the 1990 level. We can do that. PROF STEPHEN SCHNEIDER, CLIMATE SCIENTIST, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: California is at the moment leading the world in terms of its commitment to reduce greenhouse gases. There is also a lot of people here and a lot of money. There is a lot of sunshine. There is a lot of wind, and as a result of that there is going to be a lot of experimentation to see who comes out the cheapest and the safest and the fastest. MATT PEACOCK: California will soon cap greenhouse gases, enforce cuts to vehicle pollution, subsidise solar rooftop systems and launch major energy efficiency programs, all of which has sparked billions of dollars worth of investment and, with the target of one third renewable energy by 2020, solar power looks a big winner to Stanford University's Professor Stephen Schneider. STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: We need to have a learning by doing experiment and you can't learn by doing until you start doing. We should have started doing 25 years ago, and solar is going to be, in my personal opinion, a significant piece of a long term solution. MATT PEACOCK: If solar is a solution anywhere, though, argues the Australian Conservation Foundation's Professor Lowe, it should be here. PROF IAN LOWE, AUSTRALIAN CONSERVATION FOUNDATION: The amount of solar energy that hits Australia alone in one summer day alone is about half the total global annual energy demand. I'll say that again, because most people can't believe it. The whole world in half a year uses about the same amount of energy as the solar energy that hits Australia in one summer day. IAN MACFARLANE, INDUSTRY MINISTER: Solar currently costs somewhere around five to six times as much as coal. Twice as much, maybe even more than wind. What we need to do is have projects that will reduce the cost of solar. MATT PEACOCK: For David Mills, the best opportunity to improve the viability of solar power is to go offshore, as many have done before him. DAVID MILLS: I've seen very talented people leave. I've seen technologies leave. Our own technology for evacuated tubes, to the point that, to give you the example, three quarters of the world's solar collectors are actually produced in China and 80 per cent of those use University of Sydney technology. There has been a failure of business on several counts. MATT PEACOCK: In 1988 the buried contact solar cell technology left for Spain. Soon after, evacuated tube technology went to China and evacuated glazing was snapped up by Japan. In 2001, Australia's Dr Zhi took his solar cells to China and, by 2004, crystalline silicone-on-glass technology went to Germany. The Opposition's shadow environment minister, Peter Garrett, thinks enough is enough. PETER GARRETT, OPPOSITION ENVIRONMENT SPOKESMAN: Why can't he set it up here? Why can we export the technology? Why can't we employ the Australians here? Why can't we build a clean and green solar industry in Australia? Have a massive nation building exercise which sees profound support for the solar technologies that Australian scientists are delivering? That's what the Government has failed to do and that's why Mills and his company are moving overseas. MATT PEACOCK: That's not true, declares Industry Minister Ian MacFarlane. The company's headquarters will remain firmly in Australia. IAN MACFARLANE: Well, I've spoken to David Mills and his company representative and both of them say their operations will be remaining in Australia. They are certainly looking to set up a subsidiary, but they've got a number of very large projects planned in Australia of which the Government is already funding the pilot to the tune of $3.2 million. DAVID MILLS: The headquarters is leaving. But in terms of the company, the company is definitely staying and we will continue to try to get up projects in Australia. MATT PEACOCK: But the Government cites its recent $75 million commitment to Mildura's planned power station as proof of its policy commitment. IAN MACFARLANE: We've got a huge investment coming from the Commonwealth Government in the area of solar, over $400 million as part of a package of more than a billion dollars, for renewable energy in Australia. We've seen investment in renewable energy grow to over $3 billion under the policies of this Government. MATT PEACOCK: That's still dwarfed by the opportunities in California, where David Mills hopes to turn his vision for a solar power grid into reality. DAVID MILLS: The thing about solar is that we can grow very, very rapidly. Eventually we can start putting in gigawatt plants at the rate of one per year. We know how to do that already. KERRY O’BRIEN: Matt Peacock with that report. ***************************************************************** 57 KNDO/KNDU: Hanford Receives Money for GNEP Grant Tri-Cities, Yakima, WA | Money Awarded for Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Research RICHLAND, Wash.- The Hanford site will receive more than $1 million in funding for Global Nuclear Energy Partnership research. The Department of Energy is giving TRIDEC and Columbia Basin Consulting the money to research the site's capability for expanding into recycling nuclear fuel and possibly adding a nuclear power plant. If selected by DOE, it would mean new long-term jobs for the area after cleanup is finished. "Hanford at the moment is in a cleanup mode, and that'll last until 2035 or beyond, and after that there's no new missions for Hanford, so one of the things we're looking for is new missions. Global nuclear energy partnership is one of those," said TRIDEC's Gary Petersen. The study will take place over the next 90 days. A public meeting is scheduled for March in Pasco where you can comment on the issue. All content © Copyright 2000 - 2007 WorldNow and KNDO/KNDU. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 58 REA: Nuclear Power Is Not A "Renewable Source of Energy" More than 100 groups and businesses sign letter to President Bush that corrects misleading phrase. Washington, DC [RenewableEnergyAccess.com] In a letter sent January 31 to the White House, 108 environmental, business, consumer, faith-based, and energy policy organizations refuted President Bush's oft-stated claim that "nuclear power is a renewable source of energy." The letter was also signed by 22 individual citizens. "Please be advised that nuclear power is neither a renewable nor a clean source of energy. For that matter, oil, coal, and natural gas are also not renewable or clean sources of energy." -- a quote from the letter sent to President Bush today In his efforts to promote nuclear power and to initiate the construction of new nuclear power plants, President George W. Bush has frequently attempted to portray the technology as being "renewable." The letter's signers write: "Please be advised that nuclear power is neither a renewable nor a clean source of energy. For that matter, oil, coal, and natural gas are also not renewable or clean sources of energy. "Nuclear power and fossil fuels are environmentally polluting and non-renewable sources of energy that produce long-term radioactive wastes and/or greenhouse gas emissions. "The primary renewable sources of energy are biomass (e.g., biofuels, biopower), geothermal, solar, water (e.g., hydropower, tidal, wave, ocean currents), and wind." The groups object to the President's efforts to revive the nuclear industry by defining it as "renewable" so that it might be included in a future federal Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard or supported by federal tax incentives or research and development programs specifically designed to promote renewable energy technologies. Release provided by the Sustainable Energy Network, based in Takoma Park, Maryland. For the full text of the letter and the 100+ signers, you may e-mail sustainable-energy-network@hotmail.com. Adrian Akau Date Posted: Any type of energy that is harmful to use should be avoided. Nuclear is one type and carbon based fuels are another. Not only is nuclear risky, but it based upon fuel mined from the ground and therefore cannot be renewed. It also leaves a dreaded residue that has the potential to destroy our underground water sources. All carbon based fuels promote global warming, renewable or not. We cannot in justice look upon any of them as "carbon neutral" at the present time because right now we cannot affort to burn carbon, period. adrianakau@aol.com Gerry Wolff Regarding "Nuclear Power Is Not A 'Renewable Source of Energy'" (2007-01-31), there really is no need for nuclear power in the US because 'concentrating solar power' (CSP) can deliver huge amounts of energy without any of the headaches of nuclear power. CSP works best in hot deserts and, of course, these are not always nearby! But it is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity over very long distances using highly-efficient 'HVDC' transmission lines. CSP plants in the south western states of the US could easily meet the entire current US demand for electricity. Further information about CSP may be found at www.trec-uk.org.uk and www.trecers.net . The many problems associated with nuclear power are summarised at www.mng.org.uk/green_house/no_nukes.htm . Renewable Energy Access - All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 59 Platts: US congressman says NRC security rule was 'industry influenced' Washington (Platts)--29Jan2007 A US Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule designed to beef up security at nuclear plants in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington drew fire Monday from a leading House critic, who said the plan "reflects an inadequate, industry-influenced approach that sacrifices security in favor of corporate profits." Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, issued a statement criticizing the new rule for failing to require nuclear plants to protect against attacks by airplanes deliberately flown into a reactor. Markey added language to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that required the NRC to write new regulations designed to upgrade the so-called design basis threat security levels to reflect new threats in the wake of 9/11. "I am disappointed that the Commission has missed this opportunity to provide the public with a real solution to the nuclear reactor security problem. These new regulations were supposed to significantly enhance our ability to secure nuclear reactors in the post-September 11 era. It does not do so. Instead, it reflects an inadequate, industry-influenced approach that sacrifices security in favor of corporate profits." The NRC, which approved the final rule Monday, said the new rule modifies and enhances the DBT-based "extensive consideration" of factors specified in EPAct 2005. "This rule is an important piece, but only one piece, of a broader effort to enhance nuclear power plant security," NRC Chairman Dale Klein said in a statement. The commission said its final rule does not require owners to protect a plant against a deliberate hit by a large aircraft, something the agency was asked to do by the Committee to Bridge the Gap, an environmental and public interest organization. The agency said it has "already required its licensees to take steps to mitigate the effects of large fires and explosions from any type of initiating event." The agency said it believes "active protection against airborne threats is addressed by other federal organizations, including the military." Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 60 NRC: NRC to Meet with Public to Discuss Revisions, Additions to Physical Security Requirements for Nuclear Power Plants News Release - 2007-01 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 07-017 January 31, 2007 public on Feb. 14, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. to discuss a proposed rule amending its security regulations related to the physical protection of nuclear power reactors. The meeting will be held in the Commissioners Hearing Room, at NRC headquarters, in the One White Flint North building, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md. The proposed rulemaking is one of a series to enhance requirements for access controls, event reporting, security personnel training, coordination between safety and security activities, contingency planning and protection against radiological sabotage. The proposed rule would also add requirements related to background checks for firearms users and authorization for enhanced weapons to fulfill certain provisions in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In addition, this proposed rulemaking includes a limited number of new security requirements for certain facilities that manufacture uranium fuel. This proposed rulemaking incorporates requirements that had been previously imposed by the Commission through orders issued after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Additionally, the proposed requirements for safety/security interface address in part, a Petition for Rulemaking (PRM 50-80), which requested regulations for governing proposed changes to facilities that could adversely affect the licensees ability to protect against radiological sabotage. This proposed rule was published in the Federal Register last year inviting the public to submit comments. The deadline for the comment period has been extended from Jan. 9, to Feb. 23. The entire proposed rule can be found on the NRCs eRulemaking Portal at: http://ruleforum.llnl.gov/cgi-bin/library?source=*&library=se creq_lib&file=*&st=prule. More information about security requirements for NRC licensees can be found on the NRCs Web site, http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/safety- security.html. 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 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 ***************************************************************** 61 PSR Alert: Protect those who are most at risk! Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:22:45 -0800 >From: Physicians for Social Responsibility >To: bobbie@wand.org >Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 5:18 PM >Subject: Protect those who are most at risk! > >268f12.jpg > >_________________________________________________________________________ > >Please add psrnatl@psr.org to your address book to >ensure our e-mails reach your inbox > >Support PSR > > > >Dear Bobbie, > >Please help us support this important effort being promoted by our >colleagues at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. We >invite you to sign >on to this letter to President Bush to fix an important problem in public >health protection: the widespread use of "Reference Man" in setting >radiation protection standards, for instance, limits on how much residual >radiation is allowed in soil or drinking water. > >"Reference Man" is defined as a hypothetical adult "Caucasian" male who is >20 to 30 years old, weighs 154 pounds, is five feet seven inches tall, and >is "Western European or North American in habitat and custom." Reference >Man must be retired. Instead, federal agencies need to protect those most >at risk from exposure to radiation and/or toxic chemicals, be they >pregnant women, the embryo/fetus, infants, children and/or some other group. > >Sign on to the letter via this web site: >http://www.ieer.org/campaign/letter.php > >We are under no illusions that the White House will act with haste on this >important issue. However if we can get thousands of signatures on this >letter, including groups that represent a broad spectrum of society, we >are likely to get the attention of the media and Congress, and educate >large numbers about this important environmental health problem in the process. > >Open Letter to President Bush on Protecting the Most Vulnerable > >Dear President Bush: > >We are writing to call your attention to a serious problem in public >health protection and ask that you take action to fix it. > >Presently, many federal radiation protection standards are based on >average lifetime exposure or on "Reference Man," a hypothetical adult >"Caucasian" male who is 20 to 30 years old, weighs 154 pounds, is five >feet seven inches tall, and is "Western European or North American in >habitat and custom." Reference Man is widely used to set federal rules and >regulations, for instance, limits on how much residual radiation will be >allowed in radioactively contaminated soil. > >The problem is that different groups are affected differently than adult >men when exposed to radiation or toxic materials. According to the >National Research Council of the National Academies, cancer mortality >risks for women are 37.5 percent higher than for men for the same >radiation exposure. Sometimes the most vulnerable period is not in >adulthood but rather in infancy, childhood, puberty, or when the ova are >developing in a female fetus. Prenatal exposures to certain toxic >chemicals or radiation can increase the risk of certain disorders, like >breast cancer, later in life. The combined effects of chemicals and >radiation are little understood. > >Further, the use of Reference Man is not in accord with Presidential >Executive Order 13045 on the Protection of Children From Environmental >Health Risks and Safety Risks, which you endorsed with amendments in 2003. >The Order acknowledges that children are disproportionately vulnerable to >environmental hazards and directs federal agencies to ensure their >policies address the disproportionate risks. > >It is urgent that these problems be addressed systematically and broadly. >Today, public water bodies used for drinking, irrigation, and recreation >are polluted with radionuclides, such as tritium, that can cross the >placenta and toxic materials, such as mercury, which affect developing >fetuses and children. > >We are counting on your leadership to make it a central principle of >federal rules and regulations to protect those who are most susceptible to >radiation and toxic chemicals, whether they be women, pregnant women, >children, the embryo/fetus at various stages of development, or, indeed, >in some cases, men. To accomplish that goal we urge you to take the >following measures: > * Issue a Presidential Executive Order to all federal agencies and > departments to: > > * Review their definitions of "Reference" persons and modify them > as necessary so that all rules protect those most at risk from exposure > to radiation and/or toxic chemicals, be they pregnant women, the > embryo/fetus, infants, children, and/or some other group; > * Review their rules regarding protection of prospective parents > and pregnant women to ensure that future generations are not endangered > or being harmed due to workplace exposures and to ensure that no > discrimination or loss of seniority results from necessary health protections; > * Update computer models and other models used to estimate dose > and risk for regulatory purposes so they take into account the > embryo/fetus and children, and keep the models updated as new scientific > evidence becomes available; and, > * Prohibit discrimination based on genetic information when > creating or enforcing workplace health protections, including protections > for pregnant women, and ensure strict privacy in genetic matters. > > * Support legislation or propose new legislation in Congress requiring > all federal regulations that affect public health and the environment to > be regularly reviewed and revised so as to protect those most at risk; and, > * Initiate or intensify research to better understand and estimate the > human health effects of combined exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals. > >Thank you very much for considering our request on this crucial matter >related to public and environmental health. For more information, please >contact Dr. Arjun Makhijani (arjun@ieer.org) or >Lisa Ledwidge (ieer@ieer.org), President and >Outreach Director of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, >respectively, or visit >http://www.ieer.org/. > >Sign on to this >letter here > >Sincerely, >The Environment & Health Team >Physicians for Social Responsibility Attachment Converted: 268f12.jpg: 00000001,535a6288,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 62 Las Vegas SUN: Federal judge in Las Vegas sets new hearing on 'Divine Strake' Today: January 31, 2007 at 12:15:12 PST ASSOCIATED PRESS LAS VEGAS (AP) - A federal judge told government lawyers Wednesday he wants to be kept closely informed on plans for a non-nuclear explosion that authorities say would send a mushroom-shaped dust cloud high over the Nevada desert. With no date set for the test, dubbed "Divine Strake," U.S. District Court Judge Lloyd George set another status hearing March 2, and said he wants to see a draft environmental assessment prepared about the Defense Threat Reduction Agency experiment. "I'll pay a lot of attention to this case, I assure you," the judge said. Justice Department lawyer Caroline Blanco said if a date is picked for the explosion, it will be at least 30 days after the environmental assessment is completed and a finding is made that the explosion would pose no significant threat to the environment or people. Blanco, speaking by conference call from Washington, D.C., said that until a decision is made to go ahead, it was premature to address opponents' claims that the test will kick up and spread radioactive dust from the Nevada Test Site. Robert Hager, a Reno-based lawyer representing Western Shoshone tribe members and "downwinders" in Utah and Nevada, said that he plans to challenge flaws in the environmental assessment. The document has been the focus of public meetings this month in Nevada, Utah and Idaho, where elected officials have questioned the safety of the experiment. It was postponed last year after Hager filed suit. Critics have called the blast a surrogate for a low-yield nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb, and have expressed fears that it would scatter radioactive dust contaminated by nuclear weapons experiments at the test site from 1951 to 1992. The experiment would explode 700 tons of fuel oil and fertilizer over an underground tunnel, about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Government officials have called it important for gathering data about penetrating hardened and deeply buried targets. All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 63 SLO Trib: Potassium iodide pills’ shelf life extended by two years San Luis Obispo Tribune | 01/31/2007 | By David Sneed The Food and Drug Administration has extended the shelf life of radiation emergency potassium iodide tablets by two years. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, thousands of the tablets were distributed to households in San Luis Obispo County in 2003. The pill distribution was part of a one-time program to help protect people living near nuclear power plants from radiation sickness if there were an accidental release or an act of terrorism. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and state Office of Emergency Services supplied the pills. The shelf life of the pills was set to expire this year. The FDA later said they are good until 2009. The extension has caused some nuclear watchdog groups to protest. They have unsuccessfully asked the NRC to offer a fresh supply. The San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace has not taken a stand on the issue. The pills are intended to be taken by anyone exposed to radiation as a result of a release at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. They block the thyroid gland from absorbing radioactive iodine, a common component of radiation releases. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine led to an increase in thyroid cancer diagnoses. The pills do not protect other organs and are not a substitute for evacuating to avoid exposure in the event of an accident. Under the distribution program, potassium iodide tablets were mailed to any household that requested them in the emergency planning area surrounding the plant. About 142,000 people live in the area that stretches along the coast from Cayucos to Nipomo and as far inland as San Luis Obispo. The county also maintains a stockpile of the tablets to be used by emergency workers. The California Men’s Colony prison also has a supply, said George Brown, a county emergency services coordinator. The pills were offered to the three school districts in the emergency planning zone, but they declined them, Brown said. People who moved to the county after the 2003 distribution or people wanting to obtain fresh pills can order them directly from the manufacturers, Anbex and Thyrosafe. Go to or . Reach David Sneed at 781-7930. ***************************************************************** 64 TND: Nanostructured Material Offers Environmentally Safe (DU) Armor-piercing Capability | Technology News Daily Technology News Daily Submitted by Technology News... on Wed, 2007-01-31 17:10.Military | NanoTechnology Armor-piercing projectiles made of depleted uranium have caused concern among soldiers storing and using them. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory are close to developing a new composite with an internal structure resembling fudge-ripple ice cream that is actually comprised of environmentally safe materials to do the job even better. Ames Laboratory senior scientist Dan Sordelet leads a research team that is synthesizing nanolayers of tungsten and metallic glass to build a projectile. “As the projectile goes further into protective armor, pieces of the projectile are sheared away, helping to form a sharpened chisel point at the head of the penetrator," said Sordelet. “The metallic glass and tungsten are environmentally benign and eliminate health worries related to toxicity and perceived radiation concerns regarding depleted uranium.†Depleted-uranium-based alloys have traditionally been used in the production of solid metal, armor-piercing projectiles known as kinetic energy penetrators, or KEPs. The combination of high density (~18.6 grams per cubic centimeter) and strength make depleted uranium, DU, ideal for ballistics applications. Moreover, DU is particularly well-suited for KEPs because its complex crystal structure promotes what scientists call shear localization or shear banding when plastically deformed. In other words, when DU penetrators hit a target at very high speeds, they deform in a “self-sharpening†behavior. “It’s very desirable to have this type of behavior together with high density, so that’s why DU is used, but there has been strong global interest in replacing it since the start of the Gulf War in 1991.†said Sordelet. A popular replacement for DU is tungsten because at 19.3 grams per cubic centimeter, it’s a little bit denser than DU. However, tungsten has a very simple crystal structure known as a body-centered cubic structure. “If I made the same solid projectile out of tungsten and plastically deformed it, I’d get a mushroom shape at the impacting face when the projectile hit the target because tungsten is notoriously resistant to forming shear bands,†explained Sordelet. “It can be compared to taking a Tootsie Roll and pushing it against something flat and hard – you get this mushroom-head effect.†Sordelet said that researchers have been looking at ways to utilize tungsten for at least the last 15 years. They’ve created tungsten heavy alloys, for example, W-Fe-Ni (tungsten-iron-nickel), in the hope of forming shear bands during high-rate deformation, but that goal hasn’t been adequately achieved yet. “There are several types of tungsten-based penetrators, but they don’t perform as well as DU,†he said. In the last few years, Sordelet said research has focused on mixing tungsten with bulk metallic glasses because glass, as a consequence of not having ordered planes of atoms, is naturally very susceptible to shear banding. “The problem is no one has come up with an economically viable metallic glass that has a sufficiently high density to form a composite that can compete with DU,†he said. “People have made all kinds of different, interesting structures, but they all have coarse-grain tungsten of a micron or above in them, and that leads back to this mushroom-head effect.†Sordelet said the ideal approach would be to make the whole penetrator from a metallic glass matrix composite reinforced with nanocrystalline tungsten because researchers from the Johns Hopkins University and the Army Research Laboratory have recently demonstrated that when the grain size of tungsten is reduced to the nanometer scale, it’s propensity to shear localize is significantly increased. So Sordelet and his Ames Laboratory co-workers, Ryan Ott, Min Ha Lee and Doug Guyer, decided to use a mechanical milling approach to reduce the grain size of coarse-grain tungsten and intimately blend it on a submicron scale with a metallic glass. “We first physically blend the two powders in a tumbler and then mechanically mill the mixture to synthesize composite particles,†explained Sordelet. According to him, the composite particles are composed of alternating nanoscale layers of tungsten and metallic glass that have an uncanny resemblance to fudge-ripple ice cream. “What was amazing to us was that in forming the composite powder structure with this nanolayering, nothing has changed in the two different layers,†he said. “The metals do not blend together – no alloying is going on between the two, and the metallic glass structure remains unchanged. The layer spacings and grain structures are just remarkably small.†In tests at low strain rates (low rates of deformation), Sordelet’s nanostructured metallic glass+tungsten composite shows susceptibility to shear localization. “The fact that this occurred at low strain rates is very remarkable,†said Sordelet. “It’s extremely suggestive that you would see it at dynamic deformation rates, as well, which is what’s needed for KEPs.†Sordelet is optimistic about the potential for the nanostructured metallic glass+tungsten composites not only for KEPs but also as an initial step in the development of similar composites for high-precision machining of advanced materials. But because the density of typical metallic glasses is fairly low, he knows they must get about 70 volume percent of tungsten into the composite, which will make it challenging to extrude in order to achieve a composite density that is acceptable to his colleagues at the Army Research Laboratory. Contemplating that problem, Sordelet wonders, “What if we replace the glass with something that has a higher density and still might have a susceptibility to shear localization? The metallic glass is just a material that’s along for the ride because of its strong propensity for shear localization,†he noted. “But work at the Army Research Lab and Johns Hopkins University has shown that a lot of body-centered cubic metals have a susceptibility to shear localization if you get the grain size small enough.†That being the case, Sordelet is now looking at a blend of tungsten and other high-density metals, but that’s another story. The DOE Office of Science Basic Energy Sciences Office funded the work described above on nanostructured metallic glass composite powder synthesis and consolidation. Further developments are being supported by a subcontract from Kennametal Inc. through their cooperative agreement with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Ames Laboratory is operated for the DOE by ISU. The Lab conducts research into various areas of national concern, including energy resources, high-speed computer design, environmental cleanup and restoration, and the synthesis and study of new materials. More information about Ames Laboratory can be found at www.ameslab.gov. Technology News ISSN 1911-1711 ***************************************************************** 65 Hanford News: Downwinders mark nuclear test day This story was published Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 By Hilary Costa, The Idaho Statesman, Boise, McClatchy-Tribune Business News On Friday afternoon, Tona Henderson and J Truman wandered through the rows of the Emmett cemetery, stopping at one headstone: that of Paul Cooper, an Army veteran who died in 1978 from leukemia he said was caused by exposure to radiation from nuclear tests. Then Henderson turned and looked a few rows down and found another familiar name: Sheri Garmon, her friend and fellow activist who brought national attention to the plight of Idaho's downwinders before succumbing to cancer herself in September 2005. "She wouldn't have necessarily been dead if we had listened to what Paul Cooper had said in 1977," a tearful Henderson said. On Saturday, she and dozens of other Idaho downwinders gathered at the Idaho Historical Museum to share their stories and to try to make sure the past's lessons aren't forgotten as the U.S. government pushes to test new weapons at the Nevada Test Site. The conference of downwinders marked the 56th anniversary of nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site, whose fallout has been linked to cancer and other illnesses in thousands of Americans living downwind of the site. Twenty-one counties in Utah, Nevada and Arizona are covered by the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which makes cancer victims and their survivors from those counties eligible for $50,000 in "compassionate payments." Four Idaho counties were among the top five counties in the country for fallout from radioactive iodine-131, according to a 1997 National Cancer Institute study. Iodine-131 can cause thyroid cancer. The 50 people who gathered Saturday also came to voice their opposition to the Divine Strake test -- what many fear is the beginning of another round of nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site. The U.S. government wants to test a 700-ton underground explosive later this year that would reportedly be able to destroy underground military compounds. But activists fear Divine Strake could send fallout still lingering at the site back into the air. "We are not going to allow another generation of us to be created," Truman said. A public meeting in Boise about Divine Strake is set for today. On Saturday, Gov. Butch Otter issued a proclamation designating Saturday as Downwinders Day of Remembrance. Those attending Saturday's event said they are hopeful they will see support for their cause from local and state officials. Boise's Charlie Smith, an activist for awareness about the environmental causes of cancer, funded the conference. Her son Trevor, 17, was diagnosed with a medulablastoma brain tumor on Nov. 15, 2002 when the family was living in McCall. Through her own research, Smith is convinced that her son's cancer could have been caused by cyanide mining or even fallout from the Hanford Site nuclear reactors. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 66 SANA: British Expert unveils Israel use of enriched Uranium in latest Lebanon war Syrian Arab News Agency: SANA, Damascus Syria :: Last Update : Wednesday, January 31, 2007- 10:30 PM -Damascus DAMASCUS, (SANA)- British researcher Grace Bisbey has unveiled that Israel used the enriched Uranium in its latest war on Lebanon, warning against the dangerous repercussions on the inhabitants of the targeted areas. Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel Tuesday quoted Bisbey as saying that the outcome of the examination he made on samples of the soil taken immediately after the end of the Israeli war on Lebanon showed that the samples didn’t contain the depleted Uranium but contained  enrich uranium. He said that he wore gloves and a mask during the analyzing process due to the high level of polluted radiation in the samples, warning against the dangerous effects of these materials on the Lebanese civilians who breathe or touch the polluted things. For his part, former Advisor at the British Ministry of Defense Frank Bernabi and Expert in the Israeli nuclear dossier stressed that the two laboratories of Wales and Harlow where the samples were examined are very famous, denying any mistakes may have occured in the results of the analysis. In a statement to Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, Bernabi said Israel tried to hide the kind of Uranium used in its late aggression on Lebanon through mixing the enriched with depleted Uranium. H.Zein/ Zahra International Copyright© 2006, SANA ***************************************************************** 67 Spectrum: Divine Strake hearing transcript released www.thespectrum.com - The Spectrum, St. George, UT Wednesday, January 31, 2007 The Utah Department of Environmental Quality has posted the complete transcript from its meetings related to the Divine Strake non-nuclear weapons test on the department's Web site. The department conducted hearings in St. George and Salt Lake City at Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s request after federal agencies changed the formats of public meetings on the test planned for the Nevada Test Site. Divine Strake has sparked fears among some residents of Southern Utah who link the non-nuclear test and governmental promises of safety to the issues that arose after above-ground nuclear weapons were tested at the site in the 1950s and 1960s. Some residents say they and loved ones were harmed by radioactive fallout. Those residents, known as "Downwinders," have raised their voices against the proposed tests on two grounds. First, they fear that radioactive dust from those earlier nuclear tests will be circulated in the atmosphere and will fall again on Southern Utah and the surrounding area. Second, they fear that the non-nuclear test could open the door to renewed nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. The transcript can be seen and heard by going to the Department of Environmental Quality's Web site at www.deq.utah.gov/DivineStrake/on the Internet. Originally published January 31, 2007 Print this article Copyright ©2007 The Spectrum. ***************************************************************** 68 Boise Weekly: Proposed nuclear blasts stir old fears JANUARY 31, 2007 Still Watching BY MARCIA FRANKLIN JTruman still has the little green book he brought home from grade school in 1957, a book all the children were supposed to show their parents. All the children, that is, who lived downwind of Nevada's nuclear test site. Entitled Atomic Tests in Nevada, the 60-page pamphlet, now weathered and stained by both time and the impassioned grip of its owner, was designed to bolster enthusiasm and reduce fear in the residents near the test site. Today, its words are all too ironic: "You people who live near Nevada Test Site are in a very real sense active participants in the nation's atomic test program." Now, with untold numbers of both military and civilian populations dead or dying from exposure to radiation from the tests, Truman is among those fighting for compensation for Idaho's "downwinders." "We all have to understand that we are still 'active participants,'" Truman told a small crowd in Boise January 27 commemorating the 56th anniversary of the first nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). "If we don't do something now, when we know better, we have no one to blame but ourselves." Truman, 55, grew up in southwestern Utah and remembers sitting on his dad's knee watching the clouds from the bomb blasts. When he was 17, he said, he developed lymphoma as a result of the fallout. He's eligible for the $50,000 compensation for those with specific cancers who lived in certain Utah counties during the tests. But he said he's refused it until Idahoans who were sickened get compensated. "People here in Idaho and in Montana got as much fallout and sometimes more than we did," said Truman. "It's time for justice, not 'just us.' We're all downwinders." In 2005, after emotional testimony in Boise from cancer survivors who lived in Idaho counties hard hit by nuclear radiation, the National Research Council recommended that Congress expand the populations eligible for monetary compensation. Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, a Republican, introduced legislation to include Idaho in the plan, but the bill hasn't advanced in Congress. Meanwhile, the fight for compensation finds itself confronted by renewed needs for the nation's security. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), an arm of the Department of Defense charged with protecting the United States and its allies from weapons of mass destruction, has been holding hearings on a bomb-testing proposal at the test site called "Divine Strake." On January 28 the agency was in Boise presenting its case. The oddly named test (the juxtaposition of the words "divine" and "strake" has no larger meaning) will involve a "single, large-scale open-air explosive detonation over an existing tunnel site" at the NTS, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It's designed to gather data about the effects of a future 'bunker buster' bomb, which would target weapons of mass destruction buried underground.The explosion is not nuclear. But opponents fear that detonating 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil in an area already contaminated by more than 100 above-ground nuclear tests will create a radioactive dust cloud that will rain its toxins over a wide area. Indeed, for downwinders, the DTRA might as well stand for "Don't Throw Radiation Again." "It's beginning all over again," said Tona Henderson of Idaho Downwinders. "These things are just as deadly as they were 50 years ago. I don't want my family to be a guinea pig." But representatives of DTRA and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) say that fear is unfounded. "This is a pristine area," said David Rigby of DTRA about the planned test site. "There has never been any above-ground nuclear testing that would have deposited radioactive material beyond what is naturally occurring or what is considered part of global fallout" from worldwide testing over the past five decades. "Most of the dirt will rise up and fall in the immediate area," said Kevin Rohrer of NNSA. Rohrer said he's so confident that the test is safe, he hopes to witness it. "I personally am actually looking forward to standing downwind during this experiment," he said. Rohrer's and Rigby's confidence are in contrast to the views of Richard Miller, an environmental specialist who wrote Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing and The U.S. Atlas of Nuclear Fallout. He spoke to downwinders at their event. Miller said his research indicates the proposed site could be contaminated from six different "dirty" nuclear tests conducted in the 1950s. As a result, he contends the test will cause clouds of toxic material that will travel much farther than the 60 miles the DTRA said is the maximum distance for the particulates. "Like it or not, whatever happens at the Nevada Test Site happens in Idaho," Miller said. Miller's presentation provoked tears from 61-year-old Eagle resident Bonnie McBrayer. McBrayer, who grew up in Utah, has been battling three different cancers--and the bills for their treatment--for the past decade. Although she attributes her illnesses to bomb blasts, she has been unable to get compensation because she didn't live in an approved county. "I'm not planning on money anymore," she said. "I just want to stand up and fight. I'm angry." Opponents of the project say government agencies have given conflicting information about its purpose. Initial reports suggested it was a precursor to developing new nuclear weapons, something now denied by DTRA. But anti-nuclear advocates believe that's still the purpose, because the explosion is much larger than that of a conventional weapon. "We don't have a bomb that's 700 tons," said Jeremy Maxand of the Snake River Alliance. "There's no plane, no delivery system for something that big. What the test is really for is to see what size of a blast you'd need with a nuclear weapon to destroy an underground facility." "It has nothing to do with that," said Rigby. "This is a scientific experiment. The idea is to understand the effect of energy on rock. We need to 'shock the rock.'" The reason that the Nevada Test Site was chosen, he said, is that its limestone tunnels replicate the geology of countries that may have buried weapons. The local meeting almost didn't happen. Representatives from Senators Crapo's and Craig's offices pushed DTRA to include Idaho when word got out that no meetings were scheduled here. "This is one of those things that got on our radar screen more as a result of public input than our due diligence," said Craig, who attended the event. "People added one and one together and got two. It worried them, and it worried us." Craig is just one of several prominent Republican lawmakers expressing reservations about the proposal. But he said the Idaho delegation won't weigh in with its opinion until DTRA decides what to do. The agency says after reviewing comments, it will either issue a Finding of No Significant Impact and proceed with the test, or will request a full Environmental Impact Statement, which would involve formal hearings. In the meantime, the downwinders' distrust of the government continues, a distrust that government officials readily admit they understand, but don't know how to combat. "I can't tell people to believe us," said Rohrer of NNSA. "We can just present the data. Nothing is ever 100 percent." © Copyright 2007, Boise Weekly - ***************************************************************** 69 Tracy Press: Fulk's depleted uranium facts are sound Russell Ace Hoffman /For the Tracy Press Tuesday, 30 January 2007 Given that there are no letters to the editor column large enough, no public hearing long enough, no newspaper article or television documentary in-depth enough to cover every fact in the debate about radiation, there will always be room for someone like letter-writer Steve Hall to claim that someone like scientist Marion Fulk did not provide all the facts. No matter how much or how little Fulk says, Hall will always respond, “But you didn’t give all the facts!” But it’s a charade. In reality, Fulk warns and Hall obfuscates. Hall claims that Tracy residents shouldn’t be concerned about possible upcoming depleted uranium testing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Site 300 because alpha particles emitted by the radioactive material cannot penetrate the skin, and he implies that debris from the testing will not leave the test site in significant quantities. Depleted uranium weapons aerosolize upon use. Their gaseous, radioactive effluent will leave the test site. And what doesn’t aerosolize and drift away immediately will drift around the world over time. Wind, rain, birds, insects, lost lab records, combined with future construction projects and a million other things will eventually move the particles around. With a half-life of 4.5 billion years, it’s just a question of when. It may not poison Tracy residents immediately, but it will surely poison somebody, someday — just as depleted uranium munitions are poisoning people wherever they are being used. Once depleted uranium gets in the body (and it does and will) Hall’s statement that alpha particles cannot penetrate the skin is irrelevant. In addition, this “fact” ignores the sensitive parts of the outer body that can be harmed by alpha radiation, including mucous membranes, pores, ducts and parts of the eye. Hall further misrepresents the facts by citing a number he claims is “natural background” radiation, which actually comes from many different sources and comprises several different types of rays and particles, some easily avoided and some not. Hall combines everything that’s not specifically depleted uranium released from Site 300 weapons testing and pretends that all the other radiation poisoning does not cause cancer to millions worldwide. It does. Any additional radiation only adds to the misery. And official government guidelines for permissible doses of low-level radiation exposure are probably several orders of magnitude too lax, even when they are followed. As usual, it is the pro-nuker presenting half-truths to the public. ***************************************************************** 70 Pittsburg Channel: Former NUMEC Workers Blame Company For Cancer [ThePittsburghChannel.com] POSTED: 4:04 pm EST January 31, 2007 APOLLO, Pa. -- A group of workers believe their cancer and other serious illnesses are a result of going to work every day. The workers insist they've been exposed to nuclear waste that came from a company called the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., which used to sit along the Kiski River in Apollo. NUMEC made enriched uranium to fuel nuclear submarines and power plants. The fight to prove their cancer, which was supposedly developed as a result of working for the company, will not be easy, but leaders from a group called Citizens Action for a Safe Environment are walking the employees through it in a series of meetings over the next month. If the workers are successful, they could receive a check for $150,000. During a meeting on Wednesday, nearly every person in the Leechburg Union Hall suffered from cancer, beryllium disease or another serious illness. Jack McAdoo, a NUMEC employee from the 60s, has kidneys that failed him last year. He said he remembers being tested daily for exposure, though. When asked if he was above the normal uranium levels back then, McAdoo said "just about all the time." Published reports said NUMEC buried waste in trenches along Route 66 in Apollo and Parks Township. Some former workers contracted cancer and diseases after working with the material, and at Wedneday's meeting, learned how to go about petitioning the federal government for compensation from the Radiation Workers Act. NUMEC has an intriguing past. According to recently declassified FBI documents, it was the subject of a1960s CIA and FBI investigation after nearly 600 pounds of weapons grade uranium went missing. The company was fined nearly $1 million. The Valley News Dispatch said investigators believed, but couldn't prove, the uranium was diverted to Israel for bomb making. Former President Zalman Shapiro, a stanch supporter of Israel, told WTAE Channel 4's news partners in 2002 that he and his company did no such thing. Former employees learned new information every day about the investigation and the dangers of the materials they once worked with; dangers they said they believe even the company never fathomed. Copyright 2007 by ThePittsburghChannel. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 71 Salt Lake City Weekly: Same Old Bomb Editorial - February 1, 2007 Divine Strake must be stopped, but so must our current policies regarding nuclear nonproliferation. Of all the famous passages from Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, one in particular stands out. British physicist James Chadwick won the 1935 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of the neutron, an achievement that made development of the atomic bomb possible. It was six years later, when Chadwick learned it was possible to separate the isotope uranium-235 and enrich uranium in large quantities, that his life became haunted by the bomb. “I realized then that a nuclear bomb was not only possible—it was inevitable,†he said during a 1969 interview. “I had many sleepless nights. But I did realize how very, very serious it could be. And I had then to start taking sleeping pills. It was the only remedy. I’ve never stopped since then. It’s been 28 years, and I don’t think I’ve missed a single night in all those 28 years.†We in Utah can relate. When the Atomic Energy Commission began testing of nuclear weapons at a site north of Las Vegas in early 1951, we were assured in government press releases that everything was on the up and up. The Red Scare of communism was in full effect, and only traitors to their country would dare say the tests shouldn’t go on. After all those bombs, too many unexplained cases of cancer and leukemia, however, the patriotic people of Utah learned that the AEC knew full well the potential dangers. They just thought it a whole lot better that we catch the fallout brought by northeast winds instead of more populous southern California. Given the fortune our government has since doled out to those who suffered from the fallout, perhaps that was the less expensive option. It still cost plenty, however. The latest Radiation Exposure Compensation Act claims-table states that more than 17,000 claims have been approved at a cost of $1.14 billion. That’s the price of liberty, some say. More than a few readers have asked, some loudly, why this paper hasn’t covered the proposed Divine Strake test of a 700-ton ammonium nitrate-and-fuel explosion in the Nevada Test Site. Well, seeing that nuclear weapons are the world’s foremost threat to life, I’d rather ask why more of us aren’t concerned about nuclear nonproliferation generally. There are legitimate concerns about the Divine Strake test, most of which are currently and thoroughly covered in the daily press. Unless we count the presence of Neptunium-237, a byproduct of past nuclear explosions, in Nevada dust that the bomb’s sure to kick up, there’s nothing nuclear about Divine Strake. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, has asked why we need such a test when Congress has already nixed money for development of nuclear “bunker-busters,†the type of weapon Divine Strake’s meant to help perfect. A callous rube might ask why the government couldn’t carry out its tests in the mountains of Afghanistan. We can either cry in rage or laugh in hysteria at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s last-minute change of venue for its “planned information sessions†from EnergySolutions Arena to the Grand America Hotel. The NNSA no doubt realized the depth of its public relations snafu too late, but we take our dark ironies where we can. And any moron could see that the NNSA’s 23 “information stations†at the hotel ballroom constituted a deliberate attempt to dilute the critics. Bureaucrats can get pretty crafty sometimes. There’s a school of thought that this test is wrong no matter what, since it will result in the resumption of nuclear testing and therefore heightened risk of nuclear war. In someone as old as I, this evokes misty-eyed memories of the early 1980s’ “nuclear-freeze†movement. I’m against Divine Strake. I don’t think it’s worth the risk. But that’s easy. When you live in a state where 71 percent of the population voted for President Bush in 2004, it’s also hard to care. People get the democracy—and by consequence, the wars and the bomb tests—they deserve. If the Iraqi people must suffer our president’s policies, my refusal to eat some nuclear dust seems a bit righteous. In case you haven’t noticed, the Deseret Morning News’ editorial board doesn’t want this bomb, either. Far more alarming are our miniscule efforts to contain the spread of nuclear weapons during a time of war and terrorism. If we want to see the number of nuclear weapons in this world held to an absolute minimum—and who doesn’t?— we must confront the fact that our nation’s current policies and practices don’t help. It’s beyond ken that President Bush castigates Iran and North Korea for developing nuclear weapons even as he signs a nuclear-cooperation agreement with India, a nation that will not sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty designed to control the distribution and manufacture of nuclear warhead fuel and weapons-grade fissile material. In a bizarre bid to balance China’s power in the region, Bush has violated the Atomic Energy Act and, at the same time, humiliated Pakistan, an important ally in the “war on terror.†While we’ve funded the NNSA’s Materials Protection, Control and Accounting department, which monitors the security of fissile materials worldwide and especially in the former Soviet Union, there’s no doubt we could give it more fiscal attention. Our funding for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Safeguards division, which tracks down international nuclear weapons builders, is pathetic. In 2002, when the agency said it needed $12 million to respond to emergency situations, we gave it $1 million. All of this is expensive but well worth it. As Chadwick discovered in time, sleeping pills don’t come cheap. slweekly.com ©1996-2007 Copperfield Publishing, Inc.. All rights reserved. offices: 248 S. Main Street Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 801-575-7003 ***************************************************************** 72 Huliq: Novel Ames Lab composite may replace depleted uranium Armor-piercing projectiles made of depleted uranium have caused concern among soldiers storing and using them. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory are close to developing a new composite with an internal structure resembling fudge-ripple ice cream that is actually comprised of environmentally safe materials to do the job even better. Ames Laboratory senior scientist Dan Sordelet leads a research team that is synthesizing nanolayers of tungsten and metallic glass to build a projectile. “As the projectile goes further into protective armor, pieces of the projectile are sheared away, helping to form a sharpened chisel point at the head of the penetrator," said Sordelet. “The metallic glass and tungsten are environmentally benign and eliminate health worries related to toxicity and perceived radiation concerns regarding depleted uranium.†Depleted-uranium-based alloys have traditionally been used in the production of solid metal, armor-piercing projectiles known as kinetic energy penetrators, or KEPs. The combination of high density (~18.6 grams per cubic centimeter) and strength make depleted uranium, DU, ideal for ballistics applications. Moreover, DU is particularly well-suited for KEPs because its complex crystal structure promotes what scientists call shear localization or shear banding when plastically deformed. In other words, when DU penetrators hit a target at very high speeds, they deform in a “self-sharpening†behavior. “It’s very desirable to have this type of behavior together with high density, so that’s why DU is used, but there has been strong global interest in replacing it since the start of the Gulf War in 1991.†said Sordelet. A popular replacement for DU is tungsten because at 19.3 grams per cubic centimeter, it’s a little bit denser than DU. However, tungsten has a very simple crystal structure known as a body-centered cubic structure. “If I made the same solid projectile out of tungsten and plastically deformed it, I’d get a mushroom shape at the impacting face when the projectile hit the target because tungsten is notoriously resistant to forming shear bands,†explained Sordelet. “It can be compared to taking a Tootsie Roll and pushing it against something flat and hard – you get this mushroom-head effect.†Sordelet said that researchers have been looking at ways to utilize tungsten for at least the last 15 years. They’ve created tungsten heavy alloys, for example, W-Fe-Ni (tungsten-iron-nickel), in the hope of forming shear bands during high-rate deformation, but that goal hasn’t been adequately achieved yet. “There are several types of tungsten-based penetrators, but they don’t perform as well as DU,†he said. In the last few years, Sordelet said research has focused on mixing tungsten with bulk metallic glasses because glass, as a consequence of not having ordered planes of atoms, is naturally very susceptible to shear banding. “The problem is no one has come up with an economically viable metallic glass that has a sufficiently high density to form a composite that can compete with DU,†he said. “People have made all kinds of different, interesting structures, but they all have coarse-grain tungsten of a micron or above in them, and that leads back to this mushroom-head effect.†Sordelet said the ideal approach would be to make the whole penetrator from a metallic glass matrix composite reinforced with nanocrystalline tungsten because researchers from the Johns Hopkins University and the Army Research Laboratory have recently demonstrated that when the grain size of tungsten is reduced to the nanometer scale, it’s propensity to shear localize is significantly increased. So Sordelet and his Ames Laboratory co-workers, Ryan Ott, Min Ha Lee and Doug Guyer, decided to use a mechanical milling approach to reduce the grain size of coarse-grain tungsten and intimately blend it on a submicron scale with a metallic glass. “We first physically blend the two powders in a tumbler and then mechanically mill the mixture to synthesize composite particles,†explained Sordelet. According to him, the composite particles are composed of alternating nanoscale layers of tungsten and metallic glass that have an uncanny resemblance to fudge-ripple ice cream. “What was amazing to us was that in forming the composite powder structure with this nanolayering, nothing has changed in the two different layers,†he said. “The metals do not blend together – no alloying is going on between the two, and the metallic glass structure remains unchanged. The layer spacings and grain structures are just remarkably small.†In tests at low strain rates (low rates of deformation), Sordelet’s nanostructured metallic glass+tungsten composite shows susceptibility to shear localization. “The fact that this occurred at low strain rates is very remarkable,†said Sordelet. “It’s extremely suggestive that you would see it at dynamic deformation rates, as well, which is what’s needed for KEPs.†Sordelet is optimistic about the potential for the nanostructured metallic glass+tungsten composites not only for KEPs but also as an initial step in the development of similar composites for high-precision machining of advanced materials. But because the density of typical metallic glasses is fairly low, he knows they must get about 70 volume percent of tungsten into the composite, which will make it challenging to extrude in order to achieve a composite density that is acceptable to his colleagues at the Army Research Laboratory. Contemplating that problem, Sordelet wonders, “What if we replace the glass with something that has a higher density and still might have a susceptibility to shear localization? The metallic glass is just a material that’s along for the ride because of its strong propensity for shear localization,†he noted. “But work at the Army Research Lab and Johns Hopkins University has shown that a lot of body-centered cubic metals have a susceptibility to shear localization if you get the grain size small enough.†That being the case, Sordelet is now looking at a blend of tungsten and other high-density metals, but that’s another story.- DOE/Ames Laboratory Posted under: Science alloys depleted uranium Novel Ames Lab projectiles Submitted by harminka on Wed, 2007-01-31 18:12. huliq.com Policy| Editorial Review Process| iNarod News © Huliq.com 2006 Write your news and inform the public. ***************************************************************** 73 PittsburghLIVE.com: Former Numec nuclear workers and survivors can seek compensation By Tribune Review News Service Wednesday, January 31, 2007 More than a hundred former employees of Numec and its successor companies, along with the workers’ survivors, packed an informational meeting Tuesday to learn their stake in a petition that might bring money and medical payments to workers who contracted cancer as a result of their employment. In the 1960s and ’70s, the former Numec company provided enriched uranium from its plant along the Kiski River in Apollo to fuel nuclear submarines and nuclear power plants. The company buried the waste in 10 trenches on the 44-acre site along Route 66 in nearby Parks. Numec was bought by the Atlantic Richfield Co., which later sold the operation to Babcock &Wilcox. The company is now known as BWX Technologies. Some former workers, who contracted cancer, believe that they were afflicted by working at one of the two operations. They are trying to get money from the government, on whose behalf the companies did the work, as compensation for their illness and resulting medical costs. The petition with an unwieldly name — a Special Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 — allows for former employees to be compensated if they contracted at least one of 22 specific cancers and worked at the nuclear facility for at least 250 days — slightly more than eight months. But there is an additional hurdle they must clear. According to Denise Brock, an ombudsman to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)/Centers for Disease Control under-compensation program, said the former employees are not part of what is known as a special cohort class. As a result, they be subjected to dose reconstruction. “Dose reconstruction is where NIOSH performs an assessment of the amount of radiation that a worker received at a specific facility,” Brock said. “There are many factors we look at when performing dose reconstruction.” Those factors include an evaluation of the site or former site; research as to what hazardous materials, and the amount, were at the site; evaluation of the type of cancer the individual was diagnosed with; and their date of exposure. A worker will be compensated if it’s determined that he or she had a 50/50 chance or better of contracting the cancer at Numec or one of its successors from 1957 and 1983. Rich Parler, 62, of Coraopolis, has filed petitions to have Numec workers become part of the special cohort class. To do so, there has to be proof that workers were in danger, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has to be able to document it. The Department of Labor implemented the compensation program for workers at nuclear plants. One section of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, called Subtitle B, would allow former Numec, Atlantic Richfield or B workers who contracted cancer or beryllium disease to collect money and medical payments. A former worker with one of those diseases or their survivors could receive $150,000 in tax-free plus medical payments or benefits, Brock said. “If a person has lung cancer, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), uses oxygen, or has symptoms that mimic asbestos exposure, then a red flag is raised for beryllium disease.” Those who were exposed to beryllium before 1993 do not require a blood test. For Brock, her most important advice to the former workers is to meet more regularly. “I encourage these people to meet a lot more often,” she said. “Rich Parler needs to build his case, and the individuals who worked for Numec are such a wealth of knowledge. More people need to get involved before Rich’s petition can go in front of a Presidential Advisory Board.” Images and text copyright © 2007 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 74 SA: Business Day: No radiation sickness in Pelindaba workers Posted to the web on: 31 January 2007 Linda Ensor Political Correspondent CAPE TOWN A report to be released by the Nuclear Energy Corporation of SA (Necsa) in the next few days would show that none of the examined former employees at the Pelindaba nuclear plant suffered from any abnormalities arising from exposure to radiation, Necsa CEO Rob Adam said yesterday. The body launched a R3,5m probe led by scientist Mogwera Khoathane in 2005 after environmental lobby group Earthlife Africa claimed former workers at the plant outside Pretoria suffered radiation-related sicknesses such as lung cancer and neurological disorders. The antinuclear lobby group claimed that radiation levels at Pelindaba were unacceptably high, but Necsa has denied this. Even President Thabo Mbeki got embroiled in the dispute when he condemned as reckless Earthlifes allegations that nuclear waste was dumped outside the plant. Earthlife Africa claimed to have found an unsecured storage site outside the nuclear plants perimeter fence in which radioactive ore used to calibrate the facilitys instruments was buried. Adam said about 50 of more than 200 former employees were examined and found to have no indications of radiation exposure. A few had what appeared to be occupationally related symptoms such as hearing loss, which would be referred to the compensation commissioner. He told Parliaments minerals and energy committee in a briefing on Necsa activities that Earthlife Africa had tried to discourage former employees against being examined by Necsa for the investigation. Adam condemned the behaviour of certain organisations, which he said saw it as in their political interests to exploit the hopes of people. Included in the terms of reference of the inquiry were Necsas health, safety and environment programme, incidents and accidents resulting from abnormal exposure to radiation within Necsa, and diseases as ascertained from employees medical records. Adam told the parliamentary committee that Necsas safety and health performance were well within the internationally recommended worker dose limit of radiation exposure of a maximum of 50 millisieverts a year. Necsas average dose of radiation per worker was about 1 mSv/a. National Nuclear Regulator CEO Maurice Magumumela assured the committee that worker exposure to radiation at Koeberg nuclear power station, Pelindaba and Vaalputs was within regulatory limits. There was also no significant public risk to the discharge of radioactivity from Koeberg, Magumumela said. Copyright © 2005 BDFM Publishers (Pty) Ltd. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 75 reviewjournal.com: Agencies to spend $25 million retracing key Yucca research Jan. 31, 2007 By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Federal agencies plan to spend more than $25 million to retrace key Yucca Mountain research that became tainted after the discovery of scientist e-mails suggesting documents may have been falsified, according to a report made public Tuesday. The report by the Government Accountability Office puts a price tag on an e-mail scandal that rocked the Department of Energy almost two years ago and that contributed to delays in the nuclear waste repository effort. Costs of $25.6 million, compiled by the GAO from figures supplied by the Energy Department and other federal agencies, include replacing an important computer model of how water might infiltrate the mountain and erode canisters of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. That work is ongoing. DOE personnel also randomly sampled and reviewed 14 million worker e-mails for evidence of deeper problems in the Yucca program. Nevada leaders who oppose nuclear waste being shipped to the Yucca site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said the 30-page GAO report will serve to remind members of Congress about turmoil surrounding the proposed repository as they contemplate future spending for the project. "This is an admission of total embarrassment for the program and an unacceptable waste of taxpayer dollars," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who released the GAO study that was undertaken at his request. Energy Department officials were reviewing the report and planned to comment today, spokesman Allen Benson said. DOE officials previously have cited the $25 million cost of the correction in remarks to Congress, and have said their response to the controversy showed their drive to get things right. The report was made public in an apparent coincidence on the same day that House Democrats unveiled a $463.5 billion budget bill for the remainder of fiscal 2007 that cuts $50 million from the Yucca project. The new budget would allocate roughly $405 million to the Department of Energy for nuclear waste disposal, its smallest line item in five years. The fiscal year runs until Sept. 30. Democrats did not disclose why the Yucca project was slashed. Most programs were frozen at 2006 levels, but leaders on the House Appropriations Committee said they forced cuts and reclaimed unspent balances in more than 60 programs to generate $10 billion that was used to boost priorities like health research and education. "There are a few bright spots, and that is one of them," in the budget, said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. Energy Department officials would not comment on how the reduced budget might impact the Yucca program as they strive to meet a June 30, 2008 deadline to complete a repository license application. "We are confident that Congress will provide adequate funding to enable the department to complete a high-quality license application to be submitted to the NRC," spokesman Allen Benson said. The Yucca e-mail controversy ignited on March 16, 2005, when Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced discovery of a series of e-mail messages from 1998-2000 in which several government hydrologists swapped e-mails expressing frustration with quality assurance rules and hinting that corners might have been cut in complying with the strict procedures. Joseph Hevesi, one of the hydrologists who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, testified before Congress in June 2005 that he did not alter reports or falsify data. DOE undertook extensive reviews of all the work he and several others had performed. Further, inspectors within the Energy and Interior departments initiated investigations of possible criminal activity that ended when the U.S. attorney in Nevada declined to prosecute. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2007 ***************************************************************** 76 Las Vegas SUN: House trims Yucca Mountain budget as Nev. lawmakers plot strategy Today: January 31, 2007 at 13:15:15 PST By ERICA WERNER ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - Funding for Yucca Mountain in 2007 would be $50 million less than in 2006 under legislation passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives. The development came as the five members of Nevada's congressional delegation met in Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid's office to discuss plans for the upcoming legislative session, including keeping the nuclear waste dump project in check. "We'll reallocate the money to something else that's needed," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "So that's the good news for the day." The cut comes in a massive spending bill funding about one-sixth of the federal budget that Democrats pushed through the House in one batch of budget bills left undone by the Republican Congress. The measure still must pass the Senate. It would put Yucca Mountain funding for the remainder of the 2007 fiscal year ending in September at about $405 million, the lowest level in several years and significantly less than the $544 million President Bush sought in his 2007 budget request. Meanwhile, congressional investigators released a report Wednesday saying it cost federal agencies some $25 million to respond to the 2005 controversy over falsified science on the Yucca Mountain project that emerged from e-mails exchanged by U.S. Geological Survey scientists. The e-mails indicated scientists on the project backdated reports and fudged quality control documents. Prosecutors ultimately decided not to pursue criminal charges and the Energy Department concluded that the science of the project had not been compromised, but decided to redo the science anyway. The figure, in a report by the Government Accountability Office that was requested by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., matches past Energy Department estimates but gives a more precise accounting. The report said that in 2005-2006 it cost government agencies some $4.2 million to review e-mails and documents to determine the extent of the problem; $16 million to redo water infiltration analyses; and $340,000 for management and quality assurance training. The Energy Department plans to spend another $5.1 million in 2007 on redoing science work. All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 77 Aiken Today: 'Modern Marvels' to feature waste facility + AikenStandard.com Wed, Jan 31, 2007 By PHILIP LORD Senior writer The History Channel's Modern Marvels series will highlight canning technology being used at the Savannah River Site tonight. At 10 p.m., the Defense Waste Processing Facility at SRS will be highlighted as a part of an episode devoted to canning. In addition to tonight's showing, the episode will air at 2 a.m. on Thursday and at 7 p.m. on Sunday. After exploring the impact of canning technology on the world's food habits, the documentary looks at the way SRS applies canning techniques to the safe disposal of radioactive waste, said Angie French, a spokeswoman for the Savannah River National Laboratory. Footage for the segment was shot at DWPF in October and includes commentary by Liquid Waste Facility Operations Manager Kim Hauer and Steve Tibrea of SRNL, French said. "The video crew and the production crew were really enjoying their time there, because visually it is a really interesting place," French said. DWPF was selected to be part of the show by History Channel researchers who found articles about the operation in professional journals, she said. Since radioactive operations began in 1996, the DWPF melter has produced more than 8.5 million pounds of glass containing more than 2.6 million pounds of radioactive sludge waste, said D.T. Townsend, a spokesman for Washington Savannah River Company, which operates SRS for the U.S. Department of Energy. So far, DWPF has produced 2,253 canisters containing radioactive waste, Townsend said. These canisters are currently being held in underground vaults at two glass waste storage buildings adjacent to the DWPF facility. All told, a total of 12.5 million curies of radioactive material have been immobilized using DWPF. The canisters already produced are currently awaiting shipment to a long-term repository, which is proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nev. At DWPF, the sludge drawn from SRS's underground high-level radioactive waste tanks is mixed with molten glass and poured into 10-foot-high stainless steel canisters. By immobilizing the radioactive waste in glass "frit," the DWPF reduces the risks associated with the continued storage of radioactive wastes at SRS. About 36 million gallons of radioactive wastes are stored in 49 underground carbon-steel tanks at SRS. Contact Philip Lord at plord@aikenstandard.com © 2005 The AikenStandard. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 78 Aiken Today: Attempt to stall MOX in Congress fails + AikenStandard.com Wed, Jan 31, 2007 By PHILIP LORD Senior writer A veiled attempt to stall the Mixed Oxide Fuel facility at the Savannah River Site has been diffused in Congress. The backdoor move by members of the Democratic leadership was noticed prior to the resolution being presented, so the language was removed from the document after an outcry from a South Carolina congressman. Rep. Gresham Barrett, R-S.C., said he was not pleased with the veiled attempt to stall the MOX program in the continuing resolution. "In 2006 the MOX program made great strides forward," said Barrett. "At the end of the year, I expressed my concerns regarding whether those now in charge of Congress fully understood the magnitude of the program. I said then only time would tell how the change in leadership would affect the MOX program – it has and what I am hearing is not good." The language stalling the MOX program was inserted by Democratic leaders in a resolution seeking to extend appropriations until Congress can agree on a 2007 budget. The continuing resolution is required in order to prevent the government from closing down. The current federal budget year, which started Oct. 1, has continued spending at 2006 levels while members of Congress pound out a budget compromise. The continuing resolution allows the government to keep running. "Unfortunately, it appears the Democratic leadership chose to include language in a CR that further delays the MOX program," Barrett said. "It is highly unusual for language affecting a program with such national security implications to be handled in this manner. No discussion, no debate, no amendments – the hope, it seems, was to let this sail through the House and Senate with no one noticing. Even more disturbing is the apparent desire by some to include language that would effectively kill the program entirely. Thankfully it did not go unnoticed. As soon as I learned of this possibility I went to work making it clear to everyone involved that this was unacceptable." Barrett said he received help in removing the MOX language from the continuing resolution from Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., who now serves as Majority Whip in the House. "I appreciate the efforts made by Rep. Clyburn ... to ensure language killing the program would not be included. Additionally, I have talked to Senator (Lindsey) Graham and I know he is working hard in the Senate to ensure MOX continues in a timely manner," Barrett said. The MOX program, which will turn weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors, has had a rocky history over the past few years. "No doubt this news is disappointing. Delays are not good – they cost the taxpayers a lot of money. Estimates are that this delay alone will cost an additional $20 million," Barrett said. He added, "In the past most of the delays have been out of our control, due mainly to issues between the U.S. and Russia, in large part those issues have been resolved. It seems the reason for this delay lies solely with members of Congress holding up the process. The nation has already invested $1 billion dollars toward this project and the ground work has begun. Any member who supports this language owes the people of South Carolina and taxpayers across the nation an explanation as to why." "South Carolinians, and the SRS community, have always stepped up in support of our national security interests. This time is no different," Barrett said. "We are committed to seeing this project through to completion. I thank the members of the South Carolina and Georgia delegations for their support, and ask them to join me in continuing to educate our colleagues as to the importance of the MOX program." Contact Philip Lord at plord@aikenstandard.com © 2005 The AikenStandard. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 79 IEEE Spectrum: Nuclear Wasteland By Peter Fairley The French are recycling nuclear waste. Should other countries follow suit? PHOTO:Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis BLUE GLOW OF SUCCESS: Fuel assemblies cool in a water pond at the French nuclear ­complex at La Hague. The blue light is ­generated by Cherenkov radiation, which arises from a ­particle’s traveling through a medium faster than the speed of light in that medium For roughly a quarter century there has been a hiatus in nuclear-plant construction in Europe and North America. Now new plants are being built in France, Finland, and Russia, and new reactor proposals are gathering steam in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. But to undergo a true resurgencewhich many analysts argue is necessary to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissionsthe nuclear power industry needs a coherent plan for dealing with its reactors’ radioactive and toxic leftovers. Burying the waste is a slow, politically painful process that leaves much to be desired. The long-planned U.S. repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been immensely controversial. Yet if built as currently planned, it may be too small when it finally opens to accommodate all the high-level waste that has piled up in the country during half a century of commercial nuclear energy. Lately, nuclear advocates, particularly in the United States, say they’ve found a better solution, or at least a path to one. It’s based on the recycling and reuse of spent nuclear fuel, known as fuel reprocessing in the industry’s jargon. Reprocessing breaks down fuel chemically, recovering fissionable material for use in new fuels. Thus, there is less highly radioactive material that needs to be sealed in caskets, buried deep underground, or otherwise permanently isolated from humankind. “If we do reprocessing and recycle, we can increase the capacity of Yucca Mountain 100-fold,†says Phillip Finck, a nuclear engineer at Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois. Suddenly, instead of being crammed full on its opening day, Yucca Mountain would be able to handle everything the industry could throw at it until 2050 or beyond, staving off searches for additional Yucca Mountains. As it happens, there’s an ideal test case with which to evaluate that enticing proposition: France, which never backed away from nuclear energy and which has long relied on reprocessing as the linchpin of its power reactor fuel system. The French experience clearly does show that reprocessing need not be the dangerous mess that other countries, including the United States, have made of it [see photo, “Blue Glow of Successâ€]. The U.S. military used reprocessing for several decades to separate plutonium from spent fuels, providing fissionable material for bombs. The result was widespread contaminationwhich has been in some cases irremediablein the central Washington desert and the South Carolina coastal plain. France, in contrast, now reprocesses well over 1000 metric tons of spent fuel every year without incident at the La Hague chemical complex, at the head of Normandy’s wind-blasted Cotentin peninsula. La Hague receives all the spent fuel rods from France’s 59 reactors. The sprawling facility, operated by the state-controlled nuclear giant Areva, has racked up a good, if not unblemished, environmental record. The United States now claims to have a way of eliminating reprocessing’s other major liability: the risk of spreading a supply of raw materials for bomb making. The United States officially banned reprocessing of spent fuel for power reactors in 1977, during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, who feared that proliferation of reprocessing technology would make it too easy for wayward nations or even terrorist groups to obtain the raw material for bombs. But in recent years, the U.S. Department of Energy engineers, including Finck, have developed an approach that they claim is more resistant to terrorist misuse, thereby mitigating concerns about nuclear security and proliferation. The result is that, three decades later, pressure is mounting for another look at reprocessing. The U.S. government is already supplying recycled fuels to one commercial reactor and planning tests of new proliferation-resistant reprocessing technologies. Nevertheless, although it may be safe to proceed with reprocessing, France’s experience suggests that reprocessing as done now is not ready to catalyze a full-blown nuclear renaissance. The problem in a nutshell is that without breeder reactors, which can break down the most long-lived elements in nuclear waste, reprocessing comes nowhere near achieving Finck’s 100-fold reduction in that waste. France’s engineers tried harder than those in any other country to build and run breeder reactors reliably at a commercial scale, but ultimately they failed. The result is that even in Francethe best real-world model of what reprocessing can accomplishthe technology remains a tantalizing but only partial solution to the problem of high-level nuclear waste. Reprocessing got its start in the early 1940s, when Manhattan Project scientists sought a way to isolate pure plutonium. According to Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster, 1986), the chemist Glenn Seaborg, the discoverer of plutonium, came up with the basic concept. A carrier molecule grabs onto plutonium that's in a particular chemical state. That allows the carrier and the plutonium to be separated from the rest of the spent fuel. Further chemistry releases the carrier, leaving a solution of nearly pure plutonium. It was a risky endeavor from the start because of the volatile, intensely radioactive materials involved. When it was scaled up at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state to obtain the quantities of plutonium needed for bombs, immense concrete bunkers were built to house the operations [see "The Atomic Fortress That Time Forgot," IEEE Spectrum, April 2006]. The workers called them Queen Marys, after the British ocean liner, the world's biggest at the time. Inside, all the processing steps were done entirely by remote control, with technicians peering through thick windows at the machinery that moved materials through the chemical tanks. It was all part of what Bertrand Goldschmidt, an eminent French chemist who worked with Seaborg, called "the astonishing American creation in three years"-a network of laboratories and factories equivalent in size to the whole U.S. auto industry. France's Commissariat … l'nergie Atomique (CEA), a -government organization, commissioned its first reprocessing plant in 1958 at Marcoule, in the south, to supply weapons-grade plutonium for the country's nascent atomic bomb program. It added an initial reprocessing unit at La Hague for the same purpose in the early 1960s. The equipment running today, however, dates mostly to a massive upgrade and expansion begun in the 1970s and 1980s. France cut a deal with five countries-Belgium, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and Switzerland-to finance the modernization of La Hague. In exchange, France agreed to reprocess those countries' spent fuel and return their separated plutonium, so as to reduce high-level waste volumes and provide additional fresh nuclear fuel. Today, the Areva Group, a spin-off of the CEA, runs La Hague as well as other French fuel-cycle installations and builds reactors via a subsidiary it co-owns with Siemens. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/webcasts Even some of the nuclear industry's most tenacious opponents acknowledge that the result is a technical marvel. The leader of Greenpeace France's antinuclear program, Yannick Rousselet, says he no longer cites technical challenges in his criticism of Areva. "In the past," Rousselet says, "the antinuclear movement tried to say that they would not succeed with reprocessing. But they succeeded. To be honest, at least in terms of the technical aspects, it works." Activists such as Rousselet had reason to doubt La Hague's chemistry, essentially the same as the separation process developed by the Manhattan Project. It has proved an ecological, occupational, and humanitarian disaster nearly everywhere else. Spills and explosions at reprocessing plants in the United States, Russia, and Britain have polluted rivers and contaminated hundreds of thousands of acres. Britain's Sellafield reprocessing complex, on England's Cumbrian coast, was shuttered in April 2005 after safety authorities discovered that 83 cubic meters of highly radioactive liquids had spilled during a period of nine months. La Hague, in contrast, has never had a serious accident or spill. It does intentionally release relatively small amounts of radioactive substances into the air and water of the adjacent English Channel, whose strong currents were a key attraction of the La Hague site-behavior that Rousselet calls irresponsible and unwarranted. But the amounts released are below licensed levels and are dropping. Eric Blanc, the marine engineer turned chemical plant operator who serves as La Hague's deputy director, tells the growing stream of visiting U.S. politicos and utility executives that La Hague's neighbors experience an annual radiation dose below 0.02 millisieverts-roughly equivalent to the dose of solar radiation the visitors receive on their transatlantic flights. La Hague's 5000 workers absorb less radiation than they would if they were employed at a nuclear power plant. LA Hague takes exposure seriously, nevertheless. Inside the plant, there's a bit of the atmosphere of a James Bond movie. Protection suits and respirators hang on the walls. Scores of workers in white jumpsuits sit at computer screens in a central control room, while others control radiation-resistant robots or dexterous telemanipulators to guide, clean, or repair the equipment. The robots are in the thick of the action, and the danger lies safely isolated behind walls and leaded-glass windows 1 to 2 meters thick in workshops that have not seen a human in two decades of heavy-industrial operation. Reprocessing at La Hague takes place in two independent but interconnected lines. At the front end of each line, robotic assemblies lift spent fuel-rod bundles weighing 500 kilograms from armored shipping casks and suspend them in 9-meter-deep pools of water. The fuel bundles are at 300 øC; after cooling for four to five years, the fuel elements are fed into the plant's processing workshops to be chewed up, dissolved in nitric acid, and run through a series of chemical separation baths. The chemistry is fundamentally the 63-year-old Purex process developed in the Manhattan Project-Purex stands for "plutonium-uranium extraction"-but Areva says the separation equipment employed is more compact than its predecessors and generates less waste. The major products of the separation are uranium and plutonium. The former, consisting of the isotopes U-235 and U-238, constitutes 95 percent of the spent fuel. The plutonium yield is just a little more than 1 percent. Most of the uranium is shipped to an Areva plant in southern France and, at the moment, stockpiled. Some analysts predict that uranium prices will eventually justify more reuse of La Hague's uranium; but for now, utilities find it cheaper to use fuel freshly made from uranium ores and enriched to the precise isotopic composition they need. As for the plutonium, it is shipped across France to the Rh“ne Valley, where Areva's Marcoule fuel plant blends it with uranium and fabricates it into fuel for French reactors. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/webcasts The final step in the process encapsulates the high-level waste, which consists mainly of acids and solvents from the Purex process plus dangerous, extremely radioactive leftovers from the spent fuel, including isotopes of curium, cesium, and iodine. This step is called vitrification. Technicians operating remote manipulators drop the toxic blend into a bath of borosilicate glass heated to 1150 øC, then dole out the molten mix into 180-liter stainless-steel canisters. Think of a huge glass paperweight with radioactive matter inside instead of colored swirls. But this particular glass is not fragile, Blanc explains. That's the point: the glass is supposed to immobilize the isotopes, isolating them from the environment, like bugs in amber, for thousands of years. Once processed, two bundles totaling 528 fuel rods yield one vitrification canister 1.3 meters tall and a bit less than half a meter in diameter, plus another steel canister of similar size holding the compacted metal fuel rods. Even the largest of France's reactors, which can produce 1300 megawatts, generate just 20 canisters of high-level waste per year. According to Areva, it's about a factor of 10 reduction in the mass of highly radioactive waste needing to be stored under the most stringent conditions, and a four- or fivefold reduction in volume relative to leaving a plant's spent fuel unseparated [see flowchart, "The French Nuclear System"]. Despite its record of technical success, La Hague's business lost much of its shine during the past decade. By the mid-1990s, France's European partners were rethinking the wisdom of their investment in La Hague and, one by one, stopped shipping their spent fuel. From its 1997 to 1998 peak of 1700 metric tons per year, La Hague's throughput sharply decreased by 2003 to an average of 1100 metric tons per year. In part, France's partners were responding to grassroots concerns about the security of spent fuel and plutonium shipments [see sidebar, "The Terrorist Threat"]. But the ultimate cause for the slump traces back to the demise of the next-generation reactors designed to consume La Hague's plutonium, the so-called fast breeders. All reactors get their heat from bundles of rods filled with a fissile fuel. The rods are inserted into a core in close proximity to each other, enabling neutrons radiating from the fuel in each rod to split heavy atoms of uranium or plutonium in neighboring rods, thereby generating more neutrons, which split more atoms, and so on. In most conventional power reactors, water or graphite is employed as a moderator to slow down the neutrons, thus rendering them more likely to be absorbed by U-235 atoms, knocking out more neutrons. That is necessary because the concentration of fissionable material in the fuel is low, just a few percent. In contrast, breeder reactor fuel contains a high fraction of fissionable material, so that a moderator is not required. There is an additional potential advantage to the breeder reactor. By surrounding the fuel rods in its core with a jacket of U-238, which is not fissionable by slow neutrons, the reactor can produce power and simultaneously "breed" new plutonium faster than the plutonium in the fuel rods is consumed. The U-238 atoms capture neutrons to form fissile plutonium 239. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/webcasts The reason for expanding La Hague in the 1980s was to produce a first load of plutonium fuel for what was to be a fleet of breeder reactors. Energy analysts, alarmed by the oil-supply manipulations of the 1970s, had predicted a rush into nuclear power that would exhaust uranium reserves in a matter of decades. "We were projecting that by 2010 nothing but fast [breeder] reactors would be built," recalls one such analyst, Evelyne Bertel, an expert in nuclear fuel cycles at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency, in Paris. The United States and the Soviet Union both mounted major efforts to develop breeder reactors during the 1950s and 1960s. But it fell to France, after Carter took the United States out of the reprocessing and breeding game, to design and build the first commercial prototype. In 1972, a consortium of companies led by the French utility Electricit‚ de France (EDF) started work on the Superph‚nix. There were countless challenges. Above all was keeping the breeder's densely packed core from overheating, which could cause the fuel to melt and possibly even explode. Because the heat flux is so high in a breeder and absorption of neutrons by a moderator is undesirable, reactor designers faced a limited choice of coolants. In practice, almost all breeder designers have opted for liquid metals that are notoriously hard to handle. Liquid sodium, used in the Superph‚nix, is extremely corrosive and ignites explosively on contact with oxygen or water. Starting in the mid-1980s, the Superph‚nix suffered a series of sodium leaks. Meanwhile the nuclear industry peaked and uranium prices crashed, eliminating the imperative to switch to plutonium fuel. The reactor went through several shutdowns and restarts before the French government finally pulled the plug for good in 1998. By then the reactor had run just 174 days at its full 1250-MW design capacity. A French government investigation in 2000 estimated that the project had cost about ?9 billion (US $11.8 billion). French industry players often blame politics for the Superph‚nix debacle. Fran‡ois Mitterrand, then president, held power through a coalition with France's staunchly antinuclear Green Party. However, the technical problems are undeniable. "The experience of Superph‚nix demonstrated that France built a nonmature technology," says Bertel. With breeder reactors out of the picture for the foreseeable future, France tried to find a new role for La Hague's plutonium. The solution was to re-engineer Areva's fuel assembly plant at Marcoule, originally designed to make fuel bundles for the Superph‚nix, to instead produce plutonium-enriched fuel elements for conventional reactors. By blending plutonium and depleted uranium, in a ratio of 8 percent to 92 percent, the plant created so-called mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel, which can be substituted for enriched uranium fuel after just minor modifications to a conventional reactor. Today MOX fuel provides close to 10 percent of France's nuclear power generation and is also used in Belgium, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland. The downside is that spent MOX fuel is even tougher to transport, store, and reprocess than regular used fuel. Spent MOX fuel contains four to five times as much plutonium, increasing the risk of unexpected nuclear chain reactions, called accidental criticalities, within reprocessing plants. Spent MOX is also three times as hot as spent uranium fuel, thanks to an accumulation of transuranic isotopes such as americium and curium, making it less fit for underground storage. Therefore, according to a 2000 consensus report on reprocessing prepared for France's prime minister, spent MOX must cool for 150 years before it can go into an underground waste repository such as Yucca Mountain [see sidebar: "The Prickly Economics of Reprocessing"]. Meanwhile, spent MOX fuel is -piling up quickly in La Hague's cooling ponds: the 543--metric-ton accumulation grows by 100 metric tons every year. The bottom line is that burning MOX fuel makes economic sense only as the beginning of a larger process that ends with incineration in a breeder reactor, and no sense at all as an end in itself. Most of France's reprocessing customers, seeing little future for nuclear energy amid the antinuclear demonstrations of the 1980s and 1990s, accordingly saw no future for breeders either. In that context, Bertel says, pulling away from reprocessing and MOX fuel made perfect sense. As she puts it, "If you are stuck with the spent MOX fuel, why bother?" The French government and EDF remain invested in the country's nuclear future and therefore classify La Hague's spent MOX as a strategic reserve of plutonium to jump-start future breeder reactors. This eternal hope is, in fact, an essential justification for France's fuel cycle. Japan shares France's vision and built its own reprocessing plant using Areva's designs, which started up last year; the plant is expected to eventually supply Japanese reactors with MOX fuel. France and Japan suddenly look less isolated in their reprocessing strategy, thanks to U.S. President George W. Bush. Early last year, Bush singled out France's nuclear program for a rare bit of cross-Atlantic praise, telling the American people in a Saturday radio chat that reprocessing will "allow us to produce more energy, while dramatically reducing the amount of nuclear waste." Surprisingly, Bush has endorsed reprocessing as not only a means of handling domestic nuclear waste but as a bold response to proliferation as well. Turning a conventional argument on its head, Bush is saying that the risk of additional countries' using reprocessing to arm nuclear weapons can be lower, not greater, if the United States reprocesses. Under his proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), nations with "secure, advanced nuclear capabilities" would guarantee a steady supply of nuclear fuel to non-nuclear-weapons countries that agree to return the resulting spent fuel and the plutonium within for reprocessing, forgoing reprocessing plants of their own. But many proliferation experts worry that Bush's plan could backfire. It's not clear that many countries will agree to forgo reprocessing, letting others do the work for them, while they themselves agree to take back the noxious wastes. If participation in GNEP is disappointing, the program could end up encouraging rather than impeding the spread of reprocessing technology-Areva, for one, is plainly interested in licensing its technology. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/webcasts Whether or not GNEP attracts any takers, a movement toward reprocessing is already well established in the United States. U.S. utilities are getting their first taste of MOX fuel today, thanks to former President Bill Clinton, whose Energy Department in 1997 authorized the fabrication of surplus weapons-grade plutonium into MOX fuel for use in U.S. power plants. Clinton's DOE also awarded a contract to an Areva-led consortium to build a MOX fabrication plant at the DOE's Savannah River, S.C., site. While awaiting construction of the MOX plant-beset by lawsuits that have delayed its projected start date from 2009 to as late as 2015-Bush's first energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, gave Areva permission to produce a first load of MOX at Marcoule. The resulting fuel assemblies began producing power at Duke Power's Catawba, S.C., plant last year. (Abraham, by the way, has since signed on as chairman of Areva's U.S. subsidiary, Areva Enterprises.) Since Bush's high-profile endorsement of reprocessing last year, nuclear players within and around the Energy Department have been lobbying Congress to support the next step toward full integration of plutonium into the U.S. nuclear industry: a -reprocessing demonstration plant. The demo is needed to prove, at large scale, a reprocessing scheme called Urex+, developed at Argonne National Laboratory to be more proliferation-resistant than La Hague's. Urex+ coextracts plutonium together with other transuranic elements present in spent fuel. Such isotopes can be "burned" in a breeder reactor but would complicate the job of any would-be bomb maker, because they contaminate the explosive material somewhat. The DOE's Spent Nuclear Fuel Recycling Program Plan, sent to Congress this past May, also calls for a demonstration of a breeder reactor fueled by Urex+. In fact, as with France's fuel cycle, the DOE plan is hard to defend unless several such breeder reactors are built. Without them, high-level transuranic waste would become a growing annoyance in the United States, much like the MOX bundles building up in La Hague's cooling ponds. Burton Richter, a Nobel laureate who leads the DOE's science panel on nuclear waste separations (and also serves on the board of Areva Enterprises), acknowledges that breeder reactors are DOE's endgame. "Everybody is in agreement that the right system ultimately results in multiple recycles in fast [breeder] -reactors, so that's where things are going," Richter says. With visions of nuclear electricity "too cheap to meter" long gone, the case for breeder reactors has shifted from creation of new fuels to management of spent fuels. Without breeder reactors, the case for reprocessing is less than compelling. Considered in isolation, the economic arguments for and against reprocessing are a wash. Most of the arguments concerning security and terrorism, too, seem moot. But until or unless breeder reactors are commercialized that can truly burn up all the residual fissile material found in spent fuels, reprocessing will simply concentrate high-level waste in a form that's hotter and harder to handle, exchanging one nuclear waste headache for another. About the Author Contributing Editor Peter Fairley has reported for IEEE Spectrum from Bolivia, Beijing, and Paris. To Probe Further A recent report to address recycling of nuclear fuels, critically, is "Managing Spent Fuels in the United States: The Illogic of Reprocessing," by Frank von Hippel. It is also available online at http://www.fissilematerials.org. "Economic Forecast Study of the Nuclear Power Option," a report to France's Prime Minister on the economics of reprocessing, was published in July 2000: http://fire.pppl.gov/eu_fr_fission_plan.pdf. MIT's 2003 study, "The Future of Nuclear Power," is at http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower. Greenpeace France's "Stop Plutonium" Web site is http://www.greenpeace.fr/stop-plutonium/en. The U.S. Department of Energy sent a Recycling Program Plan to Congress in May 2006: http://www.gnep.energy.gov/pdfs/snfRecyclingProgramPlanMay2006.pdf. Areva's La Hague Web site is http://www.cogemalahague.com. ***************************************************************** 80 KOLO: House Trims Yucca Mountain Budget Funding for Yucca Mountain in 2007 would be $50 million less than in 2006 under legislation passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives. The development came as the five members of Nevada's congressional delegation met in Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid's office to discuss plans for the upcoming legislative session, including keeping the nuclear waste dump project in check. "We'll reallocate the money to something else that's needed," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "So that's the good news for the day." The cut comes in a massive spending bill funding about one-sixth of the federal budget that Democrats pushed through the House in one batch of budget bills left undone by the Republican Congress. The measure still must pass the Senate. It would put Yucca Mountain funding for the remainder of the 2007 fiscal year ending in September at about $405 million, the lowest level in several years and significantly less than the $544 million President Bush sought in his 2007 budget request. Meanwhile, congressional investigators released a report Wednesday saying it cost federal agencies some $25 million to respond to the 2005 controversy over falsified science on the Yucca Mountain project that emerged from e-mails exchanged by U.S. Geological Survey scientists. The e-mails indicated scientists on the project backdated reports and fudged quality control documents. Prosecutors ultimately decided not to pursue criminal charges and the Energy Department concluded that the science of the project had not been compromised, but decided to redo the science anyway. The figure, in a report by the Government Accountability Office that was requested by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., matches past Energy Department estimates but gives a more precise accounting. The report said that in 2005-2006 it cost government agencies some $4.2 million to review e-mails and documents to determine the extent of the problem; $16 million to redo water infiltration analyses; and $340,000 for management and quality assurance training. The Energy Department plans to spend another $5.1 million in 2007 on redoing science work. (Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) Gray Television Group, Inc. Copyright © 2002-2007 ***************************************************************** 81 Platts: Uranium spot price tops $75/pound, Ux Consulting says Uranium spot price tops $75/pound, Ux Consulting says Washington (Platts)--30Jan2007 The spot price of uranium (U3O8) is now at least $75 a pound, Ux Consulting said late Monday. The consulting firm said that based on some activity it has seen recently in the spot market, the U3O8 price rose $3/lb and was now at $75/lb, although the company said there was still a belief among suppliers that the price remains under considerable upward pressure. Based on discussions with market analysts, Platts newsletter NuclearFuel on January 29 said it was likely that any spot market deals done over the next two weeks would be concluded within a range of $75 to $81/lb. --Michael Knapik, newsdesk@platts.com Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 82 amarillo.com: Agency recognizes Pantex for pollution prevention 01/31/07 Amarillo Globe News] By Jim McBride The National Nuclear Security Administration has given BWXT Pantex four pollution-prevention awards - three NNSA Environmental Stewardship Awards and one Best-in-Class Award - for its recycling efforts and energy cost-cutting moves. The awards recognized performance in electronics stewardship, recycling, environmental management and waste minimization and pollution prevention. One of the awards lauded Pantex's energy-management program, which is designed to reduce electrical power and natural gas use. As of September, the program saved Pantex about $484,000 in electricity and $395,000 in natural gas costs. The Pantex Pollution Prevention Team also identified ways to find new uses for about 2,000 compressed-gas cylinders and 160 wooden utility poles that had been destined for landfills. Pantex gave poles to the public for uses as fence posts and found a vendor that could recertify the gas cylinders and reuse them. BWXT Pantex also removed Styrofoam dishes and plastic cutlery from the plant's two cafeterias, eliminating 50 metric tons of waste each year at a cost savings of more than $200,000. The programs now will be submitted for consideration in the White House's Closing the Circle environmental awards. "BWXT Pantex sets specific annual goals designed to move the facility toward more environmentally friendly and efficient processes that will improve our work," Pantex President and General Manager Dan Swaim said. ***************************************************************** 83 Salt Lake Tribune: Expansionist moguls Public Forum Letter Article Launched: 01/31/2007 12:00:00 AM MST Is there no end to the saga of nuclear waste storage from the expansionist moguls at EnergySolutions (formerly Envirocare)? During the 2007 legislative session EnergySolutions is trying to eliminate all nuclear waste management oversight from the purview of Utah's elected officials (SB 155). This includes the governor and state legislators who are elected officials obligated to represent and protect their constituents. EnergySolutions floats the idea that the public can speak out sufficiently by contacting state regulators with their concerns about nuclear waste storage expansion. This is as if the state regulators have nothing better to do than take "customers'" complaints. With the elimination of any real venue for the public's concern, it is obvious that a public outcry against expanding nuclear waste storage will fall on corporate deaf ears. SB 155 will kill all serious oversight on nuclear waste storage in Utah. Rosemary A. Holt Salt Lake City © Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 84 Carlsbad Current-Argus: WIPP acceleration funds no more By Kyle MarksteinerArticle Launched: 01/30/2007 10:07:24 PM MST CARLSBAD — Carlsbad will likely not receive any new WIPP acceleration funds in the near future. The final FY07 federal funding plan is not expected to involve $12 million in earmarks for Carlsbad, according to a press release from the office of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. The House of Representatives is expected to take up the year-long continuing resolution legislation on Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration this week, and the Senate could take up the measure next week. The current short-term CR to fund most of the federal government expires Feb. 15. Under the year-long CR plan, $6.275 billion is outlined for weapons activities, $1.683 billion is set aside for nonproliferation activities and $3.79 billion is designated for scientific research. Currently, the CR would fund National Nuclear Security Administration weapon activities and national laboratory activities in the state, but all earmarks would be removed. Funding for the DOE Carlsbad Area Office and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant will follow the FY06 funding level, which does not include the $12 million in FY07 earmarks. Earmarks included $3.5 million in WIPP acceleration funds, $2 million for development of the Center of Excellence for Hazardous Materials Management, $5 million for the WIPP Records Archive and $1.5 million for continued neutrino research, according to Domenici's office. "I adamantly dislike the manner in which we're handling the FY07 appropriations process," Domenici said in a press release. "But I have been working to make sure that we ended up with a best case scenario for DOE work, particularly in New Mexico." WIPP acceleration funds have been awarded to Carlsbad by on a year-by-year basis from the federal government to help offset the economic impact of WIPP's anticipated closure sooner than originally anticipated due to an accelerated cleanup schedule. The city of Carlsbad has received $3.5 million annually in acceleration funds for the past four years. The money has been used for a number of projects — including the recruitment of the medical transcription company DTS America, a loan to help build a biodiesel facility and a partial funding of the construction of the Permian Basin Regional Training Center. Domenici said he would work with the DOE to have some of the earmarked programs funded from available DOE funds. The Center of Excellence and WIPP Records Archive will continue, officials stressed Tuesday, as will other current projects involving WIPP acceleration funds. The Carlsbad Department of Development will continue to use other incentives to bring businesses to Carlsbad, CDOD board president Valerie Murrill said. Money that may potentially go to ongoing community development projects involving acceleration funds has already been secured — for example DTS could still receive additional funding if it crosses an employment level based on a work agreement. "One thing we did smart is we saved some of the money," Carlsbad Mayor Bob Forrest said. "We were being cautious, and thank God we did that." In the worst case scenario, Forrest said, the city would not be able to pursue new WIPP-acceleration funding related to economic development and city infrastructure. A small amount of education related money remains, the mayor said. A partnership headed by SM Stoller Corp. holds the contract for the WIPP Records Archive. The archive employs a staff of about 50 people, and the jobs are not at risk, Don George, vice president for Stoller, stressed Tuesday. "Our contract is good until October of 2008," George said, noting that the archive will continue to seek funding for the future. Forrest said he and mayor pro tem Ned Elkins will travel to Washington, D.C. next week to fight for WIPP acceleration funds. "Maybe we can get part of that money back," he said. "We're going to try to salvage some. What happened this year is a unique situation. We're also getting ready to get in line for next year. "We have saved the DOE a lot of money and lived up to our end of the bargain," he added. Copyright © 2005 Carlsbad Current Argus, a MediaNews Group Newspaper. ***************************************************************** 85 [NYTr] Cuba Calls for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:58:35 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Cuba for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons Havana, Jan 31 (ACN) The only way to achieve effective disarmament in the world is by eliminating all weapons of mass destruction with international cooperation, said Cuban ambassador to the United Nations Juan Antonio Fernandez as he addressed the UN Conference on Disarmament. The Cuban diplomat considered it crucial to hold the Conference on Disarmament, which will run until next March 10, though he warned that its objectives will not be pursued without authentic political will and he referred to "some countries whose unyielding positions have hindered the attainment of such objectives in the past," Granma daily reported. Cuba?s position in respect to nuclear weapons is in tune with the conclusions reached by the latest Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, held last September 2006 in Havana, and which were signed by 118 heads of state and government. Fernandez recalled that during the Non-Aligned Summit, the heads of state and government referred to the UN Conference on Disarmament as "the only bargaining table for the disarmament issue and they called for the setting of an initial deadline for the total elimination of nuclear weapons." The Cuban diplomat said that there are 33,000 nuclear weapons in the world, out of which 12,000 are ready to be used and that there is not an instrument to stop the production of this kind of weapons, however. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 86 [DU-WATCH] Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab's Executioners Ready Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:16:34 -0600 (CST) For Immediate Release Contact: Bob Nichols DUweapons@gmail.com San Francisco Bay View Please distribute widely. http://rense.com/general75/hyd.htm Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab's 200 Executioners Ready 1-30-7 "Hydrodynamic (bomb core) test on a firing table at Site 300, 1961. The bright "streaking" effect in the photo is likely from shards of pyrophoric metal, such as Uranium 238, hurtling through the air. U-238 is one of the contaminants of concern in the Site 300 Superfund cleanup. Photo: LLNL." SF Bay Area Targeted - 7,000,000 People Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab's 200 Executioners Are Ready By Bob Nichols duweapons@gmail.com 1-30-7 SAN FRANCISCO -- About 200 Executioners will report for work one day soon at the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons "Lab" in Livermore, California and methodically, even "professionally," set about executing the premeditated random murder of hundreds of innocent victims in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area is home to About Seven Million potential murder victims, all blissfully unaware of the deadly radioactive uranium gas about to be released in a "dirty bomb" by the 200 Executioners. Gay or straight, bisexual or transgender, black or white or Asian, it makes no difference to the cold blooded murderers at Livermore as the employees mindlessly carry out their proscribed "tests" and "detonations." After all, the money's good, why would they ever ask anything? THE WEAPON. The weapon of choice in this long running random killing spree is a radioactive metal aerosol so small, tiny even, so finely divided, that it acts like a gas. Weaponized insoluble ceramic uranium oxide and uranium nitride gas or aerosols have only two purposes. Those are to 1) kill people, and 2) contaminate the land. The Executioners will gather on the Federal Government's appointed day, concurred in by the University of California at Berkeley (UC-B,) and use exotic high explosives to blast to smithereens a substantial amount of weaponized uranium gas in solid metal form. The Executioners have done this reguarly for at least 46 years, since 1961. [See attached photo.] The uranium metal then catches on fire and burns at more than 3000 degrees. The fumes are radioactive gas [aerosols] deadly to all life forms. Dr. Chris Busby found them in giant high volume air filters in England from Iraq nine days after the United States started bombing Iraq in the "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign starting on March 21, 2003. England is 2500 miles away from Baghdad. The San Francisco Bay Area is just a few miles away from Livermore's radioactive bomb detonation site. California's fantastically rich agricultural valleys are just a few miles inland. It is time to recognize the reality of the situation. San Francisco is under attack from the Nuclear Weapons Lab at Livermore, California. THE LOCATION. The deadly explosive "device" will be detonated at the Livermore Site 300 Open Air 7000 acre detonation site one mile from Tracy, California. The facility is run by the nearby Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons "Lab." The Nuke Bomb Factory is "managed" for the Federal Government by UC-B and has been, continuously, for 61 years. HISTORY. A variety of Executioners working for the Nuclear Weapons "Lab," UC-B, and the Federal Government, since 1961, purposefully detonated thousands of pounds of deadly weaponized uranium gas. The Executioners are responsible for poisoning and contaminating thousands of people, buildings and land in the San Francisco Bay Area. The British Intelligence Agency called MI-6 has used the casualty rate figure of 10,000 people killed and maimed per ton of weaponized uranium gas explosively aerosolized and released. Supposing, for example, the Executioners explode 1000 pounds a year for 46 years. That works out to a kill and maimed casualty figure of 230,000 persons - men, women, and children. The Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons "Lab" recently "requested" that the maximum amount of uranium exploded annually be increased to 8000 pounds by the San Joaquin County Pollution Control Board. In other words, the Masters of the Nuclear Weapons Lab decided to increase the annual premeditated random casualty rate by 35,000 men, women and children. However, all the radiation dose rates are calculated for male victims between 15 and 34 years of age, generally, the strongest and healthiest human specimens. This lucky group of men's chances of getting a radioactive, chemically poisonous, heavy metal particle are, simply stated, about 5 chances out of a thousand all things being equal. However, things are not equal or fair; women, children and older men suffer higher rates of radiation related death and disease. A large daily newspaper and Livermore apologist, The San Francisco Chronicle, really distinguished themselves by blaming the high rate of breast cancer in nearby Marin County in the 1990s on hot tubs and smoking cigarettes. At the time Marin County had the highest breast cancer rate in the world. The Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, now called Livermore National Laboratory, apparently regards the Seven Million human beings in the San Francisco Bay Area as just so many expendable lab rats. The picture of a uranium bomb explosion at the Livermore Site 300 caption reads "Hydrodynamic (bomb core) test on a firing table at Site 300, 1961. The bright "streaking" effect in the photo is likely from shards of pyrophoric metal, such as Uranium 238, hurtling through the air. U-238 is one of the contaminants of concern in the Site 300 Superfund cleanup. Photo: LLNL." LLNL is the commonly used shorthand name for Lawrence Livermore National Lab. HOW URANIUM KILLS AND MAIMS. Weaponized uranium metal bombs detonated with high explosives create tiny aerosols of burning uranium oxides and uranium nitrides. The uranium burns at more than 3000 Degrees. The fumes created contain the tiny ceramicized particles that are so devastating to human bodies and all living things. The ceramicized uranium gas is toxic in at least three ways. The radioactive toxicity is well known. A milligram of uranium oxide is smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. For the rest of our eternity that same milligram fires of 1,251,000 little bullets a day. That's One Million, Two Hundred and Fifty Onr Thousand. Then you, individually, have the power of an H-Bomb for your own personal internal ionizing radiation source that decimates those cells around it. Cancer, anyone? The chemical or heavy metal toxicity is well known and applies equally to uranium. The catalytic toxicity of ceramic uranium compound aerosols is perhaps the most dangerous and least well known. It wrecks the information flows in the body. Uranium is always attracted to phosphate structures and since DNA, RNA, and Mitochondrial DNA are phosphate structures, genetic mutations are introduced that never go away. Whether you or your loved ones in the San Francisco Bay Area get sick and die of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, nueromuscular diseases, renal (kidney) disorders, endocrine disorders or some combination of these dreaded diseases; they all can be set off by the radioactive uranium gas Livermore's Executioners are set to send to the San Francisco Bay Area. There are two public agency meeting coming up Febuary 6th and 7th. This is where to go to have your traditional California say in whether or not this travesty continues. The City of Tracy City Council Meeting and the San Joquin Air Pollution Control District.. You all know what you should do. Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award winner. He is a newspaper correspondent and a frequent contributor to various online publications. Nichols is completing a book based on 15 years of nuclear radiation war in Central Asia. He is a former employee of the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. Nichols can be reached by email, and readers are encouraged to write to him at: mailto:DUweapons@gmail.com Mr Nichols states "I am indebted the following individuals for sharing their knowledge and understanding of ionizing radiation which made this article possible. Dr Doug Rokke, US Army, Ret., Leuren Moret, Dr Chris Busby, Dennis Kyne, Karen Parker, JD., the US Army, Department of Defense and publications from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab with numerous authors. HELP STOP DU EXPLOSIVES http://tinyurl.com/3x8ch8 Help STOP DU Explosives 1) Donate monies to be used to fight large explosions at Site 300 at Livermore National Lab. Funding to hire experts is desperately needed. No donation is too small! Donate by check or online. Make checks payable to: Tri-Valley CAREs Put: Site 300 Explosions on Memo line. Send checks to: Tri-Valley CAREs Attn: Bob Sarvey 501 West Grant Line Road Tracy, CA 95376 Or donate online to Tri-Valley Cares http://www.trivalleycares.org/donate.asp#whydonate If you donate online, also be sure to send a note to mailto:marylia@earthlink.net telling Tri-Valley CAREs that you would like your donation to be used to oppose Site 300 explosions. Contact info for Tri-Valley CAREs 2582 Old First Street Livermore, CA 94551 Phone (925) 443-7148 * Fax (925) 443-0177 mailto:marylia@earthlink.net 2) Attend Tracy City Council meeting on Tuesday, February 6 at 7:00 p.m. to support local residents to ask Tracy City Council to oppose large DU explosives at Livermore Lab: Tracy City Hall 325 East 10th Street Tracy, CA 95376 Phone: (209) 831-4103 council@ci.tracy.ca.us Email correspondence addressed to or carbon copied to City Council is a public record. For information on Tracy City Council: http://www.ci.tracy.ca.us/city_council/ 3) Attend Hearing to show support on Wednesday, February 7 at 10 a.m. Appeal to San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District Hearing Board Meeting Location: San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District 4800 Enterprise Way Modesto, CA Information about this meeting: http://www.valleyair.org/Board_meetings/HB/agenda_minutes/ North/Cancel/HB-NR-Cancel%202007-January-3.pdf or, http://tinyurl.com/2ndu66 --------------------------------- Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates. --------------------------------- Don't be flakey. Get Yahoo! Mail for Mobile and always stay connected to friends. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:du-watch-digest@yahoogroups.com mailto:du-watch-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 87 [NukeNet] Sen. Domenici's Nuclear Lab Earmarks Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:20:54 -0800 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: CHRIS GALLEGOS JANUARY 30, 2007 (202) 224-7082 DOMENICI SAYS FINAL FY2007 FUNDING PLAN MEANS STEADY SUPPORT FOR LABS IN N.M. All FY2007 N.M. Earmarks in Rest of Budget Eliminated WASHINGTON ­ U.S. Senator Pete Domenici today said the agreement reached to fund most of the federal government in FY2007 suitably treats the national laboratories but is poor news for other New Mexico programs and projects expecting earmark funding this year. Domenici, ranking Republican on the Senate panel that funds Energy Department activities in New Mexico, has been working the past few weeks with the new Democratic leadership, Senate and House appropriators and the Department of Energy to mitigate the impact of a year-long Continuing Resolution (CR) on DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) weapons activities and the like. The House is expected to take up the year-long CR legislation this week and the Senate could take up the measure next week. The current short-term CR to fund most of the federal government expires Feb. 15. "I adamantly dislike the manner in which we¹re handling the FY2007 appropriations process, but I have been working to make sure that we ended up with a best case scenario for DOE work, particularly in New Mexico," Domenici said. "I believe the CR is not bad for the Energy Department or the national laboratories. It keeps major priorities, like the weapons program, largely intact. I see no reason why our labs and the NNSA cannot ensure that there will be no need for layoffs this year. The NNSA has committed as much during this process," he said. Domenici noted that his work will mean that the NNSA will move forward with the Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement project and environmental cleanup at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad is sufficiently funded. "Because Congress has ceded its appropriations responsibility on FY2007, federal agencies and departments will have more authority to decide where to designate funding. That being the case, I will continue to press the importance of New Mexico priorities on departments, like the NNSA, Bureau of Reclamation or Transportation Department," Domenici said. For example, Domenici has worked with DOE to provide $500,000 to Technology Ventures Corp. in Albuquerque to support ongoing technology transfer from each of the three weapons laboratories. TVC lost an expected $3.5 million appropriation in the Senate because of the FY2007 appropriations stalemate. Domenici will also meet this week with federal water agencies to outline priorities that should be funded this year. Domenici has been warning New Mexico constituents, who expected an estimated $75 million in (non-DOE) appropriated earmark funding this year, to prepare not to receive federal funding. In the Senate last year, Domenici had secured funding for a variety of projects ranging from funding to expand the dialysis center in Gallup, to agriculture research at New Mexico State University, to airport improvement funds for the Albuquerque International Sunport. Because the Rocky Flats cleanup was completed in FY2006, Domenici helped negotiate a shift of $400 million to new spending priorities and $169 million to fill in the DOE cleanup program such as LANL environmental cleanup. The LANL program was facing a $50 million shortfall in the FY2007 budget request. Funding for DOE Carlsbad Area Office and WIPP will follow the FY2006 funding level, which does not include the $12 million in FY2007 earmarks gained Domenici. These included $3.5 million in community impact funding, $2.0 million for development of the Center of Excellence for Hazardous Materials Management, $5.0 million for the WIPP Records Center and $1.5 million for continued Neutrino Research. "I am already working with DOE to ensure that WIPP is fully funded for the remainder of this year," Domenici said. Domenici said he would work with DOE to have some of these earmarked programs funded this year from within available DOE funding. In negotiations, Domenici pressed for, and gained, sufficient new funding with DOE accounts to support implementation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, such as $265 million to support nuclear energy R&D including GNEP and Nuclear Power 2010. The agreement also provides an additional $300 million for renewable energy R&D, and adds $330 million toward the President¹s American Competitiveness Initiative. Under the year-long CR plan, $6.275 billion is outlined for weapons activities, $1.683 billion for nonproliferation activities, and $3.79 billion for scientific research. --30-- _______________________________________________________________________ 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 ***************************************************************** 88 KnoxNews: New Union leader at Oak Ridge vows to improve communication By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com January 31, 2007 Garry Whitley, the new president of the Atomic Trades and Labor Council in Oak Ridge, said he wants to improve communications - not only with his fellow union members but with the general public. "It's a bad time for union workers nationally because there's so much anti-union feeling," Whitley said. "We're hoping we can turn that around." Whitley was elected president in December, defeating Kenny Cook for the top post. He and the other officers took office Jan. 11. The ATLC is an umbrella labor organization that represents about 2,100 hourly workers at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Whitley, an electrician at Y-12 for more than 37 years, has served as chief steward for the electricians' union for 12 years and served as an ATLC delegate and board member since 1983. The other elected officers are Carl Wright, first vice president; Earl Johnson, second vice president; Danny Cantrell, secretary-treasurer; and Steve Jones, recording secretary. The current union contracts run through June 2009, so there's not a lot of pressure there. But there are plenty of issues that may need attention. It's likely that the 4/10 work schedule will resurface at Y-12, perhaps sooner than later. BWXT, the government's managing contractor at Y-12, adopted the work schedule - four days a week, 10 hours a day - on a permanent basis for its salaried workers, but negotiations with the unions did not produce any change. Y-12 management earlier conceded that productivity gains would not fully be realized until all of the plant's work groups are on the same schedule. Whitley said the issue is in management's court at the moment. "I'm not going to bring it back up," he said. However, he indicated, if the company offered another proposal, it would get the due attention. "It's not really what I think - it's what the majority thinks," Whitley said of the union members in Oak Ridge. The biggest issue at the moment involves the privately financed office buildings at the Y-12 site, the union leader said. It's unusual to have private facilities at the government complex, and the ATLC wants the developer, Lawler-Wood, to use union workers for maintenance and upkeep after construction is completed this summer. "It's an important issue," Whitley said, "because they may build six to 10 more of these (privately financed) buildings." Because the buildings are privately owned, there's no requirement to use union workers. In an interview late last year, Wayne Roquemore, the president of Lawler-Wood, was noncommittal about using Y-12's existing labor for maintenance of the Jack Case Center and the New Hope Center. The two facilities will house about 1,500 Y-12 employees, about a third of the plant's work force. "We just want to make sure we make the decision that's best for Y-12 and these facilities," Roquemore said. He said cost wouldn't necessarily be the deciding factor. "It's really not so much (cost) as what type of maintenance arrangement is going to be best for these facilities - what's going to give us the ability to deliver the best service," Roquemore said. "These buildings are nicely built buildings. They're going to be around for a long time. We've got a responsibility to the bondholders and the bond insurers to maintain these facilities in a Class A, industry-standard fashion. We can't handcuff ourselves in selecting a facility management program that won't allow us to do that." It's not clear how many workers will be needed for maintenance at the facilities. Estimates range for 30 to 100 and would include electricians, carpenters, pipe fitters, etc. Senior writer Frank Munger covers the Department of Energy for the News Sentinel. He may be reached at 865-342-6329 or at . This column is also available in the opinion section of knoxnews.com. © 2007 - Knoxville News Sentinel ***************************************************************** 89 The State: House vote might delay SRS funding 01/31/2007 The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote today to delay funding for a nearly $4 billion plutonium processing plant at the Savannah River Site near Aiken. That would put the mixed oxide fuel project more than three years behind schedule for construction to start, raising further questions about the plants future. The project would turn surplus, bomb-grade plutonium stockpiled at SRS into fuel for Duke Energy power plants in the Carolinas. Supporters of the mixed oxide fuel project say it will bring more than 1,400 jobs to SRS, but detractors say it is both expensive and dangerous to burn plutonium fuel in commercial nuclear reactors. The House plan halts funding for construction of the controversial MOX project until Aug. 1, the Greenwire news service reported Tuesday. ***************************************************************** 90 Tri-City Herald: DOE gives TRIDEC $1 million to study recycling fuel Published Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer The Tri-City Development Council has been awarded $1.02 million to study what role the Hanford nuclear reservation might play in recycling used fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. The grant includes money for TRIDEC to work with Columbia Basin Consulting Group to see if Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility and nearby buildings could be used for research for the program. Tuesday, the Department of Energy announced the award of $10.5 million in grants to study 11 sites for recycling fuel as part of President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. It announced the sites and study participants in November, but had not divided the money among winning applicants. Grant awards ranged from $468,000 to about $1.6 million, with smaller grants generally going to sites owned and operated by DOE because more information already is available about them. However, TRIDEC and Columbia Basin Consulting Group received one of the larger awards to study Hanford because of the complexity of the proposal that included FFTF. "It's a good step forward for the community," said Gary Petersen, TRIDEC vice president for Hanford programs. TRIDEC will look at whether a recycling center and an advanced recycling reactor could be built at Hanford. They could be supported by largely unused nuclear facilities related to FFTF, including the 28,000 square-foot Maintenance and Storage Facility and the 250,000 square-foot Fuels and Materials Examination Facility. FFTF or Energy Northwest capabilities for holding spent nuclear fuel will be studied. Energy Northwest also has significant capabilities in power transmission and water and is a certified Nuclear Regulatory Commission site. In addition, the 300 Area of Hanford also has nuclear handling capabilities and shielded buildings that might play a role in the project. The proposed fuel recycling center would use chemical processes to recycle spent nuclear fuel and wastes for consumption in an Advanced Burner Reactor. The reactor would generate 800 megawatts of electricity while consuming plutonium and other isotopes that would otherwise have to be disposed of as waste at a national repository. Columbia Basin Consulting Group is looking at whether Hanford's research reactor and related facilities could be used as a fast spectrum nuclear research center. It would be used for advanced fuel work, transmutation fuel testing and any other work needed to advance the new generation of fast reactor designs, said Bill Stokes, president of Columbia Basin Consulting. The Hanford proposal is strengthened by different coalitions in the community working together, he said. Sodium used to cool FFTF has been drained as part of a permanent shutdown of the reactor, but some supporters believe it still might be possible to safely restart it. The proposed recycling center and reactor will allow nuclear fuel to be reused in a safe and proliferation-resistant manner, said Dennis Spurgeon, DOE assistant secretary for nuclear energy, in a statement. "They will set the technological standard and allow us to influence energy policy abroad while increasing energy security here at home," he said. Japan and Europe already are moving forward on new ways to produce nuclear energy and prevent global warming, according to TRIDEC. Washington should have an opportunity to help lead that effort, TRIDEC said. TRIDEC will have 90 days to complete the study. In addition to Columbia Basin Consulting Group, it is working with Areva, Washington Group International and Battelle. Other sites that will be considered for the project are in Idaho, South Carolina, New Mexico, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 91 Hanford News: Hanford budget part of appropriations measure: House leaders proposing more funding than what was considered last year This story was published Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer Leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives is proposing a fiscal year 2007 budget for Department of Energy environmental cleanup that's smaller than last year's budget, but more than was being considered by last year's Congress. The House is expected to consider the bill today. The appropriations bill covers the Hanford nuclear reservation, but includes no specific amounts for cleanup of individual former weapons sites, such as Hanford. Instead, it directs the Department of Energy to submit a spending plan within 30 days of enactment of the bill. Fiscal year 2007 started Oct. 1, but Congress adjourned last year without passing nine appropriations bills, including the bill that covers the Hanford budget. Democrats, who now control Congress, said they would dispense with finishing the fiscal year 2007 budget process and instead pass a continuing resolution for appropriations through September 2007. Congress will begin considering the fiscal year 2008 budget next week. The continuing resolution bill for fiscal year 2007 in the House includes $5.7 billion for environmental cleanup of DOE defense sites. That's down from $6.6 billion last year and $7.3 billion the year before, according to the Energy Communities Alliance. However, it's more than had been approved by the House, $5.5 billion, before it adjourned last year. The Senate Appropriations Committee had approved $5.47 billion, but the bill did not come before the full Senate before adjournment. The continuing resolution budget deducts much of the money spent in previous years at the Rocky Flats, Fernald and Mound sites, where cleanup is complete, rather than switching that money to other sites, such as Hanford. Among the biggest questions is how much money will be available in the current budget year for Hanford's $12.2 billion vitrification plant. Construction was planned based on a $690 million annual budget, but last year the project received only $526 million. However, the Department of Energy had recommended that be restored to $690 million this year. No amendments are expected to be allowed when the House considers the continuing resolution today. The Senate is expected to take up the continuing resolution next week. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 92 Hanford News: Washington Closure names new chief - Charles Spencer now can remove 'acting' from job title This story was published Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer Charles Spencer has been named president of Washington Closure Hanford, less than two weeks after he was named acting president. Under terms of Washington Closure's contract, the Department of Energy needed to approve Spencer before he could be named president. Washington Closure holds the $1.9 billion contract for cleanup of much of the Hanford nuclear reservation along the Columbia River. That includes cleanup of the 300 Area just north of Richland and the reactor areas that line the Columbia River in north Hanford. Pat Pettiette was president when Washington Closure took over work about 17 months ago. But on Jan. 18, after a difficult week for the contractor, employees were told that Spencer was replacing Pettiette. Spencer comes from Aiken, S.C., where he has been working as senior vice president for management and operations for Washington Group International's Energy and Environment Business Unit. He has worked for 25 years for Washington Group in the nuclear industry. "Today, the important work on Hanford's River Corridor Closure Project is at a critical period of transition as we move into a more complex and hazardous nuclear decommissioning and cleanup environment," E. Preston Rahe Jr., president of Energy and Environment for Washington Group, said in a statement. He called Spencer "one of our most proven executives and foremost experts in disciplined conduct of operations in hazardous work environments." As senior vice president, Spencer was responsible for Washington Group operations at the Idaho and Los Alamos national laboratories and the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, a national repository in New Mexico where Hanford waste contaminated with plutonium is sent for disposal. Much of his work experience was at Savannah River, where he had key positions for servicing active nuclear weapons and developing the conceptual design of the Modern Pit Facility for future plutonium trigger manufacturing. Pettiette is being assigned to Washington Group's Boise headquarters. He was instrumental in developing Washington Group's business strategy to deal with emerging international energy markets and has been reassigned to the corporation to make him available as those markets emerge, according to a statement from Washington Closure. Washington Group has announced no title for his new position to avoid giving competitors information on new business strategies, according to Washington Closure. Pettiette was praised by Rahe. "Pat Pettiette is an accomplished major project executive, having successfully initiated complex major engineering and construction projects literally around the world," Rahe said. "Our goal from the start was to have Pat mobilize our efforts here to get our team off to the best start possible - something he's done by beating his targets for schedule, budget and safety." However, Washington Closure also has had problems in the last year. DOE deducted $100,000 from its pay in September because of a series of electrical safety problems. The next month, the Environmental Protection Agency fined DOE $120,000 for its handling of chemical spills during work done by Washington Closure to remove pipes that once carried sodium dichromate. In October, an independent review ordered by DOE found strong indications of a hostile work environment and a chilling effect that might interfere with worker and environmental safety. In the week before Spencer was named to lead Washington Closure, it was discovered that compaction testing records had been falsified at the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility and that radioactive tritium had been tracked out of a radiological work area elsewhere. However, Washington Closure stands by its safety record, saying that statistics show it is keeping workers safe. The project is running ahead of schedule and under budget, and the contractor is exceeding its goals for awarding contracts to small businesses, according to Washington Closure. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 93 Hanford News: DOE gives TRIDEC $1 million to study recycling fuel This story was published Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer The Tri-City Development Council has been awarded $1.02 million to study what role the Hanford nuclear reservation might play in recycling used fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. The grant includes money for TRIDEC to work with Columbia Basin Consulting Group to see if Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility and nearby buildings could be used for research for the program. Tuesday, the Department of Energy announced the award of $10.5 million in grants to study 11 sites for recycling fuel as part of President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. It announced the sites and study participants in November, but had not divided the money among winning applicants. Grant awards ranged from $468,000 to about $1.6 million, with smaller grants generally going to sites owned and operated by DOE because more information already is available about them. However, TRIDEC and Columbia Basin Consulting Group received one of the larger awards to study Hanford because of the complexity of the proposal that included FFTF. "It's a good step forward for the community," said Gary Petersen, TRIDEC vice president for Hanford programs. TRIDEC will look at whether a recycling center and an advanced recycling reactor could be built at Hanford. They could be supported by largely unused nuclear facilities related to FFTF, including the 28,000 square-foot Maintenance and Storage Facility and the 250,000 square-foot Fuels and Materials Examination Facility. FFTF or Energy Northwest capabilities for holding spent nuclear fuel will be studied. Energy Northwest also has significant capabilities in power transmission and water and is a certified Nuclear Regulatory Commission site. In addition, the 300 Area of Hanford also has nuclear handling capabilities and shielded buildings that might play a role in the project. The proposed fuel recycling center would use chemical processes to recycle spent nuclear fuel and wastes for consumption in an Advanced Burner Reactor. The reactor would generate 800 megawatts of electricity while consuming plutonium and other isotopes that would otherwise have to be disposed of as waste at a national repository. Columbia Basin Consulting Group is looking at whether Hanford's research reactor and related facilities could be used as a fast spectrum nuclear research center. It would be used for advanced fuel work, transmutation fuel testing and any other work needed to advance the new generation of fast reactor designs, said Bill Stokes, president of Columbia Basin Consulting. The Hanford proposal is strengthened by different coalitions in the community working together, he said. Sodium used to cool FFTF has been drained as part of a permanent shutdown of the reactor, but some supporters believe it still might be possible to safely restart it. The proposed recycling center and reactor will allow nuclear fuel to be reused in a safe and proliferation-resistant manner, said Dennis Spurgeon, DOE assistant secretary for nuclear energy, in a statement. "They will set the technological standard and allow us to influence energy policy abroad while increasing energy security here at home," he said. Japan and Europe already are moving forward on new ways to produce nuclear energy and prevent global warming, according to TRIDEC. Washington should have an opportunity to help lead that effort, TRIDEC said. TRIDEC will have 90 days to complete the study. In addition to Columbia Basin Consulting Group, it is working with Areva, Washington Group International and Battelle. Other sites that will be considered for the project are in Idaho, South Carolina, New Mexico, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 94 Hanford News: Heart of America bill blasted This story was published Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 By Chris Mulick, Herald Olympia bureau OLYMPIA - The state departments of Health and Ecology joined Tri-City interests Tuesday in signaling their opposition to a bill designed to clean up Heart of America Northwest's legally challenged Hanford cleanup initiative from 2004. And a hearing in the Senate previously scheduled for today on the bill has been canceled. "There doesn't seem to be any support in the Legislature except from Heart of America," said Sen. Erik Poulsen, chairman of the Senate Water, Energy and Telecommunications Committee. In particular, Poulsen said he was swayed after Ecology Director Jay Manning advised him the bill would do more harm than good. "That carries a lot of weight with me," Poulsen said. A senior assistant attorney general last week issued a 20-page memo requested by committees in both chambers outlining a series of complications with the bill. And with the initiative still hung up in the courts, some opponents said there's no reason to pursue it this year. "We find it unwise and unnecessary," Larry Goldstein, an environmental specialist for the Department of Ecology, told the House Select Committee on Environmental Health on Tuesday. Heart of America, which first sought to revise its initiative in the Legislature in 2005, is working on a revised version of the bill. Initiative 297, approved in all but Benton and Franklin counties, generally sought to prevent new waste from being brought to Hanford until existing wastes are cleaned up. Tri-City business, labor and other interests opposed the measure, arguing it actually would slow cleanup and lead other states to enact similar restrictions that would prevent them from receiving Hanford wastes as planned. A federal judge ruled last year that I-297 violated the Supremacy, Commerce and Contract clauses of the U.S. Constitution. That decision is being appealed. In the meantime, Heart of America has crafted House Bill 1419 and Senate Bill 5393 in an attempt to recast the law to fit the judge's ruling. Bob Cooper, a lobbyist for Heart of America, argued Tuesday the that proposal wouldn't invite other states to approve similar restrictions, would promote cleanup jobs at Hanford and would "support the will of the Washington voters." "It clearly accelerates cleanup at Hanford," said Heart of America director Gerald Pollet. Further, Heart of American board chairwoman Helen Wheatley said the bill "serves as a backstop to protect the integrity and the independence of the Hanford Advisory Board." Rep. Shirley Hankins, R-Richland, said the bills merely prop up Heart of America and help fund their activities. Last week, Hankins and Rep. Larry Haler, R-Richland, said they support disbanding the board because it gives the watchdog group a bully pulpit. "It has not a lot to do with cleanup," Hankins said of the bill. "There's nothing new in here at all. It's all the same stuff." Bob Parks, a Kennewick city councilman, Hanford worker and a HAB member, spoke against the bill but defended the board. "We don't always get along but most of the time we have a common interest and that is cleaning up Hanford," he said. The Washington Public Ports Association and U.S. Ecology - which operates a commercial low-level waste site at Hanford - testified against the bill, believing it would affect their operations. Various ports have their own cleanup projects involving hazardous materials. U.S. Ecology accepts low-level wastes from various clients including Battelle, the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center and the state itself. "It is very possible this bill will regulate hazardous cleanup sites across the state, not just Hanford," said ports lobbyist Eric Johnson. Kris Johnson, president of the Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce, said the measure would slow cleanup by 20 years and questioned why it was even being heard. "If the regulators don't want this, if DOE doesn't want this, then why are we spending our time here this morning with this bill?" he asked. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 95 Carlsbad Current-Argus: Energy alliance to receive $1.59 million for fuel plant study By Kyle Marksteiner Article Launched: 01/30/2007 10:07:34 PM MST CARLSBAD — The Eddy/Lea Energy Alliance will receive $1.59 million in Department of Energy funds to conduct suitability studies for a potential new spent fuel recycling fuel plant, according to a press release from the office of U.S. Senator Pete Domenici, R-N.M. Eleven sites received $10.4 million to conduct detailed site studies to determine the viability of hosting either a Consolidated Fuel Treatment Center or Advanced Burner Reactor. The facilities are part of the Department of Energy's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. Tuesday's announcement clears the way for GNEP studies to begin. Recipients will have 90-days to complete the studies and submit a Site Characterization Report to the Department of Energy by May 30. The Eddy/Lea alliance, which consists of the two counties and the communities of Carlsbad and Hobbs, was one of the 11 sites selected. EnergySolutions, in Roswell, was also selected and will obtain $1.13 million for the study. The money for the site studies was first included in the FY2006 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill. The Eddy/Lea Alliance received the most money of any of the locations selected, according to a press release from the office of Steve Pearce, R- N.M. "I'm very pleased that two sites in New Mexico are among those being considered for a spent fuel recycling plant," Domenici said in a prepared statement. "DOE has now taken the next step in the process by awarding funds for site studies in Lea County and Roswell. "Our state is a leader in energy production, and a new facility here would give us a role in advancing nuclear power in the U.S. and building on the nuclear expertise already in New Mexico. Nuclear energy has to be part of any serious long term energy solution, and that means we have to address waste." Washington Group and Areva are the business partners of the Eddy/Lea Energy Alliance. "It's great to see that the communities can now take the next step to characterize the site," said Dick Raaz, Washington TRU Solutions President and General Manager. "This is an important project, particularly now that the nation is turning more and more toward nuclear power as an energy option," Raaz said. "These facilities will help the nation deal with the used nuclear fuel cycle while at the same time reducing the volume of waste and reduce proliferation concerns. And as part of a company that is heavily involved in both government and commercial nuclear business that's encouraging." Pearce said the studies provide New Mexico with the opportunity to build on the momentum provided by the National Enrichment Facility near Eunice. "Working together, we can create jobs and prosperity for New Mexicans while helping our nation build the energy independence that is so critical for our economy and national security," he said. Copyright © 2005 Carlsbad Current Argus, a MediaNews Group Newspaper. ***************************************************************** 96 Inside Bay Area: Legislators fed up with lab slip-ups House committee talks of closing Los Alamos if security breaches continue FROM STAFF WRITER AND WIRE REPORTS Article Launched: 01/31/2007 02:39:06 AM PST WASHINGTON — Fed-up lawmakers on a House oversight committee said Tuesday they want to strip a federal nuclear-weapons agency of its security responsibilities and threatened to shut down Los Alamos National Laboratory, now under new managers from the Bay Area. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said he had sat through nearly a decade of hearings in which the Energy Department and the northern New Mexico nuclear weapons lab had promised to fix security problems. "I've been hearing these promises for a long time, and they've become somewhat tedious," he said. The lawmakers blistered the lab for its most recent security breach in which a contract worker walked out with more than 1,500 pages of classified documents. The documents turned up during a drug raid last October involving a man who rented a room at the worker's home. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said if problems cannot be solved this time, he will ask that Los Alamos lab, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, be shut down. After more than 60 years of operation by the University of California, the lab now is run by former Lawrence Livermore Lab director Michael Anastasio and a consortium led by the university and San Francisco-based Bechtel National. "There is an absolute inability and unwillingness to address the most routine security issues at this laboratory," Barton said. Barton, Dingell and others on the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a measure Tuesday to strip the National NuclearSecurity Administration of its primary security responsibilities and turn them back to the Energy Department. They expressed concerns that NNSA has not fixed security problems at Los Alamos despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on improvements. "NNSA was a management experiment gone wrong," Barton said. If the lawmakers succeed in gutting NNSA of its security and safety responsibilities, much of the original reason for its creation will have disappeared. The agency was born out of the lax handling of classified information by Los Alamos researchers, including computer scientist Wen Ho Lee, who for years copied vast amounts of U.S. nuclear weapons information onto data tapes that he later said he tossed in the trash. Other security problems at the lab include the disappearance of two hard drives containing classified material that later were found behind a copying machine, and the disappearance of two computer disks that forced a virtual shutdown of Los Alamos. The shutdown cost taxpayers more than a quarter billion dollars. It later was learned those two disks never existed and were a figment of a bad inventory. Congress looked for culprits and found fingers pointing everywhere. Lawmakers created the new nuclear agency for accountability. No longer would responsibility for safety and security reside with the Energy Department but right inside the nuclear weapons program. Now lawmakers are talking of doing away with the duties that defined the "semi-autonomous" agency and the lab that gave rise to its creation. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., also called for a comprehensive audit of all services performed at Los Alamos. He wants to evaluate whether its size and mission are too large and whether many of the classified operations should be moved to another lab. "I will not tolerate continued security lapses and a thumbing of their noses at Congress," Stupak said. A new management team was installed at Los Alamos less than a year ago, in part to reverse years of security and safety problems. The embarrassing October incident involving the classified documents resulted in a shake-up in the agency that oversees the lab. Linton Brooks, already reprimanded for an earlier incident, resigned this month as NNSA chief. Lab officials have said none of the material found during the drug raid was top secret. A lawyer for the employee, a 22-year-old archivist, said she had taken it home to catch up on work. Throughout Tuesday's four-hour hearing, lawmakers repeatedly asked why the lab needs to exist and whether it simply has too much responsibility for too many secret materials. Administration officials urged lawmakers to give the new management team more time to turn things around. Deputy energy secretary Clay Sell said Los Alamos probably could not be replaced or duplicated. It is the only place where plutonium fission cores for weapons can be made. Sell said that much of what happens at Los Alamos is secret because the lab is responsible for the bulk of the strategic nuclear weapons stockpile. He promised stronger security there. "It appears to me the tail's wagging the dog," said a skeptical Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La. "It has been suggested that we shoot the dog," Sell responded. "I have to reject that suggestion in the strongest possible way. It is my view we have to have Los Alamos." Compiled from The Associated Press. Staff writer Ian Hoffman contributed to this report. © 2000-2006 ANG Newspapers ***************************************************************** 97 Idaho Press-Tribune: Poll finds support for renewable energy in Idaho Photo courtesy The Times-News of Twin Falls Posted: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 5:39 PM EST BOISE, Idaho - About 70 percent of people in Idaho think global warming is being caused by humans, and a majority think the state should use incentives to increase the use of renewable and alternative energy sources, a survey indicates. The Energy Policy Institute conducted the survey last fall and asked 513 people what they thought about producing energy, using energy, and alternative ways of making energy. "Energy is back in the public's mind," John Freemuth, interim director of the institute, told the Idaho Statesman. "Perhaps because it's been covered in the media, or their own experiences with high fuel prices, or the war, or what they're noticing about climate changes and their own behavior it probably makes the public more aware." The institute is based at the Idaho National laboratory and Boise State University, and is a part of the Center for Advanced Energy Studies. The center is a partnership between INL, Idaho State University, University of Idaho, and Boise State University. The poll, released Tuesday, has an error margin of plus or minus 5.6 percent. It found that people in Idaho support producing ethanol and biodiesel from Idaho crops. It also found that most people thought the state should work at getting more people to buy energy-efficient vehicles, vehicles that run on alternative fuels, and that it should push for more investment in such things as landfills and feedstock waste that can be a source of natural gas. The state has put out a draft energy plan that lists its top goal as energy conservation, with using renewable resources as next on the list. "I think the plan is cautious," said Freemuth. "It's an attempt to do the art of the possible, given the fiscally constrained, conservative Legislature that exists. Clearly the survey indicates that Idahoans are more ready to see more aggressive action on some of this than maybe the plan indicates." Nearly half of those surveyed said their vehicle gets 21 to 30 miles per gallon. About 5 percent said they drive 40 to 50 miles to work. About half said they travel up to 10 miles or don't have to commute. The people who took the survey said renewable energy was the top issue facing the state, while the price of gas was second. Information from: Idaho Statesman, http://www.idahostatesman.com Copyright © 2007 Idaho Press-Tribune. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 98 Knox News: Expert urges 'feebates' to promote energy efficiency By RICHARD POWELSON, powelsonr@shns.com January 31, 2007 WASHINGTON - Congress could provide "feebates" to help solve the nation's energy challenge, according to a Knoxville energy expert. A "feebate" is the policy of imposing extra fees on new autos with the worst gas mileage - on a sliding scale for those over the target mileage - and rebates for new cars with the best mileage, David Greene told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The panel is exploring how best to change U.S. energy policy to lessen dependence on foreign oil. Greene, who has studied energy issues for 30 years, works at the National Transportation Research Center in Knoxville, which is part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. But he cautioned that his personal energy views do not necessarily reflect ORNL's or those of the Department of Energy. He was asked to be part of a panel of experts that included executives of General Motors, Honda Motor Co. and FedEx. Like Honda's environmental manager, John German, Greene said Congress also could increase the fuel economy standards to prod automakers toward more efficiency. German said Honda already exceeds the current federal economy standards consistently by 20 percent to 25 percent. A GM vice president, Beth Lowery, said the automaker is not recommending that Congress set a new, higher fuel economy standard. Instead, GM wants to voluntarily improve its engines' efficiency, she said. Greene argued that varying fuel economy fees and rebates for automakers would provide "a continuing incentive for manufacturers to adopt the latest technologies and apply them to improving fuel economy." Energy Committee chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said the country since the mid-1980s has "been losing ground in fuel efficiency." Now the transportation sector dominates energy needs and accounts for more than 80 percent of predicted future oil demand, he said. "We are on an unsustainable path" that includes higher energy prices, environmental pollution and global warming, and a national security threat from depending on oil in politically unstable parts of the world, Bingaman said. FedEx, based in Memphis, has been trying out 93 gas/electric hybrid trucks intended to increase fuel economy by more than 40 percent and cut particulate emissions by 90 percent and greenhouse gases by more than 25 percent. "They do work" with those benefits, said William Logue, a FedEx executive vice president. However, the E700 hybrid vehicles cost up to twice as much as standard trucks used in ground delivery, Logue said. FedEx and other shippers likely would use more of the hybrid trucks if the Department of the Treasury fixed details for hybrid commercial truck tax credits passed by Congress in 2005, he said. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said the Treasury Department seemed to be "thumbing its nose" at the 2005 law with the long delays. Richard Powelson may be contacted at 202-408-2727. © 2007 - Knoxville News Sentinel ***************************************************************** 99 lamonitor.com: Committee fumes, wants money back The Online News Source for Los Alamos ROGER SNODGRASS Monitor Assistant Editor House investigators' patience is wearing thin, they told Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Michael Anastasio and his superiors in the federal government. Lawmakers threatened to have the laboratory shut down and spoke disparagingly of "shooting the dog" or at least "moving it to another kennel." The occasion in the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday was one more in a series of visits to the woodshed by government officials and the laboratory since 1999. "Los Alamos is the problem child," said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky, the ranking member of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations. Whitfield is a veteran of many of those inquiries, most recently the one following the costly shutdown of the laboratory for six months beginning in July 2005. "All the weapons labs have problems," he said. "But Los Alamos' seem to be more frequent and more serious." The energy department's Inspector General Gregory Friedman responded, as many witnesses and blue-ribbon panels have before him, that it was a problem of follow-through. "There's not the 'stay-with-it,' the closing of the deal," he said. In his prepared remarks, delivered during the last panel of the morning, Anastasio agreed: "It is my belief that many of the past problems at Los Alamos were never fully rectified," he said. "Many corrective actions were formulated and implemented at the local organizational level, without clear and consistent implementation across the entire laboratory. That approach continues to leave the laboratory vulnerable to the recurrence of security problems that are the basis for this hearing." In October, Los Alamos police uncovered a stash of documents in the mobile home of a former contractor employee. Significant quantities of classified material were found on portable jump drives as well as in hard copy form. Along with a number of corrective actions, Anastasio said he had held 24 employees accountable for individual failure and had terminated all laboratory subcontracts with the company that employed the individual responsible. Under questioning he said he had three people removed from their assignments. "There is no evidence that anything's happened beyond taking the information to her home," he said, based on his conversations with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has withheld almost all information about the case. Subcommittee chair, Rep. Bart Stupak asked Anastasio what the consequences had been for him, since he had acknowledged responsibility. "I've been working a lot longer hours," Anastasio answered. "If you mean have I been disciplined, my board made their expectations very clear to me." In general, the panel was not satisfied with what they heard. "Sometimes you can't get somebody's attention any other way, sometimes you can by withholding financial assets," said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Tex., the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who also threatened to ask for the lab to be shut down if the problems can't be fixed. Barton urged DOE to consider penalizing the labs operators and perhaps even imposing civil penalties against them. Thomas D'Agostino, appointed acting administrator of the nuclear weapons agency overseeing LANL as a direct result of security problems under scrutiny, said the total performance fee for the contract manager is about $73 million. He said the decision would be made after the current fiscal year ends Sept. 30. "If we wanted to, we could penalize them the full amount," he said, although he added later that it would be a bad management decision to make that move right now before the fiscal year was over. "If there were a material breach of contract, we have the ability to recompete," he said. During the hearing, Stupak said he would ask the Government Accountability Office to conduct an audit and perhaps see LANL reduced to a more manageable size. Commenting on the hearings, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said in a news release that he shares frustrations over security failures at Los Alamos. "It's clear that the security of LANL must improve," he said. At the same time he criticized those who singled out Los Alamos, when many other government agencies were struggling with cybersecurity problems. He called for a "government-wide effort to improve the way data is handled." Domenici said he was opposed to a House bill proposed by members of the energy committee that would remove safety and security responsibilities from NNSA, because it would lead to the creation of another bureaucracy in the Department of Energy. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., declined comment on the House measure. Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said by phone this morning that he had attended most of the hearing. "There is a frustration," he said, "but the lab is in good shape. I think the new team is working hard to resolve these problems. Mike Anastasio made a good impression on the committee." Video of the House Committee hearing was webcast live in its entirety Tuesday, before the panel and witnesses retired to a closed session. © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 100 lamonitor.com: Budget favors labs The Online News Source for Los Alamos Domenici says no need for employee layoffs ROGER SNODGRASS Monitor Assistant Editor At-risk projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory, like the Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility and the environmental cleanup program mandated by the state are expected to survive in the new federal appropriations bill. An omnibus, long-term continuing resolution scheduled for a vote today will "suitably treat" New Mexico's national laboratories, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., reported Tuesday. There will be no need for layoffs this year, according to commitments from the National Nuclear Security Administration, he said. "The staff has been working full time over the last several weeks to see that the labs were taken care of," said Chris Gallegos, the senator's spokesman. Appropriations for the current year were not completed during the last session of Congress, causing many projects envisioned for the year to face cuts or abandonment. Rather than start at the beginning of an appropriations well into the new fiscal year, Democrats last December decided to go with a budget based on last year's numbers, vowing to cut out "earmarks," often considered pet projects of senators and representatives. "I adamantly dislike the manner in which we're handling the FY 2007 appropriations process, but I have been working to make sure that we ended up with a best case scenario for the DOE work, particularly in New Mexico," Domenici said in an announcement. The Waste Isolation Pilot Project in Carlsbad should also be fully funded for the rest of the year. The two national nuclear laboratories in New Mexico will keep "major priorities, like the weapons program, largely intact." Domenici added. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Committee greeted the decision with measured approval. "Like all of my Senate colleagues, I wish the leadership in the last Congress had taken up and passed the spending bills in the fall. That said, I believe the continuing resolution was fair to the Department of Energy, funding initiatives that affect New Mexico such as the NNSA stockpile stewardship efforts at Sandia and Los Alamos and effective operations of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant," Bingaman said. Under the new appropriations, divvying up the funding pie will fall to each department. "Congress is going to leave it up to the agencies to decide where funding goes," said Gallegos. "It's up to lawmakers to point out why projects in their states need funding. Another piece of funding that was salvaged under the new arrangement, he added, would boost DOE's Office of Science. Gallegos said competitive initiatives sponsored by New Mexico's two senators will gain $330 million under the adjustments worked out with energy officials. Approval of an interim budget will clear the table for debate over next year's spending proposals. © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 101 WAVE 3 TV: Three months remain for Paducah to prove it is suitable for plant Louisville, KY (PADUCAH, Ky.) -- Armed with a $664,600 federal grant, Paducah leaders have three months to finish a study outlining the suitability for a 1,000-job nuclear fuel recycling plant planned by the Department of Energy. The city wanted $1.2 million for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative, but got the second lowest of 11 awards given nationwide. The awards total almost $10.5 million. Paducah's share is slightly more than half Nevertheless, Mayor Bill Paxton said Paducah was treated fairly, taking note that communities with a long history of DOE plants generally received lower amounts because many of the details are already available. Cities without DOE plants have more work to do, he noted. Of the 11 sites, six are currently owned and operated by DOE. A consortium called Eddy Lead Energy Alliance received the highest award, $1.59 million, for a non-DOE site in Hobbs, N.M. The $14 billion factory, targeted for near the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, would cut up nuclear fuel rods and chemically treat 2,000 to 3,000 metric tons of spent fuel annually starting in about 2020. DOE expects to decide by mid-2008 if and where to build the plant, which would create about 5,000 construction jobs. Sen. Jim Bunning, who announced the Paducah award, expressed confidence in the work of the Paducah Uranium Plant Utilization Task Force. It is co-chaired by Paxton and Judge-Executive Van Newberry. (Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) .gif"> All content © Copyright 2000 - 2007 WorldNow and WAVE, a Raycom Media Station. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************