***************************************************************** 03/04/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.52 ***************************************************************** 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 ICH: How Far is Iran from the Bomb? 2 [NYTr] The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear War 3 [southnews] Aust Peace groups Warn on Iran War 4 [southnews] US military threats will speed up Iran's nuclear program 5 AFP: Attacking Iran could speed up nuclear programme - 6 Reuters: Would Israel attack Iran? Depends who you ask | U.S. 7 UPI: Iran president in Saudi Arabia for meeting 8 Antiwar.com: Fool Me Thrice? - 9 Guardian Unlimited: Iranian, Saudi Leaders Hold Key Talks 10 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Ready to Release N. Korean Assets | 11 AFP: Spy agency defends intelligence on NKorea nuclear program - 12 Guardian Unlimited: Israeli, U.S. Officials to Meet 13 US: Tallahassee Democrat: The Issue: Energy 14 US: UPI: United States to develop new hydrogen bomb 15 AFP: US, North Korea meet to unravel half century of enmity - 16 Vancouver Sun: Driving to secret U.S. air base 'that isn't there' 17 Guardian Unlimited: Last-ditch Campbell in Trident win 18 Guardian Unlimited: Blair stifling Trident debate, say key MPs 19 AFP: Pakistan tests nuclear-capable ballistic missile - 20 BBC NEWS: Pakistan military tests missile 21 BBC NEWS: Sir Menzies wins vote on Trident 22 UPI: Pakistan tests potential nuclear missile 23 AFP: Iran, North Korea won't disarm unless compensated - Kadhafi 24 Guardian Unlimited: Campbell faces challenge on Trident NUCLEAR REACTORS 25 Sydney Morning Herald: Switkowski to head nuclear body - 26 Sydney Morning Herald: Ziggy will be govt pawn at ANSTO - Labor - 27 Economic Times: India to sell low-cost nuke reactors 28 Xinhua: China mulls int'l input for energy law 29 US: toledoblade.com: Oversight level normalized for nuclear plant 30 UK: Sunday Herald: Fears Over Torness Safety 31 US: APP.COM: Time to counter NRC's actions | 32 US: MHNN: Schumer calls for ISA at IP (Indian Point) 33 The Australian: Ziggy to head nuke body 34 Thailand: MCOT: Coal-fired and nuclear power necessary, says Energy 35 AU ABC: Support for nuclear power growing - poll 36 AU ABC: Switkowski appointed ANSTO chairman. 37 US: PRN: Unit 2 at Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant Safely Shut Down 38 PerthNow: Under the nuke cloud | NUCLEAR SECURITY 39 US: Lexington Herald-Leader: Terrorists helped by lax security 40 US: Lexington Herald-Leader: U.S. unprepared for nuclear attack 41 US: AFP: Lawmakers deride US intelligence agencies - NUCLEAR SAFETY 42 Irna: Belgian parliament to vote on bill to ban depleted uranium wea 43 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Radiation studies to be expanded around Indian Poi 44 Yokwe Net: Nuclear: People of Bikini Wait for US Court Response to L 45 US: Big Island Weekly: Monitoring depleted uranium NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 46 US: AP Wire: Future uncertain for S.C. nuclear waste landfill 47 The State: Yucca issue presents dilemma for Democrats 48 US: The State: Firm wants more space, more waste 49 US: Sun News: Locals speak up for nuclear landfill 50 US: Columbus Free Press: Nuclear reprocessing: dangerous, dirty, and 51 US: Aiken Today: Nuclear waste landfill future may be uncertain in S 52 US: Carlsbad Current-Argus: DOE to narrow GNEP site choices by 08 53 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Walsh: Huntsman wilts when pressure on 54 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Guv plans to cut off N-waste expansion 55 US: KnoxNews: Candidates sought for nuclear waste contract 56 US: Times and Democrat: Wanting nuclear waste 57 UK: News & Star: Another delay to Thorp's opening PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 58 SF Chron: Lab's high-tech, nonexplosive weapons tests were vital to 59 KnoxNews: Wamp: Oak Ridge doesn't need more nuclear waste 60 SF Chron: Bomb gurus ponder non-nuclear future / New U.S. weapons 61 Tennessean: Oak Ridge develops deluxe dust rag - 62 SF Chron: Livermore lab picked to design warhead 63 lamonitor.com: LANL takes warhead consolation prize ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 ICH: How Far is Iran from the Bomb? Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 19:35:25 -0600 (CST) "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." -- Charles Darwin (1809-1882) 1871 = "He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." Aquinas = "I don't know a more irreligious attitude, one more utterly bankrupt of any human content, than one which permits children to be destroyed."-- Daniel Berrigan = "I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have: three meals a day for their bodies, - education and culture for their minds - and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits" Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. === NEW - NEW - NEW ICHBLOG.EU without the bells and whistles. Click here for text only version of the site (great for dialup users)! http://www.ichblog.eu/text/ === Read this newsletter online http://tinyurl.com/dy6yy === Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War On Iraq - At Least 655,000 + + http://tinyurl.com/usq4x Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America'sWar On Iraq 3,169 http://icasualties.org/oif/ The War in Iraq Costs $405,070,880,466 See the cost in your community http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182 === How Easy it is to Put Hatred on a Map By Robert Fisk Our guilt in this sectarian game is obvious. We want to divide our potential enemies. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17230.htm === Who the Hell Knows? How Far is Iran from the Bomb? By RAY McGOVERN Former CIA analyst That was one of the key questions asked of newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell at a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing on Tuesday. Why had McConnell avoided this front-burner issue in his prepared remarks? Because an honest answer would have been: "Beats the hell out of us. Despite the billions that American taxpayers have sunk into improving U.S. intelligence, we can only guess." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17232.htm === Who Will Stop The Next War? By Patrick J. Buchanan If Americans sickened by the carnage of Iraq wish to stop an even more disastrous war on Iran, they had best get cracking. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17229.htm === Too Much Blood On being the subjects of a military economy By Matt Taibbi A country that feeds itself through the manufacture of war technology is bound to view peace, nonviolence and mercy as seditious concepts. It will create policies first and then people to fit its machines, finding wars to fight and creating killers to fight them. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17233.htm === America on its Knees Before Tyranny By Richard Mynick Today's America is no democracy -- it's a degenerating tyranny, disfigured by its military-industrial-governmental cancer. Our people are increasingly ashamed and terrified of their government, and rightly so, because we have no control over it, and it's become a deceitful monstrous danger to us and to the health of the planet. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17231.htm === See Hillary Run By Scott Ritter Run, Hillary, run. But your race towards the White House will never outpace the hypocrisy and duplicity inherent in your decision to vote for war in Iraq. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17228.htm === Iraq: At least 39 killed in another bloody day of U.S. occupation: A suicide car bomb killed 12 people, including three policemen and a child, when it blew up at a police checkpoint in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KHA323459.htm === 6 Sunni men killed execution-style : Gunmen stormed the home of a Sunni family threatened with death for meeting with local Shiites, separating out the women and children and executing six men on Saturday, Iraqi police and military officials said. http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/57863.html === 'Surge' needs up to 7,000 more troops : President Bush's planned escalation of U.S. forces in Iraq will require as many as 28,500 troops, Pentagon officials told a Senate committee Thursday. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-03-01-surge_x.htm === Outrage over Imminent Execution of Iraqi Women: Three young women accused of joining the Iraqi insurgency movement and engaging in "terrorism" have been sentenced to death, provoking protest from rights organisations fearing that this could be the start of more executions of women in post-Saddam Hussein's Iraq. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36797 === US asks us to pick up litter while city is in ruins, says mayor of Baghdad: Baghdad's mayor lashed out at the United States yesterday for spending huge sums on projects to collect rubbish and plant trees while his devastated war-torn city struggles without electricity. http://snipurl.com/1by6i === Afghan Taliban says sending fighters to Iraq - TV: "We have very strong relations with the mujahideen in Iraq. The mujahideen stay in Iraq for a month for example then they come here," he added in remarks dubbed in Arabic. "We also share intelligence." http://snipurl.com/1by6j === Three killed, 33 wounded in Afghanistan violence: In eastern Afghanistan, one police officer is dead after an insurgent attack on a police post last night. About 30 militants fired heavy machine guns and launched rocket-propelled grenade. Two other officers are wounded. http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=6171967&nav=23iiYvns === Pakistan: U.S. Can't Target Militants Here: Pakistan vehemently denied Saturday the U.S. military's claim that coalition forces in Afghanistan have the authority to pursue Taliban fleeing across the border into Pakistani territory. http://www.themilwaukeechannel.com/news/11164311/detail.html === Secret unit hunts terrorists overseas: The Pentagon has turned a secret terrorist-hunting unit into a nearly self-contained command of more than 1,000 men and women who collect intelligence and track and capture Americas mostwanted enemies. http://snipurl.com/1by6m === U.S. claims on North Korea come under scrutiny: The Bush administration, which used some false and exaggerated intelligence to make its case for invading Iraq, also may have inflated some of its allegations against North Korea to justify a hard-line policy toward the Stalinist regime. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16813725.htm === China warns Negroponte on Taiwan arms sales: China warned visiting US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte that plans to sell American missiles to Taiwan threatened to harm Sino-US ties, a Chinese spokesman said Saturday. http://snipurl.com/1by6q === Algeria says won't host a U.S. base on its territory : Algeria said on Saturday its cooperation with Washington's war on terrorism was "profitable" but it would never agree to host a U.S. military base on its territory. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070303/wl_nm/algeria_usa_dc_1 === CIA torture victim denied his day in US court: A U.S. federal appeals court has upheld a refusal to hear the case of a Lebanese-born German man who was detained and tortured by the CIA for five months. http://snipurl.com/1by6r === Kuwaiti court acquits 2 ex-Gitmo inmates: A criminal court on Saturday acquitted two former Guantanamo Bay prisoners of joining al-Qaida or the Taliban. http://snipurl.com/1by6s === Attorney general halts BBC probe : The attorney general has obtained an injunction against the BBC to stop it broadcasting an item about the cash-for-honours investigation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6414113.stm === Envoy Warns Chavez About Oil Takeover : He noted that 80 percent of Venezuela's petroleum revenue comes from the United States and that most refineries capable of processing Venezuela's heavy crude are in the U.S. http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6454213,00.html === Michael Parenti -- Myth of UnderDevelopment!: 4 Minute Video: The stupendous fortunes that were-and still are being extracted by the European and North American investors should remind us that there are very few really poor nations in what today is commonly called the Third World. Brazil is rich; Indonesia is rich; and so are the Philippines, Chile, Bolivia, Zaire, Mexico, India, and Malaysia. Only the people are poor. http://snipurl.com/1by6v === New Hampshire REAL ID Protest: Protesters of the REAL ID Act demonstrate and speak in Concord for the New Hampshire House bill which would prevent NH's participation in it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeE3iB90KeE === Let us work towards Peace & Joy Tom Feeley === Liberty can not be preserved without general knowledge among people." (August 1765) John Adams _____________________________ Change address / Leave mailing list: http://ymlp.com/u.php?feminine+rich@math.missouri.edu Hosting by YourMailingListProvider ***************************************************************** 2 [NYTr] The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear War Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 19:41:26 -0500 (EST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Tim Murphy (activ-l) Information Clearing House - Mar 1, 2007 http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/752/1/ The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear War By George Lakoff "The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete."-Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, April 17, 2006 "The second concern is that if an underground laboratory is deeply buried, that can also confound conventional weapons. But the depth of the Natanz facility - reports place the ceiling roughly 30 feet underground - is not prohibitive. The American GBU-28 weapon - the so-called bunker buster - can pierce about 23 feet of concrete and 100 feet of soil. Unless the cover over the Natanz lab is almost entirely rock, bunker busters should be able to reach it. That said, some chance remains that a single strike would fail." -Michael Levi, New York Times, April 18, 2006 A familiar means of denying a reality is to refuse to use the words that describe that reality. A common form of propaganda is to keep reality from being described. In such circumstances, silence and euphemism are forms of complicity both in propaganda and in the denial of reality. And the media, as well as the major presidential candidates, are now complicit. The stories in the major media suggest that an attack against Iran is a real possibility and that the Natanz nuclear development site is the number one target. As the above quotes from two of our best sources note, military experts say that conventional "bunker-busters" such as the GBU-28 might be able to destroy the Natanz facility, especially with repeated bombings. On the other hand, they also say such iterated use of conventional weapons might not work, e.g., if the rock and earth above the facility becomes liquefied. On that supposition, a "low yield" "tactical" nuclear weapon, say, the B61-11, might be needed. If the Bush administration, for example, were to insist on a sure "success," then the "attack" would constitute nuclear war. The words in boldface are nuclear war, that's right, nuclear war - a first strike nuclear war. We don't know what exactly is being planned - conventional GBU-28s or nuclear B61-11s. And that is the point. Discussion needs to be open. Nuclear war is not a minor matter. The Euphemism As early as August 13, 2005, Bush, in Jerusalem, was asked what would happen if diplomacy failed to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear program. Bush replied, "All options are on the table." On April 18, the day after the appearance of Seymour Hersh's New Yorker report on the administration's preparations for a nuclear war against Iran, President Bush held a news conference. He was asked, "Sir, when you talk about Iran, and you talk about how you have diplomatic efforts, you also say all options are on the table. Does that include the possibility of a nuclear strike? Is that something that your administration will plan for?" He replied, "All options are on the table." The President never actually said the forbidden words "nuclear war," but he appeared to tacitly acknowledge the preparations - without further discussion. Vice-President Dick Cheney, speaking in Australia last week, backed up the President: "We worked with the European community and the United Nations to put together a set of policies to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations and resolve the matter peacefully, and that is still our preference. But I've also made the point, and the president has made the point, that all options are on the table." Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain, on FOX News, August 14, 2005, said the same: "For us to say that the Iranians can do whatever they want to do and we won't under any circumstances exercise a military option would be for them to have a license to do whatever they want to do ... So I think the president's comment that we won't take anything off the table was entirely appropriate." But it's not just Republicans. Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, in a speech in Herzliyah, Israel, echoed Bush: "To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table. Let me reiterate - ALL options must remain on the table." Although, Edwards has said, when asked about this statement, that he prefers peaceful solutions and direct negotiations with Iran, he has nonetheless repeated the "all options on the table" position - making clear that he would consider starting a preventive nuclear war, but without using the fateful words. Hillary Clinton, at an AIPAC dinner in New York, said: "We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons, and in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table." Translation: Nuclear weapons can be used to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Barack Obama, asked on 60 Minutes about using military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, began a discussion of his preference for diplomacy by responding, "I think we should keep all options on the table." Bush, Cheney, McCain, Edwards, Clinton, and Obama all say indirectly that they seriously consider starting a preventive nuclear war, but will not engage in a public discussion of what that would mean. That contributes to a general denial, and the press is going along with it by a corresponding refusal to use the words. If the consequences of nuclear war are not discussed openly, the war may happen without an appreciation of the consequences and without the public having a chance to stop it. Our job is to open that discussion. Of course, there is a rationale for the euphemism: To scare our adversaries by making them think that we are crazy enough to do what we hint at, while not raising a public outcry. That is what happened in the lead up to the Iraq War, and the disaster of that war tells us why we must have such a discussion about Iran. Presidential candidates go along, not wanting to be thought of as interfering in on-going indirect diplomacy. That may be the conventional wisdom for candidates, but an informed, concerned public must say what candidates are advised not to say. More Euphemisms The euphemisms used include "tactical," "small," "mini-," and "low yield" nuclear weapons. "Tactical" contrasts with "strategic"; it refers to tactics, relatively low-level choices made in carrying out an overall strategy, but which don't affect the grand strategy. But the use of any nuclear weapons would be anything but "tactical." It would be a major world event - in Vladimir Putin's words, "lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons," making the use of more powerful nuclear weapons more likely and setting off a new arms race. The use of the word "tactical" operates to lessen their importance, to distract from the fact that their very use would constitute a nuclear war. What is "low yield"? Perhaps the "smallest" tactical nuclear weapon we have is the B61-11, which has a dial-a-yield feature: it can yield "only" 0.3 kilotons, but can be set to yield up to 170 kilotons. The power of the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons. That is, a "small" bomb can yield more than 10 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb. The B61-11 dropped from 40,000 feet would dig a hole 20 feet deep and then explode, send shock waves downward, leave a huge crater, and spread radiation widely. The idea that it would explode underground and be harmless to those above ground is false - and, anyway, an underground release of radiation would threaten ground water and aquifers for a long time and over a wide distance. To use words such as "low yield" or "small" or "mini-" nuclear weapon is like speaking of being a little bit pregnant. Nuclear war is nuclear war! It crosses the moral line. Any discussion of roadside canister bombs made in Iran justifying an attack on Iran should be put in perspective: Little canister bombs (EFPs - explosively formed projectiles) that shoot a small hot metal ball at a humvee or tank versus nuclear war. Incidentally, the administration may be focusing on the canister bombs because it seeks to claim that the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 permits the use of military force against Iran based on its interference in Iraq. In that case, no further authorization by Congress would be needed for an attack on Iran. The journalistic point is clear. Journalists and political leaders should not talk about an "attack." They should use the words that describe what is really at stake: nuclear war - in boldface. Then there is the scale of the proposed attack. Military reports leaking out suggest a huge (mostly or entirely non-nuclear) airstrike on as many as 10,000 targets - a "shock and awe" attack that would destroy Iran's infrastructure the way the U.S. bombing destroyed Iraq's infrastructure. The targets would not just be "military targets." As Dan Plesch reports in the New Statesman, February 19, 2007, such an attack would wipe out Iran's military, business, and political infrastructure. Not just nuclear installations, missile launching sites, tanks, and ammunition dumps, but also airports, rail lines, highways, bridges, ports, communications centers, power grids, industrial centers, hospitals, public buildings, and even the homes of political leaders. That is what was attacked in Iraq: the "critical infrastructure." It is not just military in the traditional sense. It leaves a nation in rubble, and leads to death, maiming, disease, joblessness, impoverishment, starvation, mass refugees, lawlessness, rape, and incalculable pain and suffering. That is what the options appear to be "on the table." Is nation destruction what the American people have in mind when they acquiesce without discussion to an "attack"? Is nuclear war what the American people have in mind? An informed public must ask and the media must ask. The words must be used. Even if the attack were limited to nuclear installations, starting a nuclear war with Iran would have terrible consequences - and not just for Iranians. First, it would strengthen the hand of the Islamic fundamentalists - exactly the opposite of the effect U.S. planners would want. It would be viewed as yet another major attack on Islam. Fundamentalist Islam is a revenge culture. If you want to recruit fundamentalist Islamists all over the world to become violent jihadists, this is the best way to do it. America would become a world pariah. Any idea of the U.S. as a peaceful nation would be destroyed. Moreover, you don't work against the spread of nuclear weapons by using those weapons. That will just make countries all over the world want nuclear weaponry all the more. Trying to stop nuclear proliferation through nuclear war is self-defeating. As Einstein said, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." Why would the Bush administration do it? Here is what conservative strategist William Kristol wrote last summer during Israel's war with Hezbollah: "For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak. "The right response is renewed strength -- in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions -- and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement." -Willam Kristol, Weekly Standard 7/24/06 "Renewed strength" is just the Bush strategy in Iraq. At a time when the Iraqi people want us to leave, when our national elections show that most Americans want our troops out, when 60% of Iraqis think it all right to kill Americans, Bush wants to escalate. Why? Because he is weak in America. Because he needs to show more "strength." Because if he knocks out the Iranian nuclear facilities, he can claim at least one "victory." Starting a nuclear war with Iran would really put us in a worldwide war with fundamentalist Islam. It would make real the terrorist threat he has been claiming since 9/11. It would create more fear - real fear - in America. And he believes, with much reason, that fear tends to make Americans vote for saber-rattling conservatives. Kristol's neoconservative view that "weakness is provocative" is echoed in Iran, but by the other side. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted in The New York Times of February 24, 2007 as having "vowed anew to continue enriching uranium, saying, 'If we show weakness in front of the enemies, they will increase their expectations.'" If both sides refuse to back off for fear of showing weakness, then prospects for conflict are real, despite the repeated analyses, like that of The Economist that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran would be politically and morally impossible. As one unnamed administration official has said (The New York Times, February 24, 2007), "No one has defined where the red line is that we cannot let the Iranians step over." What we are seeing now is the conservative message machine preparing the country to accept the ideas of a nuclear war and nation destruction against Iran. The technique used is the "slippery slope." It is done by degrees. Like the proverbial frog in the pot of water - if the heat is turned up slowly the frog gets used to the heat and eventually boils to death - the American public is getting gradually acclimated to the idea of war with Iran. * First, describe Iran as evil - part of the axis of evil. An inherently evil person will inevitably do evil things and can't be negotiated with. An entire evil nation is a threat to other nations. * Second, describe Iran's leader as a "Hitler" who is inherently "evil" and cannot be reasoned with. Refuse to negotiate with him. * Then repeat the lie that Iran is on the verge of having nuclear weapons - weapons of mass destruction. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei says they are at best many years away. * Call nuclear development "an existential threat" - a threat to our very existence. * Then suggest a single "surgical" "attack" on Natanz and make it seem acceptable. * Then find a reason to call the attack "self-defense" - or better protection for our troops from the EFPs, or single-shot canister bombs. * Claim, without proof and without anyone even taking responsibility for the claim, that the Iranian government at its highest level is supplying deadly weapons to Shiite militias attacking our troops, while not mentioning the fact that Saudi Arabia is helping Sunni insurgents attacking our troops. * Give "protecting our troops" as a reason for attacking Iran without getting new authorization from Congress. Claim that the old authorization for attacking Iraq implied doing "whatever is necessary to protect our troops" from Iranian intervention in Iraq. * Argue that de-escalation in Iraq would "bleed" our troops, "weaken" America, and lead to defeat. This sets up escalation as a winning policy, if not in Iraq then in Iran. * Get the press to go along with each step. * Never mention the words "preventive nuclear war" or "national destruction." When asked, say, "All options are on the table." Keep the issue of nuclear war and its consequences from being seriously discussed by the national media. * Intimidate Democratic presidential candidates into agreeing, without using the words, that nuclear war should be "on the table." This makes nuclear war and nation destruction bipartisan and even more acceptable. Progressives managed to blunt the "surge" idea by telling the truth about "escalation." Nuclear war against Iran and nation destruction constitute the ultimate escalation. The time has come to stop the attempt to make a nuclear war against Iran palatable to the American public. We do not believe that most Americans want to start a nuclear war or to impose nation destruction on the people of Iran. They might, though, be willing to support a tit-for-tat "surgical" "attack" on Natanz in retaliation for small canister bombs and to end Iran's early nuclear capacity. It is time for America's journalists and political leaders to put two and two together, and ask the fateful question: Is the Bush administration seriously preparing for nuclear war and nation destruction? If the conventional GBU-28s will do the job, then why not take nuclear war off the table in the name of controlling the spread of nuclear weapons? If GBU-28s won't do the job, then it is all the more important to have that discussion. This should not be a distraction from Iraq. The general issue is escalation as a policy, both in Iraq and in Iran. They are linked issues, not separate issues. We have learned from Iraq what lack of public scrutiny does. [George Lakoff is a Senior Fellow at the Rockridge Institute. Lakoff is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. ] * ================================================================ .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 ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 3 [southnews] Aust Peace groups Warn on Iran War Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2007 03:31:42 -0600 (CST) Australian peace groups have for a second time, warned against military action against Iran, as rumours of military action and even of possible nuclear strikes circulate. SUNDAY 4 MARCH 2007 UNITY FOR PEACE FRIENDS OF THE EARTH AUSTRALIA CAMPAIGN FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION AND DISARMAMENT (CICD) AUSTRALIAN PEACE COMMITTEE PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT W.A. MARRICKVILE PEACE GROUP PEACE GROUPS WARN AGAINST IRAN MILITARY ACTION Australian peace groups have for a second time, warned against military action against Iran, as rumours of military action and even of possible nuclear strikes circulate. According to the groups: "The media are full of rumours of military action against Iran and the Bush administration refuses pointedly to take the threat of military action off the table, saying over and over again that all options are on the table." 'This is worse than irresponsible. It positively ensures exactly the opposite result to the one that we say we want to achieve. As things stand, there is a religious Fatwa against nuclear weapons, which are deemed to be un-Islamic. In a society such as Iran, such a Fatwa must be taken very seriously. Military action, or the threat of military action even if it never takes place, will simply make a decision to acquire nuclear weapons more likely. The threat of Military action will simply ensure that Iran ditches the Fatwa and makes the acquisition of a nuclear deterrent its top priority. This is reinforced by US behaviour towards North Korea." "Actual military action will be a catastrophe that will set the middle-east alight and set the stage for wars that will last indefinitely with no prospect of success, as well as global recession and massive fuel price hikes." "There are rumours aplenty that nuclear weapons might be used either by the USA or possibly by Israel. Let us pray that they are only rumours, that never come to pass. The actual use of nuclear weapons against Iran would be a cataclysmic event that would propel the world into a new and frightening era in which the use of nuclear weapons is considered 'normal'. Unfortunately it is consistent with statements by influential US neo-conservatives who wish to lower the threshold for US nuclear weapons use." "Military action of any kind whatsoever needs to be taken decisively off the table and must be seen to have been taken off the table by Iran. From there we must proceed to a new and different relationship between Iran and the West." Contact: John Hallam 61-2-9810-2598(leave msg) 9319-4296(do not leave msg) Judy McVey in Melbourne 0418 347 374 Stephen Darley in Adelaide 08 8242-5121 (h) Pauline Mitchell CICD Melbourne (03) 9663-3677, (03)9555-3076 Sue Gilbey APC 0411-413-122 Jo Valentine PND-WA 08-9272-4252 Nick Deane Marrickville Peace Group 0420 526 929 ***************************************************************** 4 [southnews] US military threats will speed up Iran's nuclear program Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 01:13:29 -0600 (CST) Military strikes to destroy Iran's nuclear ambitions could backfire, increasing Tehran's determination to obtain atomic weapons and bolstering hostility toward the West, a report said on Monday. Air strikes on Iran could backfire: report By Kate Kelland Reuters Sun Mar 4, 7:30 PM ET Military strikes to destroy Iran's nuclear ambitions could backfire, increasing Tehran's determination to obtain atomic weapons and bolstering hostility toward the West, a report said on Monday. The report "Would air strikes work?," written by a leading British weapons scientist, said strikes would probably be unable to hit enough targets to cause serious damage to Iran's nuclear facilities. "With inadequate intelligence, it is unlikely it would be possible to identify and subsequently destroy the number of targets needed to set back Iran's nuclear program for a significant period," said the report. "In the aftermath of a military strike, if Iran devoted maximum effort and resources to building one nuclear bomb, it could achieve this in a relatively short amount of time." Such a weapon would then be wielded in "an environment of incalculably greater hostility," said the report, which was published by the Oxford Research Group and written by Dr Frank Barnaby, a nuclear physicist and weapons expert. Barnaby, one of the few remaining people in the world to have witnessed an above ground nuclear test, urged greater diplomatic efforts to end a standoff with Tehran. Iran refused to meet a United Nations deadline last week for halting uranium enrichment -- a process that can produce nuclear fuel for use in power plants or weapons. Iran's defiance prompted Washington to say all options are on the table for dealing with what it sees as a potential nuclear threat from Iran, and an Iranian deputy foreign minister responded by saying Tehran was prepared even for war. BLIX BACKS REPORT Iran is likely to have built secret facilities underground as well as "false targets" designed to look like nuclear sites and act as decoys, Barnaby's report said. An attack on those facilities would boost support for the country's authorities, the author told Reuters in an interview ahead of the report's release. "If Iran is bombed the whole community is going to be totally united behind the government to speedily produce a nuclear weapon," he said. "It would be an absolutely idiotic thing to do." Strikes would also interrupt oil supplies and impact the global economy, he said. Hans Blix, former U.N. chief weapons inspector, backed the conclusions and warned Washington and its allies to learn from Iraq, where a decision to invade was based partly on a false belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. "In the case of Iran, armed actionAM - Report warns US military threats will speed up Iran's nuclear program ________________________________________________ *Report warns US military threats will speed up Iran's nuclear program* AM - Monday, 5 March , 2007 08:24:00 Reporter: Stephanie Kennedy TONY EASTLEY: Still on security threat speculations, the US Vice President, Dick Cheney, has warned that while Washington favours a diplomatic approach to Iran's atomic program, "all options are still on the table", and that means a military option. But a new report predicts that rather than slowing down Iran's nuclear program, any military action against it would actually speed up Iran's production of a nuclear weapon. Dr Frank Barnaby is a nuclear physicist and weapons scientist in the UK and author of that report. He's speaking here to Stephanie Kennedy in London. FRANK BARNABY: Judging by the progress it's made so far, it would take Iran up to 10 years more to get a nuclear weapon if they go along the way they're going. At the moment the program is to, what they want to do is to become as self-sufficient as they can in nuclear power. In other words, they have a nuclear power reactor built at Bushehr by the Russians, and they plan to have a number of other nuclear power reactors. What they want to do at present is to produce a nuclear fuel for those power reactors so they become self-sufficient. So that's the program at the moment. Now, if there was a military attack, then it's likely that Iran would decide to go have a crash program to produce a small number of nuclear weapons as quickly as they could. And they could, in our estimate, do that within a matter of months or STEPHANIE KENNEDY: So they could have a nuclear weapon in a year or two? FRANK BARNABY: Yes, absolutely, yes, as a result of a military attack, yes. STEPHANIE KENNEDY: What about the scientific community in Iran, are they currently behind the nuclear program, or are they wary about it and a military attack could actually garner support in the scientific community in Iran? FRANK BARNABY: I think a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will almost certainly cause the people, including the scientific community, to get behind Iran and help it make, do what it could to get nuclear weapons, a small number of them probably, in the smallest time as possible. So it would mobilise the community to do that. STEPHANIE KENNEDY: How far advance do you think their nuclear program is? FRANK BARNABY: Well, we don't know they're going for nuclear weapons. There's absolutely no evidence that suggests that they are. But on the other hand, the peaceful nuclear energy is identical to military nuclear technology. So to the extent that they're developing peaceful nuclear energy means they're moving towards military nuclear technology, if they choose to do that. There's no other way. I mean, there's a fact of nuclear life, that there is no difference between military and civil and nuclear technology. TONY EASTLEY: Weapons scientist Dr Frank Barnaby speaking with Stephanie Kennedy in London. would be aimed at intentions -- that may or may not exist. However, the same result -- tragedy and regional turmoil -- would inevitably follow," Blix wrote in a foreword to the report. Barnaby said bombing targets such as the Bushehr nuclear power reactor in southwest Iran once they were operational could cause potentially catastrophic contamination. "To bomb that would be absolutely criminal -- you'd have another Chernobyl on your hands," he said. Barnaby, 79, witnessed an atomic weapons test and saw the awful power of the explosion in 1953 in the Australian desert. "You can't avoid being profoundly affected by that kind of experience. Seeing these things explode in the atmosphere, it makes you imagine what would happen if it exploded over a city. It's absolutely horrifying -- and it convinces you quite rapidly that these weapons have to be negotiated away." http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s1862850.htm ___________________________________________________________ ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> See what's inside the new Yahoo! Groups email. http://us.click.yahoo.com/0It09A/bOaOAA/yQLSAA/7gSolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> The archives of South News can be found at http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/ ***************************************************************** 5 AFP: Attacking Iran could speed up nuclear programme - Monday March 5, 12:09 AM LONDON (AFP) - Pre-emptive military strikes on Iran could accelerate rather than hinder Tehran's production of atomic weapons, a report by a British global security think-tank said Monday. Backed by the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix, the Oxford Research Group said Iran could respond to an attack by launching a "crash programme" and build a crude nuclear device within months. "If Iran is moving towards a nuclear weapons capacity it is doing it relatively slowly, Ad Feedback most estimates put it at least five years away," said one of the report's authors, leading British nuclear scientist Frank Barnaby. "However attacking Iran -- far from setting back their progress towards a bomb -- would almost certainly lead to a fast-track programme to develop a small number of nuclear devices as quickly as possible. "It would be a bit like deciding to build a car from spare parts instead of building the entire car factory. Put simply, military attacks could speed Iran's progress to a nuclear bomb." The report suggests air strikes, like those reportedly being considered by the United States and Israel, would harden Iranian attitudes and political resistance to outside pressure to stop uranium enrichment. The Islamic republic would then focus on manufacturing one or two nuclear devices, leading to a nuclear-armed Iran within one or two years, it added. Blix, who headed the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in Iraq and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), backs the report's assessment. He wrote in the report's foreword: "Armed attacks on Iran would very likely lead to the result they were meant to avoid -- the building of nuclear weapons within a few years." The report argued that military action would probably result in a high number of civilian casualties, as a surprise attack would inevitably catch many people unawares and unprotected. Air strikes would have to hit many well-protected targets across Iran, including the Kalaye Electric Company, which produces components for gas centrifuges used in uranium enrichment. Other targets would include the Bushehr nuclear reactor, the Arak heavy water reactor and heavy water production plant, uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, uranium mines at Saghand and the research reactors at Isfahan. But the report said there was a "real possibility" Iran had built secret facilities elsewhere as well as "false targets" in anticipation of air strikes. "With inadequate intelligence, it is unlikely that it would be possible to identify and subsequently destroy the number of targets needed to set back Iran's nuclear programme for a significant period," it said. The report suggested that Iran could salvage enough material for a bomb from the reactor at Bushehr after any attack, or turn to the black market, where small amounts of uranium or plutonium would be easy to smuggle. Alternatively, the Iranians may already set have up clandestine facilities with centrifuges that could escape an attack. "It is a mistake to believe that Iran can be deterred from attaining a nuclear weapons capability by bombing its facilities," the report said. "In the aftermath of a military strike, if Iran devoted maximum effort and resources to building one nuclear bomb, it could achieve this in a relatively short amount of time: some months rather than years." The group's executive director, John Sloboda, said: "This report doesn't get into the rights and wrongs of military strikes. It asks whether they will achieve their objectives... "The conclusions should be food for thought for even the most hawkish: military strikes against Iran will simply not work. Indeed they could even bring a nuclear-armed Iran closer." AFP ***************************************************************** 6 Reuters: Would Israel attack Iran? Depends who you ask | U.S. 11:46PM EST, Sun 4 Mar 2007 By Dan Williams - Analysis JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has long been the wild card in debates on the Iranian nuclear program -- a country that while formally outside negotiations, has lobbying clout given its strategic fears and penchant for pre-emptive strikes. But Israeli officials, once quick to project military menace in the face of what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called an "existential threat", are increasingly taking a softer public line on how to meet Iran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment. It appears that many Israelis have grudgingly decided that Iran is too tough an enemy for their armed forces to take on alone -- and that the international community senses this too. "The last thing Israel is interested in is an escalation or some military action against Iran," said Avigdor Lieberman, the usually ultra-hawkish Israeli strategic affairs minister. Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who suggested a year ago that Israel consider attacking Iran in a mission akin to its 1981 air strike on Iraq's atomic reactor, is now redirecting his rhetoric to calls for crippling Western sanctions on Tehran. "There's no question that if stiffer measures are needed, it's better that the United States lead the way," Netanyahu told foreign reporters last month. Like its U.S. ally, Israel refuses to rule out pre-emptive strikes as a last-ditch means of curbing a nuclear program that Iran insists is peaceful. Continued... Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 7 UPI: Iran president in Saudi Arabia for meeting United Press International - NewsTrack - Updated: 03/03/2007 4:04:36 PM -0500 UTC RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, March 3 (UPI) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in Saudi Arabia for talks on hot-button regional issues in the Middle East, including Iran's nuclear program. GEO TV said Ahmadinejad, who is making his first official visit to the kingdom, was met in Riyadh by King Abdallah. The subject matter of the summit includes Iraq as well as the ongoing strife in Lebanon, which Saudi and Iranian officials have been mediating in a series of recent meetings. The weekend meetings come in advance of the Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia later this month. Copyright 2007United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 Antiwar.com: Fool Me Thrice? - by Gordon Prather March 3, 2007 Way back on 26 May 2003, more than a month before the Cheney Cabal outed Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative running agents in Iran, Iraq and elsewhere, seeking information on weapons of mass destruction, under cover of Brewster-Jennings, a CIA-front "energy consulting" firm the New York Times published an editorial, calling on the CIA, the Presidents Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and Congressional Intelligence Committees to investigate how, inter alia, the Bush-Cheney administration came to rely on forged documents to make the case that Iraq was trying to import uranium from Africa. "The failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the prime justification for an immediate invasion, or definitive links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda has raised serious questions about the quality of American intelligence and even dark hints that the data may have been manipulated to support a pre-emptive war." Within days, Slates Jack Shafer called on the New York Times to investigate the quality of its own reporting, and more than suggested that its reporters may have been manipulated to support a war of aggression. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post had that same day revealed that an internal NYT e-mail sent by Judith Miller then still "embedded" with the Iraq invasion force to her NYT bureau chief acknowledged that her main source for her WMD articles over the years had been Ahmad Chalabi, a darling of the Cheney Cabal, but a persona non grata of the CIA. By now, the NYT ought to but apparently doesnt realize that much of its reporting on Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere has been and still is being manipulated by the Cheney Cabal. In particular, David Sanger and William Broad have just "reported" that surprise, surprise the North Koreans may not have made as much progress with the parallel Uranium-235 nuke development program as they have been breathlessly reporting. Recall that President Bush used "reports" of this alleged Uranium-235 nuke program which the North Koreans have denied the existence of to this day to justify his unilateral abrogation of the Agreed Framework in October, 2002. Now, Pakistani General-President-Dictator Pervez Musharraf did acknowledge in his recently published autobiography that "Dr. A.Q. Khan transferred nearly two dozen P-I and P-II centrifuges to North Korea. He also provided North Korea with a flow meter, some special oils for centrifuges and coaching on centrifuge technology, including visits to top-secret [Pakistani] centrifuge plants." (p. 294). However, neither the acceptance of Pakistani centrifuges in partial payment for North Korean assistance in development of Pakistani ballistic missiles, nor visits to Pakistani centrifuge plants by North Koreas were violations of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons nor of the Agreed Framework. In fact, as of this writing, there is no evidence whatsoever that the North Koreans violated the Agreed Framework or the NPT, while signatories. Of course, once Bush abrogated the Agreed Framework (which the Koreans had entered into "freezing" all its nuclear programs principally to secure assurances that the United States was not going to even threaten to nuke them in their jammies), North Korea withdrew from the NPT, restarted its "frozen" plutonium-producing (as a by-product) reactor, announced it was going to separate out the weapons-grade plutonium and use it to construct a "nuclear deterrent." Last October the North Koreans according to the Bush Administration conducted an at least partially successful test of a plutonium-based nuclear device. So, how did Sanger et al. "report" this story? "The intelligence agencies finding that the weapon was based on plutonium strongly suggested that the countrys second path to a nuclear bomb one using uranium was not yet ready. The uranium program is based on enrichment equipment and know-how purchased from Pakistans former nuclear chief." What it ought to have strongly suggested to Sanger was that the North Koreans had been telling the truth all along. They had never had a Uranium-235 bomb program. In January, 2004, almost a year after North Korea withdrew from the NPT, Sig Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, as a member of an invited US delegation, visited the "nuclear complex" at Yongbyon and was shown what the Koreans have been referring to as their "nuclear deterrent." Now, if anyone knows a nuke when he sees one, it's Sig. So, here are excerpts from Sig's report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "During follow-up discussions with Ambassador Li and Vice Minister Kim in Pyongyang, they stressed that the DPRK now has a 'nuclear deterrent' and that U.S. actions have caused them to strengthen their deterrent both in quality and in quantity. Ambassador Li inquired if what I had seen at Yongbyon convinced me that they had this deterrent. "I explained to both of them that there is nothing that we saw at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center that would allow me to assess whether or not the DPRK possessed a nuclear deterrent if that meant a nuclear device or nuclear weapon. "I explained that I view a 'deterrent' to have at least three components: 1) the ability to make plutonium metal, 2) the ability to design and build a nuclear device, and 3) the ability to integrate the nuclear device into a delivery system. "What we saw at Yongbyon was that they apparently have the capability to do the first. However, I saw nothing and talked to no one that allowed me to assess whether or not they have the ability to design a nuclear device." So much for the two or three nukes our intelligence community had "assessed" the North Koreans had "probably" already produced before signing the Agreed Framework. Well, how about the alleged DPRK "uranium enrichment" program? Sig continues "In the Foreign Ministry, we discussed the contentious issue of DPRK's supposed admission on Oct. 4, 2002, to having a clandestine highly enriched uranium (HEU) program in violation of the letter and spirit of the 1994 Agreed Framework." According to Sig, delegation member Jack Pritchard, formerly the US Special Envoy for DPRK negotiations, then made this statement: "The key issue is the intelligence that makes the United States believe that the DPRK has an HEU program. In the U.S., there is the widespread view that the complete, verifiable resolution of this HEU issue is now mandatory. This is a practical issue, and there must be a multilateral discussion to resolve it." According to Sig, Vice Minister Kim Gye Gwan immediately responded that North Korea has no HEU program; no facilities, no equipment or any scientists dedicated to it, and has never claimed to have one. Three years later, that is still the North Korean position. But Sanger has just "reported" that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has declassified part of a one-page update circulated to top national security officials about the status of "North Koreas uranium program." "The assessment, read by two senior intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity in a joint interview, said the intelligence community still had "high confidence that North Korea has pursued a uranium enrichment capability, which we assess is for a weapon." It is unclear to Sanger why the new assessment is being disclosed now. "But some officials suggested that the timing could be linked to North Koreas recent agreement to reopen its doors to [International Atomic Energy Agency] international arms inspectors. As a result, these officials have said, the intelligence agencies are facing the possibility that their assessments will once again be compared to what is actually found on the ground." You reckon? the Antiwar.com Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. Copyright 2007 Antiwar.com ***************************************************************** 9 Guardian Unlimited: Iranian, Saudi Leaders Hold Key Talks From the Associated Press Saturday March 3, 2007 9:01 PM AP Photo CAI103, CAI102, XHS104 By DONNA ABU-NASR Associated Press Writer RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - On his first official visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran's president held crucial talks Saturday with King Abdullah that are being touted as a possible means to defuse sectarian tensions in the region and prevent Iran from sliding further into isolation. The two countries have had chilly relations since the 2005 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose refusal to suspend uranium enrichment has led to U.N. Security Council sanctions and made Iran's Arab neighbors increasingly wary of the country's nuclear program. But Abdullah personally met Ahmadinejad at the airport before the two headed into a meeting. The king later threw a banquet in his guests' honor, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. Saudi and Iranian analysts said cooperation will benefit both countries, as well as the whole region. Shiite-majority Iran and Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia are on different sides of the conflicts that are threatening to ignite the Middle East - Iraq and Lebanon - and the Saudis have expressed concerns over Iran's nuclear program. Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi analyst, said the kingdom would not have agreed to receive Ahmadinejad ``if it didn't know that the visit would add to its political achievements.'' Top diplomats from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany were negotiating Saturday on possible new sanctions against Iran. None of the governments commented immediately after the conference call. A breakthrough on the Muslim sectarian divide could also pave way for the success of the March 10 conference in Baghdad of Iraq's neighbors - Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia - as well as the United States and other Western powers, and the annual Arab summit, which will be held at the end of the month in Riyadh. ``Iran has proved its capability of destabilization,'' wrote Ghassan Sharbil, the Lebanese editor of the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat daily. ``Now, it's time to prove its ability to participate in creating stability.'' ``Ahmadinejad can invest in this summit to calm down the Arab world, the Islamic world and the whole globe in order to protect Iran against isolation, the dangers of an American strike and a new resolution by the Security Council,'' he added. Riyadh broke off ties with Iran in 1988, accusing it of supporting terrorism and subversion. They were restored shortly after the 1991 Gulf War, but relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia plummeted again following Ahmadinejad's election in 2005. Since then, Arab Gulf countries have offered quiet support for moves against Iran's nuclear program that the United States and its allies fear is aimed at creating weapons. Iran says its program is solely for peaceful purposes. The chill in relations is partly due to Ahmadinejad's tough anti-Western talk, which has raised suspicions among Sunnis that Tehran is trying to expand its influence in the region. ``Since Ahmadinejad's harsh rhetoric is partly responsible for the cooling in relations, he is (now) taking this step to redress (the situation),'' said independent Iranian writer Saeed Leylaz. --- Associated Press writers Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran, Iran, and Maggie Michael in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report. Guardian Unlimited Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 10 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Ready to Release N. Korean Assets | From the Associated Press Saturday March 3, 2007 4:31 AM AP Photo DCJM103, DCJM104 By ANNE GEARAN AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States will soon recommend releasing a significant amount of frozen North Korean bank accounts, officials say, which diplomats hope will keep North Korea from reneging on its pledge to scrap nuclear weapons. The Treasury Department could announce as soon as next week that several million dollars connected to North Korea are not tainted by links to rogue nuclear proliferation or allegations of counterfeiting, smuggling and other crimes. The U.S. move is expected to prompt overseas bank regulators to unfreeze between $8 million and $12 million from about $24 million in blocked assets, one official said. Treasury and State Department officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe results of an ongoing Treasury review. Although the amount of money is relatively small, the frozen accounts became an unexpectedly large stumbling block in troubled nuclear negotiations with Pyongyang. The move was an affront to the secretive communist regime, and it had a devastating ripple effect that further estranged North Korea from the global banking system. North Korea pointed to what it called unfair U.S. sanctions as a reason to boycott disarmament talks for more than a year. The restrictions were still a sore point when the North did return to talks in December. The North Korean negotiator refused to discuss the country's weapons until Washington budged. An agreement to resolve the matter within 30 days was key to a potential breakthrough deal that the North struck Feb. 13 with the United States and four other nations. The money is held by a blacklisted bank in Macau that North Korea accuses of complicity in counterfeiting and money laundering. A Treasury Department delegation was in Macau, a semiautonomous territory of China, this week to discuss results of the department's 18-month review of the Banco Delta Asia accounts. ``We intend to handle this matter in a straightforward way based on the evidence and the law,'' Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said Friday. ``As we have always said, the designation of Banco Delta Asia as a primary money laundering concern is separate from the nuclear talks.'' Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other diplomats had also said the financial restrictions were a law enforcement matter that should not affect the nuclear negotiations, but it was clear even before the Feb. 13 deal that one issue could not be resolved without the other. ``They've gathered a real mountain of information,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday. ``They've gone through it ... and I expect in the coming period of time the Treasury will be addressing the issue of how they have resolved the issue related to Banco Delta Asia.'' Washington slapped restrictions on Banco Delta Asia in 2005 and put it on a money-laundering blacklist, prompting Macau to freeze the $24 million. Banks worldwide then shunned North Korean business for fear of losing access to American markets. Banco Delta Asia has said money might have been laundered at the bank, but there was no evidence the institution was aware it was being used for that purpose. It said it was a small, family owned bank that didn't have the technology to check big batches of U.S. currency for fake bills. The bank also said it used a dated computer system and it didn't pay enough attention to maintaining its own books. It also has said the bank didn't have adequate written anti-money-laundering policies for its staff. South Korea's foreign minister met with Rice and other senior U.S. officials Friday at a crucial moment in North Korean disarmament efforts. The North said in the February accord that, in exchange for aid, it would close its main nuclear reactor within 60 days. A much larger shipment of aid - about $250 million worth - would follow once the North had declared all its nuclear programs and begun to disable them. As part of the nuclear agreement, on Monday and Tuesday in New York, the lead U.S. envoy at the nuclear talks, Christopher Hill, and his North Korean negotiating counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, are to discuss first steps toward establishing normal ties after decades of hostility that followed the 1950-53 Korean War. Kim arrived in New York Friday night from San Francisco, where he held private talks with a number of Asian experts. State Department notes on North Korea: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2792.htm Guardian Unlimited Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 11 AFP: Spy agency defends intelligence on NKorea nuclear program - Sun Mar 4, 6:20 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - Washington's espionage establishment on Sunday defended US intelligence on North Korea, amid reports that the US administration had backpedaled on earlier assessments of Pyongyang's nuclear program. Joseph De Trani, North Korea mission manager for the Director of National Intelligence, complained in a written statement about "considerable misinterpretation of the intelligence community's view of North Korean efforts to pursue a uranium enrichment capability." "We have continued to assess efforts by North Korea since 2002," De Trani said in the statement. "All intelligence community agencies have at least moderate confidence that North Korea's past efforts to acquire a uranium enrichment capability continue today," he said. US intelligence agencies came in for harsh criticism after the administration of President George W. Bush last week seemed to scale back the certainty it expressed in 2002 about North Korea's alleged secret uranium enrichment activity. US claims about the program led to a political standoff between Washington and Pyongyang that have only recently begun to thaw. Last week De Trani appeared to suggest that the government was now less sure about the program. "We still have confidence that the program is in existence -- at the mid-confidence level," he told the US Senate Armed Services Committee. After his comment prompted criticism from members of Congress, De Trani clarified that US officials were not revising their 2002 "high confidence judgment" about the North Korean program, but were simply expressing lesser certainty that the program remains in place today. His remarks were issued on eve of Monday's landmark US-North Korea negotiations on normalizing relations after a half-century of enmity. Earlier Sunday Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record) and Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record) said they were disappointed by the quality of US intelligence. "We still don't have the intelligence community overall to give us, as policymakers, the information that we need to make good decisions in North Korea, Iran and other places," Hoekstra told the Fox News Sunday program. "You always make policy with imprecise information, but you know, there are some things that we've been disappointed with," he said. "It's a concern about the leadership in the intelligence community, not the folks who are working this 24/7," Hoekstra added. Feinstein said the lack of reliable intelligence was particularly acute with regard to the secretive North Korean regime. "I think the gathering of intelligence with respect to North Korea has been very difficult. And the drop in the level of confidence on the uranium-based development I think is an indication of that," she said. "We now do know that North Korea has nuclear devices. The question is, how many? The question is, where are they assembling these?" She added: "Because of the underground nature of the facilities, it's very difficult. North Korea is a long way from us, and the intelligence infrastructure is not that good, to be very candid with you." Democrats in Congress last week said the revelation harkens back to the administration's past problems with flawed intelligence in the run-up to the war in Iraq. "It is troubling for us to find such uncertainty when it comes to intelligence matters of such gravity," Democratic Senator Dick Durbin told AFP last week. "To declare certain countries are part of an axis of evil, and then to find out that our intelligence on Iraq was fatally flawed -- and now our intelligence on another member of the axis may be flawed as well -- is not a confidence builder," said Durbin, the number two Democrat in the US Senate. Copyright 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 12 Guardian Unlimited: Israeli, U.S. Officials to Meet From the Associated Press Sunday March 4, 2007 7:46 AM JERUSALEM (AP) - Coordinating efforts to intensify sanctions against Iran in an effort to get it to abandon its nuclear program is the focus of Sunday talks between a senior Israeli and U.S. official. Stuart Levey, the U.S. Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, will meet Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Israeli media reported Sunday. Livni's spokesman, Mark Regev, would only say that the two would meet Sunday on ``matters of mutual concern.'' In addition to Livni, Levey will meet with senior officials in the Mossad secret service agency, the National Security Council and the Atomic Energy Commission, Haaretz and Israel Radio said. Israel will help the United States identify firms that do business with Iran and track the trail of Iranian funding to nuclear and terrorist activities, Haaretz reported. Levey will detail for the Israelis the U.S. efforts to get international businesses to stop working with Iran, Haaretz said. Iran has refused to implement a U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted Dec. 23, that demanded suspension of its uranium enrichment program. The resolution imposed sanctions on Iran and warned that it would adopt further nonmilitary sanctions if Iran should refuse to comply. Iran insists that its nuclear aspirations are meant for its energy program, not the production of weapons. Levey has led efforts to freeze the financial assets of companies and organizations whose activities are deemed by the United States as hostile. Most recently, Levey lead the U.S. move to prohibit U.S. businesses, including banks, from working with three Iranian companies suspected of having connections with Tehran's nuclear program. Levey operates under an executive order issued by President Bush in June 2005 that aims to financially punish those suspected of helping spread weapons of mass destruction. Guardian Unlimited Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 13 Tallahassee Democrat: The Issue: Energy www.tallahassee.com - Tallahassee, FL. Sunday, March 4, 2007 View our Mobile Site By Jim Ash FLORIDA CAPITAL BUREAU CHIEF Issue: Florida's power needs are growing faster than its population. One of the most ominous indicators is a proposal by Florida Power & Light to build a $5.7 billion Glades Power Park, a coal-fired power plant in rural Glades County near Lake Okeechobee by 2012. Also in the works are other coal plants and even a nuclear-power plant. Led by Gov. Charlie Crist, lawmakers are pushing to develop alternative power sources to make Florida more energy independent. A special commission will propose new policies by the end of the year. Proposal: The Legislature this year plans to double the size of a $15 million alternative-energy grant program that was a prominent feature of the 2006 Energy Act, one that drew more than $200 million in requests for money to develop everything from exotic solar chips to electric generators spun by the Gulf Stream. Much of the $67 million in alternative-energy spending Crist has proposed would go for developing "biomass" fuels, turning agricultural products into fuel for cars and trucks. The House is also expected to propose a sweeping mandate to use bio-diesel fuel in government fleet vehicles. Environmentalists want more money invested in energy-saving programs. Outlook: The Legislature will put more money this year into alternative-energy programs, but with a budget squeeze, is not likely to fund all of the proposals. Contact Jim Ash at (850) 671-6547 or jash@tallahassee.com. Copyright 2007 Tallahassee Democrat. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 14 UPI: United States to develop new hydrogen bomb United Press International - NewsTrack - Updated: 03/03/2007 9:52:24 AM -0500 UTC LIVERMORE, Calif., March 3 (UPI) -- California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been chosen to design the United States' first nuclear warhead in two decades. The Bush administration claims the program will improve the nation's security and allow the United States to reduce its weapons reserve, the Los Angeles Times said. But critics say the government's haste to come up with a new hydrogen bomb contradicts its efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons elsewhere, the Times reported. "I have serious concerns with the process leading up to today's announcement, and with the priorities of the Department of Energy," Rep. Peter J. Visclosky, D-Ind., chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that would fund the project, said Friday. Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was also in the running for the warhead design contract. Sandia National Laboratories' California branch was part of both teams, the Times reported. The Times reported that Livermore won the competition because its design assured it didn't need any underground testing. Copyright 2007United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 15 AFP: US, North Korea meet to unravel half century of enmity - by David Millikin Sun Mar 4, 6:55 AM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States and North Korea begin landmark negotiations Monday on normalizing relations, a long-standing condition set by the reclusive communist regime for abandoning its nuclear ambitions. But US officials caution that the talks in New York are only a small first step towards establishing diplomatic ties and that North Korea needs to meet a series of denuclearization benchmarks in order to end a half century of enmity between the two states. Washington's chief negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, will kick off the meetings with a dinner Monday night at a New York hotel and then hold a full day of talks on Tuesday, US officials said. The United States agreed to the negotiations with a state previously branded part of an "axis of evil" by President George W. Bush as part of a six-nation deal reached last month to end North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Under the multi-phase February 13 agreement, North Korea said it would shut down its main nuclear facility and begin steps towards giving up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for some 300 million dollars in aid and moves towards "full diplomatic relations" with the US. While the rapid start to those normalization talks took many by surprise and indicated a new US flexibility in dealing with Pyongyang, US spokesmen stressed that this week's talks would yield no breakthroughs, but simply begin a diplomatic process expected to last years. "Don't look at it as a meeting that's going to produce immediate results," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "Nobody's going to come out the front door and wave a piece of paper with some results on it," he said, adding that the talks were more likely to focus on "organizational" issues like setting a framework and agenda for what are hoped will be ongoing discussions. But observers of Bush administration foreign policy said this week's meetings turned an important page for Washington. "In and of itself the meeting Monday is historic," said Joseph Ciricione, a North Korea and non-proliferation expert at the American Progress Institute. "It's extremely important for the content and symbolism of the meeting, but even more important as a mechanism for keeping the momentum going towards implementation of the (February 13) agreement," he said. North Korea, one of the world's most isolated states, has for years demanded direct talks with the United States on security guarantees and improved relations as a condition for negotiating on its nuclear program. Bush long rejected the demand, choosing instead to deal with Pyongyang only in the framework of six-nation negotiations involving North Korea's closest ally, China, as well as its neighbors Japan, South Korea and Russia. Those negotiations yielded an agreement in principle to end Pyongyang's nuclear program in 2005, but the deal foundered within weeks after Washington imposed financial sanctions that froze North Korean funds in a Chinese bank accused of money-laundering for the regime. The North Koreans agreed to resume those talks after being hit with UN sanctions for carrying out a their first test explosion of a nuclear device in October. At the same time, Washington signalled its willingness to ease the financial sanctions and Bush loosened the reins on his negotiators, allowing Hill to meet with Kim in Berlin in January for talks that led to the February breakthrough. The sudden series of developments appeared to vindicate those in the Bush administration who have been arguing that engagement can be more effective that confrontation in dealing with adversaries. "In the end, the relationship with the US matters more to the North Koreans than their nuclear weapons," was how Cirincione put it. Copyright 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 Vancouver Sun: Driving to secret U.S. air base 'that isn't there' Area 51 in southern Nevada is said to have been visited by aliens; others say the base is for 'black projects' such as Stealth aircraft Bram Eisenthal, CanWest News Service canada.com Published: Saturday, March 03, 2007 RACHEL, Nev. -- For many, the road to extraterrestrial life runs through Area 51. Like the notorious site in Roswell, N.M., this venue in southern Nevada has been linked to aliens. On the edge of a large dry salt flat called Groom Lake, the remote tract of land is owned by the U.S. air force. And, even if you are skeptical that Area 51 has been visited by other-worldly sorts eager and willing to donate their secret technology to the U.S. government, the fact remains that this isn't a run-of-the-mill destination. Touring the area does, however, portend a day filled with fun and mystery. Whether the location is referred to as Area 51, Dreamland, The Box, Neverland or an air force centre for flight testing, the U.S. government has gone to great lengths to deny anything extraordinary happens here. (The site shares a border with the Nevada Test Site, where nuclear weapons were tested, and is part of the Nellis Air Force Range.) Yet locals insist the base is intended for the design and testing of so-called "black projects" like the Stealth fighter and bomber -- after all it was here that the U.S. tested its top-secret U-2 spy plane in the 1950s, and later other reconnaissance aircraft, some of which may have been mistaken for UFOs. "Ah, you went to the top-secret base that isn't there," commented a waitress, with a pronounced wink, at a restaurant in the Golden Nugget hotel and casino in Old Las Vegas, upon our return from our day trip to the area. A former jet mechanic at the nearby Nellis Air Force Base, she related some of the strange things that she had heard about the Groom Lake base while on the job. These tend to involve oddly shaped aircraft -- circular, cigar-shaped, triangular or just a series of lights that have been seen in the skies over Las Vegas -- that have purportedly been tested by the military. Whatever their origin, they have created quite a stir. The drive from Las Vegas can be done in about 21/2 hours. Get off the I-15 northbound at easy-to-miss Exit 64 (Great Basin Highway) for Route 93 north. By the time we hit Route 375, also known (and signed) as the Extraterrestrial Highway, going westbound, the afternoon was already waning. The drive through the desert seemed to take forever; we met few other cars. Suddenly there was the realization that we were alone. Make sure your gas tank is topped up and you take along food, water and other basic supplies -- a blanket might be a good idea because the desert gets cold at night. The notion of breaking down here in the dark is not appealing. The fun begins when you turn onto Route 375 and find signs referring to Area 51 and, of course, aliens. Drive about 30 minutes, and you'll come to a town that has a legendary part in UFO lore, Rachel ("Population: Humans 98. Aliens?" states the hand-painted sign at the outskirts). Here, at a spot that was featured in the science-fiction movie Independence Day, is the Little A'le'Inn, a watering hole where "Earthlings Welcome" is printed on the menu. They serve a "world famous Alien Burger" for $4.50 and carry just about every alien- and Area 51-related souvenir known to man. Owner Pat Travis is said to regale visitors with tales of the strange things she and her late husband have experienced here. Unfortunately, Travis wasn't at work that afternoon, and the sun was starting to dip below the horizon. It was time to attempt to find the perimeter of the Groom Lake base. They say you'll know you've hit the jackpot when you have been intercepted on the dirt road by a white Jeep with two guards. Their job is to keep you from the base, permanently off-limits both to civilians and normal military air traffic. Three dirt roads lead to the base perimeter. One is marked by an iconic "black mailbox," since painted white, that's on the right as you drive eastbound on Route 375; it seems to bring you to three other intersecting dirt roads, past a ranch and all over the place, everywhere but your destination. Take the major dirt road after the one with the mailbox. Here you may see an unmarked white bus with black windows. This bus transports workers to Area 51 from surrounding locales. Other employees -- it is believed that between 1,500 and 2,500 people work at the base -- are flown in on unmarked white and red planes called "Janets" (after their radio call signs) from McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Driving quickly on the dirt road toward Bald Mountain, we were not met by anything but silence and a burgeoning twilight. Then -- eureka! -- a series of signs on either side of the road: Warning Military Installation, Restricted Area, No Trespassing Beyond This Point, Photography Is Prohibited and the infinitely more menacing Use of Deadly Force Authorized. We were tempted to drive just a little farther, to see what was up ahead. After all, we're only human. Then we saw them, parked in a white Jeep on the side of the hill, watching our every move. Maybe passing this point wasn't such a good idea, after all. The Little A 'Le' Inn is a good source of information about the area and can provide directions to Area 51. Contact the inn at 775-729-2515 or via its website at www.aleinn.com. c The Vancouver Sun 2007 © 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.. All rights reserved. Unauthorized distribution, ***************************************************************** 17 Guardian Unlimited: Last-ditch Campbell in Trident win From Press Association Saturday March 3, 2007 2:18 PM A last-ditch personal appeal by Sir Menzies Campbell has helped him secure a narrow victory over Trident rebels in his party. Activists bidding to commit the party to an immediate decision not to renew Britain's nuclear deterrent were defeated by just 40 votes. Sir Menzies appeared on stage during an impassioned debate to deny he was "sitting on the fence" by putting off a judgment until 2014. The leadership's policy of cutting the number of missiles by half while leading global disarmament talks was the only "rational" approach, he told the spring conference in Harrogate. But he faced public opposition from two of his own MPs - including one junior frontbench spokesman backing unilateral disarmament. A show of hands proved inconclusive despite the leader's intervention but a count of votes showed he won the day by 454 to 414. The Government has already announced that it will press ahead with renewing the UK's deterrent with a new generation of submarines. While he has vowed to oppose the "premature" decision in a Commons vote later this month, Sir Menzies' official policy is to cut the missiles by half now but put off a long-term decision. Party chiefs insist that is the best way to ensure Britain can take a lead in negotiations on renewing international non-proliferation agreements in the coming years. The issue arouses huge passions in the party - and led to a damaging defeat for the then leadership in 1986. Copyright Press Association Ltd 2007, All Rights Reserved. Guardian Unlimited Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 18 Guardian Unlimited: Blair stifling Trident debate, say key MPs Commons Defence Committee accuses PM of avoiding nuclear discussion Ned Temko, chief political correspondent Sunday March 4, 2007 The Government will face mounting criticism from MPs this week for avoiding 'open debate' on its determination to retain Britain's nuclear missile force, as a crucial vote in the Commons draws near. A report by the Commons Defence Committee, though broadly backing the view that Britain needs to modernise its Trident nuclear deterrent, is expected to highlight a number of key issues on the timing of the decision and to criticise the government for failing to engage in any serious debate . One MP who has seen the committee's report told The Observer that it is 'highly critical of the government's failure to explain itself, to share sufficient information, to show openness and to allow debate'. Experts interviewed by the MPs during a series of hearings said the life of Britain's nuclear submarine fleet could be extended, and questioned the 17-year 'lead time' which the government says requires a decision now on building the new generation of replacements. With CND co-ordinating plans for a major anti-nuclear demonstration outside Parliament on the day of the vote, Wednesday week, a number of left-wing Labour MPs, including leadership candidate John McDonnell, last week reiterated their opposition to the government plan. 'The Prime Minister is seeking to bounce parliament into this decision without adequate debate ... Expert opinion has concluded that there is no need to take a precipitous decision when the life of the existing missile system can be extended,' said McDonnell. Another long-time anti-nuclear Labour MP, Jeremy Corbyn, suggested that particularly amid concerns over moves by North Korea and Iran to get nuclear weapons, a decision to renew Trident was dangerous. 'If we want a nuclear-free world,' he said, 'we should play our part by not renewing Trident.' But it seemed certain last night that the government would win next week's vote on its white paper proposal to build a new generation of submarines to take nuclear missiles. Under the plan, decisions on the precise number of submarines and the warhead deployment will be taken later. The shadow Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, told The Observer that his party agreed with the government that in the present international climate Britain could not abandon its nuclear deterrent. The Tories, he said, also backed the view that the initial decision on upgrading the submarines had to be taken now in order to avoid a deterrence 'gap' and the risk that Britain's independent 'skills base' in building submarines could be lost. A number of Labour MPs, including the former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, have publicly questioned the need to embark on a renewal of the Trident force and could embarrass Tony Blair by voting against the government. The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, yesterday won a knife-edge vote at the party's spring conference in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, to back his compromise position on Trident - opposing as needlessly premature the government's decision to move ahead with the new submarines, but leaving open the possibility of retaining Britain's nuclear missiles. By delaying a final decision until 2014, the Liberal Democrats are, in effect, arguing for the current deterrent to remain in place while efforts can be stepped up to achieve new disarmament accords. However, Fox dismissed the Lib Dems' approach as amateurish. With both Blair and Gordon Brown behind the plan for new subs, there was no 'putsch factor' to encourage a widespread rebellion by backbench Labour MPs, he said. Text alerts Get the day's top headlines straight to your mobile The Backbencher Sign up for our weekly insider's take on the comings and goings at Westminster Special reports Home affairs The military Have your say Email your comments for publication to: politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk Related articles 04.12.2006: Blair: we must renew Trident 04.12.2006: Q&A: Trident 04.12.2006: Blair's statement in full 04.12.2006: Replace or not? Experts speak Kate Hudson: neither independent nor a deterrent 22.06.2006: Peter Walker: How to buy a nuclear deterrent 22.06.2006: Nuclear leviathans stalk the seas 22.06.2006: Gordon Brown's Mansion House speech Guardian Unlimited Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 19 AFP: Pakistan tests nuclear-capable ballistic missile - Saturday March 3, 04:31 PM ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistan on Saturday test-fired a short-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile, its second test within eight days, the military said. The surface-to-surface Abdali has a range of 200 kilometers (125 miles) and is one of the earliest missile systems developed by Pakistan. "The test was aimed at validation of the desired technical parameters which has been successfully achieved," the military said in a statement. Pakistan tested the Shaheen II, or Hatf VI, missile with a range of 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) on February 23, two days after signing a historic deal with rival India to cut the risk of atomic weapons accidents. The neighbours have routinely conducted missile tests since carrying out tit-for-tat nuclear detonations in May 1998. Copyright 2007 Yahoo! Australia & NZ Pty Limited. All rights ***************************************************************** 20 BBC NEWS: Pakistan military tests missile Last Updated: Saturday, 3 March 2007, 05:09 GMT Last week Pakistan test fired a long-range Hatf VI missile Pakistan says it has successfully tested a short-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. A statement from Pakistan's armed forces said the test-firing proved the weapon had met its design parameters. The Hatf-II Abdali surface-to-surface ballistic missile is said to have a range of 200km (125 miles). "The test was aimed at validation of the desired technical parameters which has been successfully achieved," the military said in a statement. The statement did not say where the test took place. The short-range Hatf-II was last reported to have been tested in February 2006. Pakistan and its neighbour India - both nuclear powers - routinely carry out missile tests. Pakistan's foreign minister recently met his Indian counterpart in Delhi and signed an agreement aimed at reducing the risk of accidental nuclear war in the region. Tension between Pakistan and India has decreased in recent months amid a series of bilateral overtures. The two powers stepped back from the brink of war after India blamed Pakistan for involvement in an armed attack on the federal parliament in Delhi in 2001. ***************************************************************** 21 BBC NEWS: Sir Menzies wins vote on Trident Last Updated: Saturday, 3 March 2007, 16:23 GMT By Brian Wheeler Political reporter, BBC News, Lib Dem spring conference, Harrogate Sir Menzies is faced a challenge over his Trident policy A personal appeal by Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell has helped him win a narrow victory over Trident rebels at his party's spring conference. Sir Menzies appeared on stage to defend his policy of delaying a decision on replacing Britain's nuclear weapons. Opponents, including some of his own MPs, wanted Trident to be scrapped when it reaches the end of its life. He won the vote by 454 votes to 414, after an initial show of hands had been too close to call. The result will come as a boost to the Lib Dem leader, who has faced questions about his style of leadership Party managers said afterwards that Trident rebels would probably have won without his intervention. MP Phil Willis, who led opposition to Sir Menzies said although he was disappointed to have lost, the leader's victory would come to be seen as his "Clause 4 moment," referring to Tony Blair's historic scrapping of Labour's commitment to public ownership. "He answered his critics today," said Mr Willis, a former frontbench and the local MP. Sir Menzies, who had not been due to speak, was called to the stage in Harrogate - to the evident surprise of many delegates - to deny he was "sitting on the fence". In an impassioned speech, he argued that his policy of cutting the number of missiles by half while leading global disarmament talks was the only "rational" approach. And he said Lib Dem MPs would be voting against government plans to renew Trident whatever happened. "I only know one way to lead and that is from the front," he told delegates. Status quo But, far from backing nuclear weapons, his proposals were about disarmament and "about cutting Trident by half now". The rebel amendment, on the other hand, would see Britain keeping Trident until it reached the end of its useful life, before scrapping it. "What on earth is radical about preserving the status quo?" Sir Menzies asked delegates. He said government plans to renew Trident, at a cost of 65bn, were part of a "desperate attempt" by Tony Blair to "shore up his own legacy". And he said Liberal Democrats would not "fall into Blair's trap under any circumstances". Revolt Cancelling the replacement for Trident now would do nothing to help the cause of disarmament around the world, he argued. But his proposals were a "rational and perceptive response" to the situation, which would give Britain influence in non-proliferation talks. Sir Menzies was backed by frontbench colleagues Simon Hughes and defence spokesman Nick Harvey, who both spoke in favour of his proposals. Speaking afterwards, a clearly relieved Sir Menzies said he was "obviously pleased" with the result, as he believed it was the "right policy". He told BBC News 24 it was an "indication of the maturity of the party that we could have that debate," something he claimed would not have happened at a Labour or Tory conference. He said that by "by 2014 we will have a much better idea of the strategic environment and whether nuclear weapons are still necessary," with potential threats from countries such as Iran and North Korea. The revolt against the official party line was led by Phil Willis. He said the "wait and see" approach would discredit the party, encourage proliferation and tie the UK into US foreign policy. 'No turning back' And he attacked as "pure misrepresentation", the leadership's claims that the amendment would result in Britain keeping Trident for 20 years. "What are we waiting for?" he asked activists. "Blair is making the decision not in four years' time or five years' time; he is making the decision this month. "And once this multi-million pound programme is embarked on there will be no turning back. "Postponing a decision sends out a clear signal, that our party is prepared to support new improved weapons of mass destruction some time in the future. Is that what this conference wants? "If the Liberal Democrats are to be relevant, we must be prepared to be different. "Waiting will not make nuclear weapons less dangerous, nor will it make them more ethical. "Waiting will not kick start disarmament, it will encourage proliferation. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 22 UPI: Pakistan tests potential nuclear missile United Press International - NewsTrack - Updated: 03/03/2007 11:46:34 AM -0500 UTC ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 3 (UPI) -- Pakistan said a Saturday test of its short-range Hatf-II Abdali missile was successful. The surface-to-surface projectile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead completely met its design parameters, the BBC said, quoting a statement released by Pakistani officials. "The test was aimed at validation of the desired technical parameters which has been successfully achieved," the statement said. The successful test of the Hatf-II missile, which has a maximum range of 125 miles, came less than a week after Pakistan tested its nuclear-capable Hatf IV, which has a range 10 times longer than its predecessor. Both Pakistan and neighboring India conduct missile tests on a regular basis despite an agreement between the nations aimed at limiting the potential of an accidental nuclear war. Copyright 2007United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 AFP: Iran, North Korea won't disarm unless compensated - Kadhafi Sat Mar 3, 1:15 AM ET LONDON (AFP) - The West's failure to compensate Libya for abandoning its nuclear weapons programme is unlikely to prompt Iran and North Korea to do likewise, Libya's leader Moamer Kadhafi has told the BBC. "Libya has not been properly compensated, so other countries, like Iran and North Korea, will not follow his lead," Kadhafi said in an interview published on the broadcaster's website. "This should be a model to be followed, but Libya is disappointed because the promises given by America and Britain were not fulfilled... That destroyed the model... no-one is going to follow that model as a result." Iran is widely suspected by the West of using what it claims is a programme to develop civilian nuclear power as a front for building atomic weapons. North Korea claimed last year to have successfully tested a nuclear warhead, to widespread condemnation. Iran is facing new United Nations sanctions after refusing to stop enriching uranium while questions remain whether North Korea still has a covert uranium programme, despite its recent pledge to cease all atomic-related activity. Kadhafi -- for decades an international pariah because of his opposition to the West and alleged backing of terrorism -- pledged in 2003 to give up attempts to develop nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. That led to a normalisation of ties with Britain, France and the United States. But he told the BBC in Sebha, where on Friday he celebrated the 30th anniversary of Libya's Jamahiriyah, or State of the Masses political system, that there had been a lack of British, European Union or US investment since. He said he thought it was still possible for Libya to work with the West for mutual benefit, but the lack of foreign cash did not mean his country would slip back into its old ways. "Libya will never go back. I believe that the era of hostility and confrontation is behind us," he was quoted as saying. Copyright 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 24 Guardian Unlimited: Campbell faces challenge on Trident From Press Association Saturday March 3, 2007 4:28 AM A row over abandoning Britain's nuclear deterrent will pose a serious challenge to Sir Menzies Campbell's leadership of the Liberal Democrats at the party's spring conference. Activists have mounted a serious challenge to his policy of putting off a decision on replacing Trident until 2014. And, despite the insistence of close aides that there was "no massive ideological division" between the two sides, any defeat would be seen as highly damaging. The issue - over which the third party's leadership suffered a major reverse in 1986 - is set to dominate the party gathering in Harrogate. The Government has already announced that it will press ahead with renewing the UK's nuclear deterrent with a new generation of nuclear submarines. While he has vowed to oppose the "premature" decision in a Commons vote later this month, Sir Menzies' official policy is to cut the missiles by half now but put off a long-term decision. Opposition will be centred on a bid to take an immediate decision not to renew but to keep the deterrent in place for the rest of its lifetime - around 20 years. The amendment - which will include senior MP Phil Willis among its backers - also criticises the closeness with the US fostered by reliance on the Trident system. And it calls for the money saved to be spent on much-needed equipment for conventional armed forces. The leader's chief of staff Ed Davey insisted that the leadership remained confident of winning the vote. Copyright Press Association Ltd 2007, All Rights Reserved. Guardian Unlimited Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 25 Sydney Morning Herald: Switkowski to head nuclear body - www.smh.com.au March 4, 2007 Dr Ziggy Switkowski, who headed the prime minister's inquiry into the viability of nuclear reactors in Australia, has been appointed chairman of ANSTO, the national body in charge of nuclear research and development. Science Minister Julie Bishop said today the appointment had been approved by cabinet and signed off by Governor-General Michael Jeffery on Friday. She said Dr Switkowski, whose report to government last year suggested a scenario in which 25 nuclear reactors could supply up to 30 per cent of Australia's electricity, would concentrate on developing Australia's nuclear science expertise in his new role with ANSTO. "We are focusing on ANSTO's role in developing a skills base," Ms Bishop told the Nine Network. "That's why we are appointing Dr Ziggy Switkowski as the chair of ANSTO to focus on that role for ANSTO in developing those skills. "He is a very fine Australian. He brings a great intellect and commitment to his work. "He will be an ideal choice to head up ANSTO as we move into this period of seriously discussing nuclear power as an alternative." Australia's replacement reactor, the OPAL (Open Pool Australian Light-water) nuclear medical research reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney, is in the final stages of being brought on line. AAP (+61 424 767 764), or Copyright 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 26 Sydney Morning Herald: Ziggy will be govt pawn at ANSTO - Labor - www.smh.com.au March 5, 2007 - 10:54AM The federal opposition says the new chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has been appointed to follow the government's agenda. Ziggy Switkowski, who headed the government's inquiry into viability of nuclear reactors in Australia, was appointed chairman of ANSTO on Sunday. The opposition says that after his work heading up the prime minister's study, Dr Switkowski will have a government-created agenda to follow. "Whatever Mr Ziggy Switkowski's considerable professional qualifications, this will be seen as a highly controversial appointment," Labor's science spokesman Kim Carr said. "He is a man who has such strong qualifications in nuclear engineering and company management. However, his recent report for the prime minister lends weight to the view that he will be pursuing an agenda by this government, for this government to impose nuclear power upon Australia." Dr Switkowski's report to government last year proposed a scenario of 25 nuclear reactors that could supply up to 30 per cent of Australia's electricity. He said developing nuclear power would be best to help offset climate change because it would be clean and cost competitive in its own right. On Monday, Dr Switkowski said his experience heading up the nuclear power study would be an advantage in his new position as head of the country's nuclear research and development organisation. "ANSTO itself, I think, is well progressed in its thinking around all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle," Dr Switkowski told ABC Radio. "The fact that I now return as chairman will lead to a situation where the board will continue to be, I think, conversant with and in some cases quite expert in the areas of ANSTO, which is what you would want." Science Minister Julie Bishop described Dr Switkowski as an ideal choice. "He is a very fine Australian," she said. "He brings a great intellect and commitment to his work and I believe he will be an ideal choice to head up ANSTO as we move into this period of seriously discussing nuclear power as an alternative to coal." The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has jumped to Labor's defence, saying that Dr Ziggy Switkowski's appointment to head Australia's nuclear research body represents a conflict of interest. ACF nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney said Dr Switkowski's appointment as Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) chairman showed that due process had been thrown out the window in the nuclear debate currently raging in the country. 2007 AAP Copyright 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 27 Economic Times: India to sell low-cost nuke reactors Indiatimes> IANS[ SUNDAY, MARCH 04, 2007 02:00:37 PM] NEW DELHI: India has not only stepped up its diplomacy with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) countries to allow it to access civil nuclear technology and fuel but may also become a supplier of low-cost nuclear reactors to other countries by joining the NSG. India's nuclear establishment is riding high after the Kaiga 3 nuclear power reactor in Karnataka, developed by Indian engineers, achieved criticality early this week. The 220 MW pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) will start delivering power at the end of this month. Glowing in the success of this venture, Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, has said that completing the nuclear power plant, along with low costs, in five years has set an international benchmark. Given the low costs - Rs 984 ($22.33) per installed KW - Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) is now eyeing the export market for nuclear reactors. India is confident of exporting the design to countries like Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam for just Rs 1,200 ($27.24) per KW, which is substantially less than the international average of $1,500 per KW, a senior NPCIL official said. With the lucrative export market for low-cost nuclear reactors in mind and its new international standing driven by its growing economy and a defining civil nuclear deal with the US, India also plans to make a pitch for joining the NSG at an appropriate time, reliable sources said. But before India, a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, actually starts exporting nuclear reactors, it must first win support of the 45-nation NSG that controls global trade in nuclear technology and fuel for the India-US civil nuclear deal. The NSG will, however, take a call on India's case only after New Delhi and Washington have finalised a bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreement. Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon presented a draft of the 123 agreement for discussions with US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns during his visit to the US last month. The US Congress has to approve the 123 agreements with an up and down vote to be followed by a nod from the NSG before actual nuclear commerce starts between the two countries. The US and Russia have already announced that they would use their clout in the NSG to amend the cartel's guidelines in favour of nuclear commerce with India. Shyam Saran, the prime minister's special envoy on the India-US civil nuclear deal, plans to visit all major NSG countries to garner support for the crucial nuclear deal that will open the doors of global nuclear commerce to India after nearly a three-decade hiatus. Saran has already visited Japan, Sweden and Norway, known for their special sensitivities on nuclear non-proliferation and sought their support for the deal. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will go to Japan later this month with nuclear diplomacy on top of his mind. India got a taste of Japan's continuing ambivalence on civil nuclear cooperation with India during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Tokyo in December last year. Persuading Japan to back India in the NSG will be a breakthrough of sorts paving the way for other sceptics of the deal like the Scandinavian countries to come on board. Copyright 2007 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. For ***************************************************************** 28 Xinhua: China mulls int'l input for energy law www.chinaview.cn 2007-03-03 09:02:47 BEIJING, March 3 -- International input by leading experts will be considered in the drafting of China's first energy law, industry executives told China Daily on Friday. According to Wu Zhonghu, a drafter, the draft law is expected to be submitted to the State Council later this year, following an international conference scheduled for next month. Zhou Feng'ao, another member of the law drafting team, noted that China's energy industry had its own particular features, but that made it all the more imperative for drafters to learn about the experiences of other countries. He Yongjian, director of the strategy and planning department under the Office of National Energy Leading Group, said the law, the first of its kind in China, will be the overarching one for the country's energy industry and trade. It will include matters dealing with energy planning, exploration, supply and service, utility and conservation, environmental protection, rural energy, reserves and technology innovation in exploration, He said. At an industry symposium in Beijing yesterday, William E. Loveless, a US energy policy expert with Platts, an energy information provider, said that according to the US experience, the making of an energy law is "an extremely demanding job", since it involves compromises among different interest groups and industrial segments. It took the US four years to enact it. He Yongnian admitted that Chinese drafters had already encountered a few obstacles. One of them is how to override the existing four laws on coal, electricity, energy conservation and renewable energy without replacing them. There are no laws yet governing petroleum, natural gas and nuclear energy. Another is whether to have a unified national energy administration and how it should function once established. The reform of the energy markets and their administration was also a challenge in trying to avoid too much or too little regulation, He said. "If we write some energy-saving targets into the law, what will we do if market players fall short of those targets? If no action is taken, will not the law's authority be put into question?" He said. Loveless said that from the US experience too much regulation from the government restricts the flexibility of the energy market. He Yongnian said issues such as the varied interests of industries and regions had also to be taken into account. China set up a team of experts from 15 ministry-level agencies to draft the country's energy law early last year. (Source: China Daily) Editor: Yao Runping ***************************************************************** 29 toledoblade.com: Oversight level normalized for nuclear plant Article published Saturday, March 3, 2007 PERRY, Ohio - FirstEnergy Corp.'s Perry nuclear plant east of Cleveland was returned to normal oversight yesterday by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after being under heightened scrutiny for more than two years. The plant faced special inspections because of various equipment and management problems since August, 2004. FirstEnergy Corp.'s other nuclear plant in Ohio, the Davis-Besse facility 30 miles east of Toledo, was under heightened oversight for three years following the near-rupture of that plant's old reactor head in 2002. Davis-Besse resumed operation in March, 2004, but continued to be monitored at a higher level than the industry norm until July, 2005. 2006 The Blade. By using this service, you accept the terms of The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 ***************************************************************** 30 UK: Sunday Herald: Fears Over Torness Safety March 05, 2007 Est 1999 Scotland's award-winning independent By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor MORE THAN 30 safety incidents were investigated at Torness nuclear power station in 2005, sparking fears about the reliability of the East Lothian plant. The list included four emergency shutdowns; plus incidents involving damaged or faulty safety equipment, and a "transformer fire". According to experts, some of the events had the potential to cause a radiation leak. A list of 33 incidents was released to Alan Beith, the Liberal Democrat MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, last week. It coincides with a prolonged shutdown of Scotland's other nuclear power station at Hunterston in North Ayrshire due to boiler defects. "It's worrying," Beith said of the list. "You want the incidents to be reported and not covered up, but many people will be surprised to discovered that there were so many." According to independent nuclear engineer John Large, some of the incidents could have been serious. If undetected, they might have caused injury to workers or, in the worst circumstances, triggered a radiation release, he claimed. The list was provided by the UK trade and industry minister, Margaret Hodge, in response to a parliamentary question from Beith. But a spokeswoman for British Energy, the company that runs Torness, insisted that the incidents were all minor. She added: "As a nuclear operator aiming for high standards of safety, we have an open and transparent reporting culture." 2007 newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 31 APP.COM: Time to counter NRC's actions | Asbury Park Press Online Sunday, March 4, 2007 Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 03/4/07 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's denial last week of the state's request to consider the consequences its decision on license renewal has on a potential terrorist attack on the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey hardly came as a surprise. What was surprising, and equally disturbing, was the reassignment of Dennis J. Zannoni, the state Department of Environmental Protection's top nuclear engineer one intimately familiar with Oyster Creek's operations. He was exiled to a cubicle without a phone or Internet access after an NRC official complained Zannoni had criticized the credentials of the members of an NRC advisory committee. Both developments augur badly for those who believe, as we do, that the risks posed by Oyster Creek are unacceptable and not getting the objective hearing they deserve. The NRC's decision on license renewal could come as early as May. If approved, Oyster Creek, the nation's oldest commercial nuclear plant, would be allowed to operate another 20 years. State officials must respond immediately to the latest setbacks in three ways: File a federal lawsuit seeking to require the NRC to consider the terrorist risk posed by the spent fuel pool at Oyster Creek in license renewal. A similar lawsuit was successful in a California federal court. Insist that Oyster Creek build a cooling tower, in keeping with the requirements of the federal Clean Water Act and a recent New York federal court ruling that affirms other alternatives to meeting environmental standards are not acceptable. Gov. Corzine should investigate the circumstances behind the reassignment of Zannoni, and the threat from an NRC employee to restrict the state's participation in plant inspections if the complaint against Zannoni weren't investigated. Copyright 2007 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 32 MHNN: Schumer calls for ISA at IP (Indian Point) Weekend, March 3-4, 2007 Washington - U.S. Senator Charles Schumer Friday announced his support for legislation requiring a thorough and independent safety assessment at the Indian Point nuclear plant. Earlier this week, Indian Point 2 was shut down when a devic ein a non-nucler area malfunctioned.\ Schumer said he will cosponsor legislation offered by Senator Hillary Clinton to require the ISA within six months. “The NRC has been dragging its feet on the safety issues at Indian Point for far too long,” Schumer said. “When it comes to nuclear safety and security, we expect the highest standards. Safety must be the number one priority. There must be an independent vigorous investigation so that we can get to the bottom of what is going on at Indian Point – and fix it.” The legislation, offered by Clinton would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to conduct a focused, in-depth independent safety assessment of the design, construction, maintenance, and operational safety performance of the systems at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, Reactors 2 and 3. The systems covered by the investigation would include the reactor protection system, the control room ventilation system and the containment ventilation system, the 4.16 kV electrical system, the condensate system, and the spent fuel storage system. HEAR today's news on MidHudsonRadio.com, the Hudson Valley's only Internet radio news report. ***************************************************************** 33 The Australian: Ziggy to head nuke body NEWS.com.au | * March 05, 2007 ZIGGY Switkowski, who headed John Howard's inquiry into the viability of nuclear reactors in Australia, has been appointed chairman of ANSTO, the national body in charge of nuclear research and development. Science Minister Julie Bishop said yesterday the appointment had been approved by cabinet and signed off by Governor-General Michael Jeffery on Friday. She said Dr Switkowski, whose report to government last year suggested a scenario in which 25 nuclear reactors could supply up to 30 per cent of Australia's electricity, would concentrate on developing Australia's nuclear science expertise in his new role with ANSTO. "We are focusing on ANSTO's role in developing a skills base," Ms Bishop told the Nine Network. "That's why we are appointing Dr Ziggy Switkowski as the chair of ANSTO to focus on that role for ANSTO in developing those skills. "He is a very fine Australian. He brings a great intellect and commitment to his work. "He will be an ideal choice to head up ANSTO as we move into this period of seriously discussing nuclear power as an alternative." AAP The Australian ***************************************************************** 34 Thailand: MCOT: Coal-fired and nuclear power necessary, says Energy Ministry TNA English News : Monday 5 March 2007 12:39:41 PM (GMT+7:00) BANGKOK, March 3 (TNA) - It will be difficult for Thailand to avoid counting on coal-fired and nuclear power plants in the future since natural gas is rarely found and in limited supply, according to the kingdom's Ministry of Energy. Deputy Permanent Secretary for Energy Nokun Sitthiphong said the ministry had recently organised a forum where around 80 academics and representatives of non-governmental organisations participated to discuss and exchange views on consumption of alternative energy such as natural gas, coal, and nuclear in the future, and a power development plan proposed by NGOs. The meeting found Thailand might experience a power shortage if it adhered to the power development plan (PDP). Under the plan prepared by NGOs last year, the country's power demand per month is expected to peak at 18,000 megawatts. But according to reliable information from other sources, the actual maximum demand considerably higher at 21,064 megawatts. Even in February, which is Thailand's 'winter' period (meaning that there is less demand for air-conditioning than in hotter months), the demand increased to 20,592 megawatts and is expected to peak at 22,567 megawatts. Because of this, it is difficult for Thailand to avoid relying on coal and nuclear energy for power generation because it is too risky to count solely on natural gas. According to data provided by Thailand's oil and gas conglomerate PTT Plc, natural gas supplies from the Gulf of Thailand and joint petroleum development areas with neighbouring countries could be supplied at 4 billion cubic feet per day while consumption is 2.1 billion. At the same time, the country purchases 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas from Myanmar. So, should Thailand need to consume more natural gas, it must import liquefied natural gas (LPG). However, since imports are probably limited to 10 million tonnees per year, it is worrying that the supply would not be enough for a new power plant. "Natural gas is very unlikely to be sufficient for a new power plant. So, nuclear power is one of the alternative choices. Equally important, consumption of nuclear power can help relieve the problem of a warmer global climate," he said. (TNA)-E005 Last Update : 2007-03-03 / 10:25:49 (GMT+7:00) Bangkok Post | The Nation | Business Day | Pattaya Mail | Phuket MCOT Public Company Limited. All Rights Reserved.2004 Tel : 662-201-6000 webmaster@mcot.net Tel : 662-201-6145 Powered by Computer Department of MCOT ***************************************************************** 35 AU ABC: Support for nuclear power growing - poll AM - Saturday, 3 March , 2007 08:04:00 Reporter: Jennifer Macey ELIZABETH JACKSON: A new opinion poll shows that Australians are becoming more accepting of nuclear power. The McNair Gallup survey of 1,000 people found that 41 per cent support the construction of nuclear power plants in Australia, while 53 per cent are opposed. The greatest opposition was found in Victoria and South Australia, two states which have been identified as potential sites for nuclear power stations. Jennifer Macey reports. JENNIFER MACEY: There's been a re-occurring nuclear debate in Australian for more than 60 years. Our exposure to nuclear matters began in the 1940s, with the first uranium mines, and then in the 1950s with the testing of nuclear bombs by the British army. Australia's first nuclear reactor was built in 1958 at Lucas Heights as a research facility. Plans to build a power station at Jervis Bay emerged a decade later, but were dropped for largely economic reasons. The 70s were marked by mass protests and union-led strikes against uranium mining, which later led to the Labor Party adopting its three mines policy in 1983. In the 90s, the French conducted nuclear tests in the Pacific and the Australian public responded by boycotting French products. Now climate change is driving the renewed debate over nuclear energy, and a new poll suggests Australians are warming to the idea. Matt Balogh is the Managing Director of McNair Ingenuity Research, which conducted the study. He says claims that most Australians oppose nuclear power are no longer valid. MATT BALOGH: About 40 per cent, or 41 to be exact, per cent of adult Australians are in favour, and 53 per cent opposed. So while it's a majority, it's a pretty narrow majority, and it certainly puts the issue square on the agenda. JENNIFER MACEY: Did you also ask whether people approved of nuclear power stations in their local areas, and did the numbers then change? MATT BALOGH: What we did is we asked the poll nationally, and we can see differences in results in areas which are potential candidates for nuclear power stations. So at the moment one of the high options is South Australia, and we can actually see that in South Australia the level of resistance to the idea of nuclear power is slightly higher than average, so 57 per cent compared to the Australian average of 53 per cent. So, yes, to some part we can see that there is greater resistance if it's going to be in your backyard. JENNIFER MACEY: Are people becoming more accepting of nuclear power? MATT BALOGH: I think they are, partly because there's a lot more concern about fossil fuel power, which contribute to the greenhouse effect and to climate change, and the concerns that existed around nuclear power are fading, and there has not been a major nuclear accident for some time now, not since Chernobyl. And so the safety thing is sort of moving away in that sense, and also since the end of the Cold War, the whole sense that nuclear power would lead to a nuclear arms race has faded back too. JENNIFER MACEY: There's still a majority of Australians, though, who are opposed to nuclear power. MATT BALOGH: Mmm, but it certainly shows that as we debate it, and I think with 53 per cent opposed, it's going to be a very important debate because it's a, you know, it's a relatively borderline issue and we've got four in 10 Australians thinking one way, a little bit more than five in 10 thinking the other way. So, for a very small number of people to change their views on it would have a significant effect, 'cause it would move from a minority to a majority view. JENNIFER MACEY: However, recent surveys show that while more people may favour nuclear energy, when respondents are asked whether they'll accept a power plant in their backyard, opposition increases to over 60 per cent. ELIZABETH JACKSON: Jennifer Macey with that report. ***************************************************************** 36 AU ABC: Switkowski appointed ANSTO chairman. 04/03/2007. ABC News Online Appointment: Julie Bishop says Ziggy Switkowski (pictured) is very fine Australian (file photo). The Federal Government has appointed Ziggy Switkowski as the chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). Mr Switkowski was appointed to the board of ANSTO in 2006 and headed up Prime Minister John Howard's task force into nuclear energy last year. The federal Science Minister, Julie Bishop, has told Channel Nine that Cabinet approved the appointment on Friday. "He is a very fine Australian," he said. "He brings a great intellect and commitment to his work and I believe he will be an ideal choice to head up ANSTO as we move into this period of seriously discussing nuclear power as an alternative to coal." ***************************************************************** 37 PRN: Unit 2 at Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant Safely Shut Down for Planned Refueling and Maintenance BERWICK, Penn., March 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Operators safely shut down the Unit 2 reactor at PPL Corporation's Susquehanna nuclear power plant in northeastern Pennsylvania early Saturday (3/3) to begin a planned refueling and maintenance outage. While the reactor is shut down, workers will replace about 40 percent of the uranium fuel and complete an extensive list of equipment maintenance and upgrades. Unit 1 at the plant continues to operate at full power. "This will be one of the largest outages we have ever conducted in terms of the amount of work scheduled," said Robert A. Saccone, vice president of Operations for PPL Susquehanna. "The equipment maintenance performed will keep Unit 2 in excellent condition so that it continues to operate safely and reliably," he said. "In addition, selected equipment will be upgraded or replaced in support of a proposed future increase in the amount of power the unit can safely generate." The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing a request filed by PPL in the fall of 2006 to increase the plant's total electrical output by about 200 megawatts, which is enough additional electricity to supply 160,000 homes. Because PPL Susquehanna will be replacing some major components during this outage, it is scheduled to be slightly longer than other recent refueling and maintenance outages at the plant, Saccone said. Unit 2 is expected to be generating electricity again by the middle of April, before the arrival of summer weather and the resulting increase in electricity use by consumers. PPL schedules nuclear refueling and maintenance outages at this time of year, when temperate weather reduces electricity use and the demand on the regional power grid is lower. Each of the two units at the Susquehanna plant is taken out of service for refueling and maintenance every 24 months. The Susquehanna plant, located in Luzerne County about seven miles north of Berwick, is owned jointly by PPL Susquehanna LLC and Allegheny Electric Cooperative Inc. and is operated by PPL Susquehanna. PPL Susquehanna is one of PPL Corporation's generating facilities. Headquartered in Allentown, Pa., PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL) controls more than 11,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the United States, sells energy in key U.S. markets and delivers electricity to nearly 5 million customers in Pennsylvania, the United Kingdom and Latin America. More information is available at http://www.pplweb.com SOURCE PPL Corporation Related links: http://www.pplweb.com Copyright 1996- PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights Reserved. A United Business Media company. ***************************************************************** 38 PerthNow: Under the nuke cloud | NEWS.com.au | By Phil Haberland, writing in The Sunday Times March 03, 2007 03:00pm "I DON'T think I've got a problem with nuclear power," I said to my mate over a few phlegm-cutters at the pub this week. He was taken aback. This guy dabbles in the stock market and is what I would call an ethical investor. He won't buy shares in tobacco companies or invest in businesses that make poker machines or run casinos because of the human misery and suffering these industries produce. He feels the same way about companies that want to mine uranium. "Listen cobber, if you can put your hand on your heart and tell me that in 1000 years' time everything will be fine with the disposal and storage of nuclear waste, then do it. But you can't! No individual, no private company, no government can make that millennium promise. This current generation of humanity cannot give that assurance." I felt lower than a bar coaster – we are both parents of young children. I'd forgotten my old school-day statistic that nuclear waste is supposed to stay radioactive and lethally toxic for thousands of years. It had been ages since I'd thought about the Chernobyl meltdown and its aftermath. Did those Russian firemen who fearlessly ran on to the reactor's roof survive? Are the locals eating the produce that is grown within coo-ee of the original site? Are there any locals left? We hear lots today about the so-called "footprint" that we are leaving on the Earth for future generations. If we decide to go nuclear, is there a possibility that the foot will have six toes? As a citizen of the 21st century, I am being overwhelmed by scientific information and arguments that I am finding difficult to absorb. And yet I am going to have to try to make an informed vote on these conundrums in the coming federal election. Last week, after much mental anguish trying to arrive at some cogent position on the water debate, I was just getting up to speed with the whole carbon-trading scheme thing when the Prime Minister pulls nuclear power out of his pocket and says: "Cop this! It's the way to go." To be honest, as a layman, I JUST DON'T KNOW. There are so many arguments for and against. Like global warming, there are as many experts coming out of the laboratory to say it's not happening as there are Al Gore cheerleaders crying "Repent! Repent. The time of drowning is near." A simple man like me asks: "If global warming melts the Antarctic ice caps, why does Tim Flannery reckon Perth will run out of water?" But the nuclear-powered ducks appeared to be lining up in a row this week. John Howard's little business mates, Ron Walker and Hugh Morgan, have announced that their Australian Nuclear Energy Co is open for business. Labor leader Kevin Rudd and deputy Julia Gillard have indicated that they will be asking the party to lift the ban on new uranium mining at Labor's national conference in April. And if you happen to own shares in some of these ostensibly dormant uranium mines, it's becoming harder to wipe the smile off your face, as their prices head north. I'm starting to feel about nuclear power like I did about the war in Iraq. I can't recall the names of any politicians or businessmen who fervently supported the invasion – offering up their own children to fight the fight. This time with nuclear power, any politician or businessman who wants to build nuclear power stations must commit to having them in their own electorates and agree to live within close proximity. On weekends and holidays, their children and grandchildren should be encouraged to play near the reactors. That is walking the nuclear walk. Copyright 2007 The Sunday Times. All times AWDT (GMT + 8). ***************************************************************** 39 Lexington Herald-Leader: Terrorists helped by lax security 03/04/2007 | By Greg Gordon MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS WASHINGTON - The number of experts who believe that terrorists could obtain the apparatus for a nuclear bomb is impressive and growing. The 9/11 Commission described in 2004 the relative ease with which terrorists could conceal the needed weapons-grade plutonium or highly enriched uranium, which it said would be "about the size of a grapefruit or an orange." Since 2001, law enforcement officials have developed training exercises on how terrorists might smuggle eight components for an improvised 10-kiloton bomb into the United States and then detonate it near the White House. Experts in and out of the government worry that the most likely source of nuclear material is Russia and the former Soviet bloc nations, where stocks of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium are stored at loosely guarded sites. And some people are trying to get their hands on them. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports 976 incidents of illicit trafficking of nuclear and radioactive materials since 1993 -- with 149 of them last year alone. In 2006, a man in the former Soviet republic of Georgia was arrested for allegedly trying to sell highly enriched uranium to terrorists. In a recent interview, Lee Hamilton, who was vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, said the United States must do more. He suggested spending $3 billion to $4 billion on securing nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. Currently, U.S. officials spend about $1 billion a year. Joe Cirincione, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons, said some radioactive materials in former eastern bloc nations are "guarded by little more than a chain-linked fence, a padlock and a guard that works during the day." He said he considers it a certainty that, "if we just keep doing what we're doing, a terrorist group will get a nuclear weapon or the materials for a nuclear weapon and use it sometime in the next 10 years." "You just can't keep tempting fate like this," he said. ***************************************************************** 40 Lexington Herald-Leader: U.S. unprepared for nuclear attack 03/04/2007 | Experts tally critical response needs By Greg Gordon MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS * A simulated nuclear attack on the White House WASHINGTON - Although the Bush administration has warned repeatedly about the threat of a terrorist nuclear attack and spent more than $300 billion to protect the homeland, the government remains ill-prepared to respond to a nuclear catastrophe. Experts and government documents suggest that, absent a major preparedness push, the U.S. response to a mushroom cloud could be worse than the debacle after Hurricane Katrina, possibly contributing to civil disorder and costing thousands of lives. "The United States is unprepared to mitigate the consequences of a nuclear attack," Pentagon analyst John Brinkerhoff concluded in a July 31, 2005, draft of a confidential memo to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We were unable to find any group or office with a coherent approach to this very important aspect of homeland security. ... "This is a bad situation. The threat of a nuclear attack is real, and action is needed now to learn how to deal with one." Col. Jill Morgenthaler, Illinois' director of homeland security, said there's a "disconnect" between President Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's nuclear threat talk and the administration's actions. "I don't see money being focused on actual response and mitigation to a nuclear threat," she said. What's needed Interviews by McClatchy Newspapers with more than 15 radiation and emergency preparedness experts and a review of internal documents revealed: ? The government has yet to launch an educational program, akin to the Cold War-era civil defense campaign promoting fallout shelters, to teach Americans how to shield themselves from radiation, especially from the fallout plume, which could deposit deadly particles up to 100 miles from ground zero. ? Analysts estimate that as many as 300,000 emergency workers would be needed after a nuclear attack, but predict that the radiation would scare many of them away. ? Emergency rooms wouldn't be able to handle the surge of people who were irradiated or the many more who feared they were. ? Medical teams would have to improvise to treat what could be tens of thousands of burn victims because most cities have only one or two available burn-unit beds. Cham Dallas, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Mass Destruction Defense, called the predicament "the worst link in our health care wall." ? Several drugs are in development and one is especially promising, but the government hasn't acquired any significant new medicine to counteract radiation's devastating effects on victims' blood-forming bone marrow. Over the last three years, several federal agencies have taken some steps in nuclear disaster planning. The Department of Health and Human Services has drawn up "playbooks" for a range of attack scenarios and created a Web site to instruct emergency responders in treating radiation victims. The Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is geared to use real-time weather data, within minutes of a bombing, to create a computer model that charts the likely path of a radioactive fallout plume so that the government can warn affected people to take shelter or evacuate. The government also has modeled likely effects in blast zones. Capt. Ann Knebel, the U.S. Public Health Service's deputy preparedness chief, said her agency is using the models to understand how many people in different zones would suffer from blast injuries, burns or radiation sickness "and to begin to match our resources." Grim scenario No matter how great the government's response, a nuclear bomb's toll would be staggering. The government's National Planning Scenario, which isn't public, projects that a relatively small, improvised 10-kiloton bomb could kill hundreds of thousands of people in a medium-sized city and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses. The document, last updated in April 2005, projects that a bomb denoted at ground level in Washington, D.C., would kill as many as 204,600 people, including many government officials, and would injure or sicken 90,800. Another 24,580 victims would die of radiation-related cancer in ensuing years. Radioactive debris would contaminate a 3,000-square-mile area, requiring years-long cleanup, it said. Brinkerhoff, author of the confidential memo for the Joint Chiefs, estimated that nearly 300,000 National Guardsmen, military reservists and civil emergency personnel would be needed to rescue, decontaminate, process and manage the 1.5 million evacuees. The job would include cordoning off the blast zone and manning a 200-mile perimeter around the fallout area to process and decontaminate victims, to turn others away from the danger and to maintain order. Brinkerhoff estimated that the military would need to provide 140,000 of the 300,000 responders, but doubted that the Pentagon would have that many. And the Public Health Service's Knebel cited studies suggesting that the "fear factor" would reduce civil emergency responders by more than 30 percent. 'Dangerously unprepared' Planning for an attack seems to evoke a sense of resignation among some officials. "We are concerned about the catastrophic threats and are trying to improve our abilities for disasters," said Gerald Parker, a deputy assistant secretary in Health and Human Services' new Office of Preparedness and Response. "But you have to look at what's pragmatic as well." Dr. Andrew Garrett of Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness, put it this way: "People are just very intimidated to take on the problem" because "there may not be apparent solutions right now." Dr. Ira Helfand, a Massachusetts emergency care doctor who co-authored a report on nuclear preparedness last year by the Physicians for Social Responsibility, chided the administration for trying "to create a climate of fear rather than to identify a problem and address it." The doctors' group found the government "dangerously unprepared" for a nuclear attack. Government officials say they have drafted playbooks for every sort of radioactive attack. But radiation experts and government memos emphasize the chaos that a bigger bomb could create. Emergency responders could face power outages, leaking gas lines, buckled bridges and tunnels, disrupted communications from the blast's electromagnetic pulse and streets clogged by vehicle crashes because motorists could be blinded by the bright flash accompanying detonation. No equipment exists to shield rescue teams from radiation, and survivors would face similar risks if they tried to walk to safety. Defense analyst Brinkerhoff proposed having troops gradually tighten the ring around the blast zone as the radiation diminished, but warned that the government lacks the hundreds of radiation meters needed to ensure that they wouldn't endanger themselves. Emergency teams would have no quick test to determine the extent of survivors' radiation exposure. They would have to rely on tests for white blood cell declines or quiz people about their whereabouts during the blast and whether they had vomited. The National Planning Scenario expressed concern that uninformed survivors of an attack could be lethally exposed to radiation because they failed to seek shelter, preferably in a sealed basement, for three to four days while radioactive debris decayed. Another big problem: Only a small percentage of Americans store bottled water, canned food and other essentials. Helfand said it would be too late to help most people near the blast, but that advance education could save many people in the path of the fallout. ***************************************************************** 41 AFP: Lawmakers deride US intelligence agencies - Sun Mar 4, 12:48 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - US lawmakers on Sunday lamented the state of America's intelligence capability after President George W. Bush's administration scaled back allegations about North Korea's nuclear program. Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record) said lawmakers in Congress are hard-pressed to make policy with intelligence reports that sometimes turn out to be seriously flawed -- despite recent moves to streamline the country's 16 intelligence agencies "We still don't have the intelligence community overall to give us, as policymakers, the information that we need to make good decisions in North Korea, Iran and other places," Hoekstra told Fox News Sunday. "You always make policy with imprecise information, but you know, there are some things that we've been disappointed with," he said. "It's a concern about the leadership in the intelligence community, not the folks who are working this 24/7," Hoekstra added. The US intelligence network came in for harsh criticism after the Bush administration last week expressed uncertainty over its accusations about a secret North Korean uranium enrichment program which in 2002 led to a political standoff with Pyongyang. "We still have confidence that the program is in existence -- at the mid-confidence level," Joseph DeTrani, the North Korea mission manager at the national intelligence director's office, told the US Senate Armed Services Committee last week. The United States and North Korea begin landmark negotiations Monday on normalizing relations, a long-standing condition set by the reclusive communist regime for abandoning its nuclear ambitions after a half-century of enmity. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record) said the lack of reliable intelligence was particularly acute with regard to the secretive North Korean regime. "I think the gathering of intelligence with respect to North Korea has been very difficult. And the drop in the level of confidence on the uranium-based development I think is an indication of that," she said. "We now do know that North Korea has nuclear devices. The question is, how many? The question is, where are they assembling these?" She added: "Because of the underground nature of the facilities, it's very difficult. North Korea is a long way from us, and the intelligence infrastructure is not that good, to be very candid with you. Democrats in Congress last week said the revelation harkens back to the administration's past problems with flawed intelligence in the run-up to the war in Iraq. "It is troubling for us to find such uncertainty when it comes to intelligence matters of such gravity," Democratic Senator Dick Durbin told AFP last week. "To declare certain countries are part of an axis of evil, and then to find out that our intelligence on Iraq was fatally flawed -- and now our intelligence on another member of the axis may be flawed as well -- is not a confidence builder," said Durbin, the number two Democrat in the US Senate. Copyright 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 42 Irna: Belgian parliament to vote on bill to ban depleted uranium weapon - Brussels, March 4, IRNA Belgium-Uranium-Weapons The Belgian parliament's Commission on National Defense will vote on Wednesday on a law proposal that would prohibit the manufacture, use, storage, sale, acquisition, supply and transit of projectiles and armour that contain depleted uranium (DU) or other industrially manufactured uranium. According to the "Belgian Coalition: Stop Uranium Weapons," a political majority has been reached in favour of banning uranium weapons in Belgium. Nineteen countries have DU weapons in their arsenals. According to the Belgian government, Belgium has never bought or possessed such weaponry. Belgian and international coalitions of scientists, war veterans, military trade unions, ecological and human rights organizations, are working for a global ban on uranium weapons. A model international convention banning DU weapons has also been developed. It is hoped that the Belgian ban on DU weapons will be an important step towards achieving an international ban, said the Belgian coalition in a statement. Investigations at the U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute have demonstrated that exposure to DU oxide particles can induce irreversible damage to the genetic material, that they accumulate in the lymph nodes and that they induce cancers. Though there exists a consensus in the scientific community about the health hazards from exposure to the mainly ceramic DU particles when ingested, there remain scientific uncertainties due to a lack of sufficient research regarding the environmental behaviour of DU. News sent: 14:58 Sunday March 04, 2007 Print ***************************************************************** 43 JOURNAL NEWS: Radiation studies to be expanded around Indian Point By GREG CLARY What do you think about the radioactive leaks? Visit the "Issues in the Lower Hudson Valley" forum at LoHud.com. (Original publication: March 3, 2007) PLEASANTVILLE - State environmental regulators plan to broaden their scientific studies of fish and other wildlife in the vicinity of Indian Point, to better determine how radiation leaks at the Buchanan nuclear plants are affecting the Hudson River's ecosystem. A group of state health and environment officials announced the expanded studies yesterday, while participating in a Pace University roundtable discussion of tritium and strontium 90 leaks at Indian Point. The first leak was discovered in August 2005, and Indian Point engineers are still trying to determine the source and extent of radiated water that is seeping into the ground at the site. "We're going to sample more locations and more fish species, and we're going to analyze the flesh and the bone of the fish," said Barbara Youngberg, director of state's Department of Environmental Radiation Bureau. "We're probably going to start taking those in the spring and summer." Youngberg spoke, along with state health and environmental conservation officials, as part of a program sponsored by the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Pace's Academy for the Environment and the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition. In mid-January, the owner of the nuclear plants, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, found traces of strontium 90 in four of 12 fish sampled as part of the company's required fish testing. The fish were caught during the summer of 2006 in two areas of the Hudson River, around the plant itself and near the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge. At the time, federal regulators said no other radioactive isotopes were found in the fish. Within days, state Department of Environmental Conservation officials said the amounts of the radioactive isotopes were "background levels" that could be found in fish in any part of the river. Yesterday's four-hour seminar covered the leaks from a variety of angles, including how water moves underground and which state and federal agencies should have jurisdiction over the pollution. Federal, state and county elected officials participated, and representatives of local municipalities were in the audience. Representatives of Indian Point, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were invited to attend, but did not participate. The federal agencies sent observers, but Entergy, which owns the two working nuclear reactors, declined, saying the nongovernment participants were avowed opponents of the plant and the nuclear industry. Based on the applause for various statements made, it appeared that most of the 100-plus people in the audience of the Willcox Gymnasium were opponents as well. Ward Stone, a wildlife pathologist for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said he would expand the examination of wildlife in the area to include snapping turtles, frogs and deer, as Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, D-Greenburgh, requested during his remarks. "The turtles and frogs stay around," Stone said during a break. He added that one test he was interested in doing was to cage and monitor fish in certain areas of the river, to "see what they pick up." Youngberg said the radiation levels that have been found in the Hudson River by the state so far are a tiny fraction of what is allowed. "It is in concentrations of less than 1 percent of the limit that we would apply for any facility discharging strontium 90 or tritium," she said. "There are no significant impacts offsite whatsoever." She said her agency will continue to monitor the leaks' impact on the environment. The NRC, the state Department of Health and Entergy have all agreed to participate in the additional sampling. Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee, D-Suffern, who has called for closing Indian Point, said the extra studies were needed. Tim Rice, a DEC researcher who has been working on the Indian Point leaks almost since they were discovered, said the agency will continue to use the Newburgh-Beacon area as a control site, but will expand the specimen collection as far north as Catskill, N.Y., a distance of about 90 miles. Rice said taking fish from so far away should help determine if fish and blue crabs that will be tested are absorbing radiation from the atmosphere or from the reactors. He estimated that some results of the sampling should be available by the fall. Reach Greg Clary at gclary@lohud.com or 914-696-8566. Copyright 2006 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York. Use ***************************************************************** 44 Yokwe Net: Nuclear: People of Bikini Wait for US Court Response to Lawsuit Everything Marshall Islands :: http://www.yokwe.net Search Mar 05, 2007 - 05:43 AM Theme creado por dev-postnuke.com People of Bikini Wait for US Court Response to Lawsuit The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has yet to respond to any of the documents filed in the case of the people of the Bikini Atoll versus the United States. The People of Bikini filed the lawsuit in April 2006, with an amended complaint on July 18, seeking damages for the U.S. Government's breaches of fiduciary duty to provide just and adequate compensation for the taking of their lands for U.S. Cold War nuclear testing. The Bikinians were first removed from their home atoll on March 7, 1946. The United States has requested the Court to dismiss the case. There is no time limit for when the Federal judge has to respond. "Basically we are just waiting for the judge to decide how he wants to proceed," said Jack Niedenthal, Trust Liaison for the people of Bikini. Read full article: 'People of Bikini Wait for US Court Response to Lawsuit' YokweOnline | Sunday, March 04, 2007 | 49 Reads Marshall Islands' Nuclear Survivors Day Commemorated More Details: 53rd anniversary of Bravo bomb - We gained nothing except for radiation, said Iroij Senator Michael KabuaReport of Bravo Commemoration Event - Harris United Methodist Church, March 3Philippo on Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day - remembers the lives lost Marshalls Mark 53rd Anniversary Of Atomic Blast - Several hundred victims and supporters gathered.VIDEO: Pacific push for global recognition - Marshall Islands wants Bikini Atoll remembered. MORE: Bikini Atoll Reparations for Damages - Motions in Bikini lawsuit against U.S. GovernmentThoughts on the beauty and terror of atomic images - Review of 100 SunsMy Adventures in Bikini - first-hand account of testingJustice Denied By U.S. Congress To Marshall Islands For Nuclear Testing - Brethren Church support.When God played with matches - A moral debt remains to be paid. Read full article: 'Marshall Islands' Nuclear Survivors Day Commemorated' YokweOnline | Saturday, March 03, 2007 | 135 Reads ***************************************************************** 45 Big Island Weekly: Monitoring depleted uranium Protecting the public against exposure By Kristine Kubat Wednesday, February 28, 2007 9:10 AM HST While weapons made with depleted uranium can penetrate any substance known to man, the issues surrounding the use of this radioactive, heavy metal are having a much harder time sinking in. Here in Hawai`i, Linda Faye Kroll is a retired nurse who has dedicated her life to educating the public about the dangers of military toxics. When Representative Josh Green introduced H.B. 1452 this legislative session, he created a forum for Kroll and others to voice their concerns. "Don't believe anything I tell you," Kroll cautions, "look into it for yourself." Advice that seems to be gaining momentum at the local and state levels as U.S. Senator Inouye once again pushes for an increase in the military presence here and citizens are raising concerns about the increase of pollution that, inevitably, comes with the deal. "Make no mistake, everything having to do with preparing and making war is toxic," says Kroll. In fact, the U.S. Department of Defense is the single largest producer of pollution in the world. H.B. 1452 originally called for testing soil outside the military's live-fire ranges in the state of Hawai`i to determine if DU is present. The bill passed out of the Energy and Environmental Protection Committee and was heard for the second time last Saturday, this time by the Finance Committee chaired by Marcus Oshiro. Here it was amended to include air and water testing. The only opposition to the bill thus far has come from the Department of Health, which has taken the position that it can't afford the testing, estimated by DOH at $5 million per year. Rep. Green believes the federal government should share the cost because "any DU we're being exposed to must have come from the military." All decision makers at the hearing voted in favor of passage, there were 17 ayes. Now H.B. 1452 is headed for the senate. Depleted uranium (DU) is the by-product of the process that yields nuclear fuel. For decades, the U.S. government has been quietly converting stockpiles of it into weapons. The use of DU munitions in our own country is prohibited, a fact which does not keep the Pentagon from deploying them abroad, primarily in Iraq. They have also been used extensively in Serbia and Bosnia. The Pentagon claims that the low levels of radiation emitted from DU weaponry pose no health risks. Many scientists disagree with the way this conclusion is drawn. The military looks only at how the trillions of healthy cells that comprise the human body are affected by exposure to low dosages when handling the munitions. They ignore the fact that as DU munitions are exploded, they burst into flames and vaporize. Dr. Helen Caldicott is the co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of 23,000 doctors committed to educating their colleagues about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and nuclear war. She also founded an international umbrella group called International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. Caldicott herself was personally nominated for the Nobel Prize by Nobel Laureate, Linus Pauling. According to Caldicott, up to 70% of the uranium released when DU munitions are exploded is converted into microscopic particles that can be inhaled or ingested immediately or when air, soil and water get contaminated. Once inside the human body, these particles kill or mutate the cells they come in contact with. Photographs of DU particles in living lung tissues show them as tiny sun-like, radiating objects. The half-life of this radioactive substance is 4.5 billion years. Over 375 tons of DU was released into the Iraq environment during the first Gulf War. Since that time, scientists, doctors and soldiers have been trying to understand how a war that lasted 100 hours and left 148 killed in action could have resulted in 10,324 veterans dead and another 221,502 disabled. DU is the prime suspect in any independent investigation of the situation. As research continues, the military is slowly shifting from its once adamant position that DU was not involved. Recent publications from the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) and the Army Environmental Policy Institute reflect the change. The AFRRI published its findings that DU transforms cells into tumorigenic phenotypes, is mutagenic, induces genetic instability and induces oncogenes, suggesting carcinogenicity. AFRRI's conclusion: "Strong evidence exists to support detailed study of DU carcinogenicity." In 1995, the AEPI admitted that DU may cause liver, lung and kidney damage. A recent Army report to Congress sheds light on DOD's predicament: If a link between the use of DU and the deaths and disabilities resulting from the Gulf War were established, the costs to the government would be astronomical. Here disabilities would also include the birth defects that are found in the returning soldiers' offspring. The name of the organization Kroll founded to educate the public about the risks of DU is called "Ten Fingers, Ten Toes" -- a reference to the alarming incidence of birth defects found in areas where DU weapons have been used in Iraq and Kosovo. AFRRI also found DU produced chromosome damage and caused delayed reproductive death. In 2002, the United Nations declared DU a weapon of mass destruction and its use a breach of international law. So far America has used over 2000 tons in the second Gulf War. Until August of 2005, when DU munitions were found at Schofield Barracks, people in Hawai`i who had concerns about the use of the radioactive substance were looking at this bigger picture. With the local discovery, the issue has hit home. The EIS that was prepared for the Stryker Brigade stated that DU was never used in Hawai`i. Evidence to the contrary turned up after Kyle Kajihiro, of the American Friends Service Committee, made repeated FOIA requests and dredged through endless stacks of documents. He discovered a single paragraph revealing that DU was present in the ground at Schofield, forcing the Army to admit that they misrepresented the facts to the community, including Senator Daniel Inouye. For a long time, the Navy has stored DU at Lualualei on O`ahu under its Naval Radioactive Materials permit. In 1994, two DU rounds were accidentally fired from Pearl Harbor; they landed above Aiea and have never been recovered. Leimaile and Kamoa Quitevis are literally on the front lines of the DU issue. The couple was hired by Garcia and Associates to monitor construction related to the expansion of Schofield to accomodate the Stryker Brigade. Their job was to ensure that sacred Hawaiian sites were not disturbed. Along with others who assisted the Quitevises in their fieldwork, the couple has been exposed to DU. Kamoa has photographic evidence that ordinances known to contain DU were open-air detonated. He testified before the house committee hearing H.B. 1452 that he has seen thousands of shards from Davy Crocketts, as the ordinances are called, scattered about Schofield. None of the cultural monitors were ever told about the dangers related to DU exposure. Whether or not the Army agrees that such dangers exist, their own guidelines require the use of protective gear for DU clean-up, including respirators. None of the personnel on base wore protective gear; none of the cultural monitors were informed about the presence of DU; none of them knew they should be taking precautions against exposure. Just recently, Leimaile's sister who was assisting on site and pregnant at the time, gave birth to a child with a serious birth defect. The baby was born with it's intestines outside its body. "We can't say for sure that the baby's defect came from DU," says Leimaile, "but there's a chance. We need to start monitoring." There are 7 comments on this story. kahiko wrote on March 01, 2007 7:01 PM:" Our compliments on a well researched article and insights. Downwind of Schofield is the Waianae Coast, and the trades blow Schofield dust and smoke right over Kolekole Pass. Leeward Oahu residents may not even realize the extent to which they have been made nuclear guinea pigs by the Schofield pollution. They have been totally betrayed by official negligence and malfeasance. As you noted, Kamoa has seen open detonation of DU going on and alot of unexploded DU remnants. The Military should not be trusted and they continue to act arrogantly with total disregard for Hawaii. Open detonation of depleted uranium UXO is not cleanup it is negligent radioactive dispersal into the biosphere where we all live and breathe. Big mahalo for bringing out the truth because ignorance is not bliss. Maybe now we can stop the clandestine DU use in Hawaii, disrespect of the sacred sites, and range expansions and construction which drives the open detonation. We should test all the ranges for contamination, and remove and safely store the unexploded DU ordnance as the radioactive waste that it is, rather than forcing the Leeward Coast downwinders to breath any more nuclear carcinogens that their bodies cannot eliminate. Here on Hawaii, I am sad to know it is very likely Pohakuloa is contaminated too. Now the Army wants to blast away at Pohakuloa because the various ranges at Schofield are too close together and full of archaeology. Pohakuloa is meant by the Army to be the new Wild West shooting gallery. West Hawaii downwind of the live fire exercises is to the Army an uncomplaining obedient community easily fooled by assurances of no DU hazards and prepared by every political leader from Harry Kim to Abercrombie to obediently eat military dust without the slightest care in the world. Pohakuloa to the militarists is just wide open wasteland like the Nevada Test Site that will help to sell Strykers for General Dynamics and C-17's for Boeing and Superferries for John Lehman. How much bloody loot does Inouye now have, enough yet? When will they stop killing us in our own land with invisible airborne poisons? Isn't Akaka's son now a downwinder at Maunalani? How will the tourists like radioactive "dosage" vacations on the beach just downwind of anti-armor live fire? They will bring some of our problems home with them, quite a change from the days of aloha and pure ha. What happens if all this falls out in Kukio and Maunalani and they someday wake up? . There is already geiger counter evidence of elevated radiation just outside Pohakuloa main gate in the Saddle Rd. realignment project. It is hard to prove damages without health studies of cancer incidence in Waikoloa which have not been done because nobody was looking. Good work for getting on this and maybe we can stop the military's health abuse with some monitoring. Yes, they should be paying for it because they messed up our land." abc wrote on March 03, 2007 11:15 AM:"As a special education teacher of thirty years, I suggest you also look at your learning disability rates in the various regions. The CDC states that 1 in 6 American children have some sort of developmental delay. This is horrendous. Statistics can be played with so I look to my own experience. I have noticed a slow rise in neurological impairments and then this was a steeper rise after 1990. I am sure there are many reasons. My point is our children are being brain damaged and very few are noticing. Studies complain that children are not doing as well on standardized tests, perhaps it is due to environmental poisoning." Robby wrote on March 03, 2007 6:43 PM:"Aloha, My Ohana is considering a natural child birth on the Big Island. Is it safe? I know the military is near Hilo and my family lives near Kona (I lived on the big island, the black sand beach area and enjoyed myself totally.) They will only be staying 2-3 weeks or more...;) I do hope our earthling cells out-live this assault from these caustic and hostile souls. Your writing is to the point and very poignant at the same time. Thank you for taking time to inform us. Question: Can we flush the toxins from our body and mind with herbs and juice? Well I know the answer to that. We all should flush the toxins to feel and think properly, to help us keep in-touch with our ancestors to show them we are taking care of ourselves and the earth. Our goal should be trying to outlive the last generation instead of killing others and depleting our own lives ever more. Good on you, R " : Kevin-John: Morgan. wrote on March 03, 2007 6:54 PM:"Whether you know it or not Hawaii, there IS no safe level of DU radiation, EVER, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, OK? DU radiation is HIGHLY contagious, both to Humans and animals alike, not to mention the sea creatures of ALL shapes and sizes! ANY person, soldier or hospital/medical worker, who has come in contact with just one minute particle of DU, is at risk not only to themselves, but all those around them.....I have witnessed cases that would send shivers through everyone....and it continues!!!!" thomnas mc dougall wrote on March 04, 2007 5:21 AM:"Utah is loaded with radioactive toxic waste.I have been studying DU for three years now.The military know it is a type of WMD. The scientests know it. The designers know it and also know Titanium will accomplish the same weapon penetration without leaving DU in its vaporized form to maim and kill for years. The only politicians I know who have fought for stopping its use are Mc Dermott of Washington and Pete Stark of CA. Their efforts to get on the House or Senate floor are shot down. The nuclear medicine dr.s know it will have a tremendous deadly effect on our soldiers exposed to it after detonation. They are not given the equipment of preventive clothing. I am tired of writing about it to no avail.Our only hope though is to bring it up contantly to the presidential candidates and our senators.So keep up the good work everyonex and I will try also. " Mele Stokesberry wrote on March 04, 2007 11:22 AM:"This is an informative and accurate article, but it should include Afghanistan in its list of countries where the US has left (and is still leaving) DU contamination. Also, the article could have noted that the baby born to a cultural researcher exposed to DU, with its intestines on the outside of its body, represents a birth defect very common in DU exposed areas. For info on and photographs of deformed babies born in Afghanistan, see "Afghanistan After 'Democracy'" by Mohammed Daud Miraki, MA, PhD., available at www.AfghanistanAfterDemocracy.com. Maui Peace Action, an organization of over 800 Maui citizens, supports legislation introduced in the Hawaii House and Senate to test the soil, air, water, AND RETURNING SOLDIERS for DU contamination." Clay wrote on March 04, 2007 3:49 PM:"The same situation is happening at Lawrence Livermore Lab in northern California just east of San Francisco. Gov. Arnold signed an air permit to allow Livermore Lab to release 8 times the previous amount of DU into the air of Bay Area residents at the Livermore testing range. Don't let Arnold fool you as being green. Hawaii and San Francisco should join forces and challenge their respective EIS's and air permits. Good luck to all of you!" Copyright 2007 Big Island Weekly | Stephens Media Group Privacy ***************************************************************** 46 AP Wire: Future uncertain for S.C. nuclear waste landfill 03/03/2007 | SEANNA ADCOX Associated Press SNELLING, S.C. - In this rural county beset by high unemployment, the soon-to-arrive day when the local nuclear-waste landfill closes its doors to nearly all debris is no cause for celebration. Chem-Nuclear, a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste from hospitals and power plants around the nation, offers some of the county's few high-paying jobs, provides roughly 10 percent of its overall budget and pumps $1 million a year into local schools. It has also handed out college scholarships and bought equipment for police and paramedics. The landfill has long been under attack from environmentalists, and a 2000 state law says that starting next year, it can accept waste only from South Carolina and two other states. But now, as that date draws near, lawmakers are considering extending the deadline to 2023. Locals say that changing the law is vital and that outsiders just don't understand how important the landfill is. "It's been in Barnwell so long, it's part of who we are," said Berley Lindler, a jewelry shop owner in the nearby town of Barnwell. "It's good for the economy. They're our friends." About 23,300 people live in Barnwell County, about 55 miles from Columbia in the southwestern part of South Carolina, near the Georgia state line. The county has no rail lines or interstate-highway access, and unemployment stands at 10 percent. In the past few years, hundreds of jobs in the county have vanished with the closing of a gas-grill maker and a window manufacturer. The biggest employer, the Dixie-Narco vending machine company, has cut about 1,400 jobs over the past several years and was bought out last year, said Keith Sloan, chairman of the County Council. "We've really taken some hits," he said. Nuclear power plant debris and radioactive hospital clothing have been buried here since 1971 atop aquifers that run to the Savannah River. In its heyday from 1980 to the early 1990s, Chem-Nuclear employed hundreds of people. In 1980, it collected 2.4 million cubic feet of the solid, radioactive waste, which is stored in steel containers that are put in concrete vaults and then buried in long trenches. Bought last year by Utah-based EnergySolutions, it is now one of three landfills in the nation for low-level radioactive waste. Utah and Washington have the others. The landfill was last cited by state environmental regulators in 1983, for improperly unloading a shipment. In 1999, tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, was found on the grounds of a church next to the landfill. The levels were below those accepted by regulators, but the company dug up and replaced the contaminated soil. A year later, then-Gov. Jim Hodges led a campaign to wean South Carolina off radioactive waste. From about 120 miles away, residents of wealthier Beaufort and Hilton Head, which get drinking water from the Savannah River, added to the outcry. State lawmakers passed a measure to slowly choke off the amount of waste that could be sent to the landfill. This year, the cap is 40,000 cubic feet of waste, or enough to cover a baseball infield to a depth of 5 feet. Plant manager Jim Lathan said restricting the waste to South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey means the landfill will run a deficit and will probably have to lay off some of the 51 workers who are left since the state law was passed. Environmentalists say none of the changes should be a surprise. Ann Timberlake, executive director of the Conservation Voters of South Carolina, said the county should have used the $2 million it has received yearly since 2000 to prepare itself. "Everyone knew the volume would go down," she said. "We've established a fair roadmap, and we need to stick to it." State officials test the soil, air, surface and ground water four times a year, inspect shipments daily and show up unannounced for semiannual inspections. While tritium has been found in groundwater, it has been far below regulatory limits, said Michael Moore, the state's environmental manager for infectious and radioactive waste management. But environmentalists still worry about the trucks carrying waste to Chem-Nuclear that pass through other counties, and the underground water that makes its way into the river. They worry, too, about the state's image. "One county should not decide for South Carolina whether we should be the nation's dump," Timberlake said. Locals point out that the site has paid $430 million in fees to the state Education Department since 1995, provides jobs that pay an average of $49,500 a year, and has been a good corporate citizen in other respects. Plaques thanking Chem-Nuclear for paying for various projects pepper the walls of buildings and parks. "I don't disagree we knew this was coming," Sloan said. "But you know, one day you're going to die, too. How are you going to prepare for it when you don't have alternatives available?" Without Chem-Nuclear, residents, officials and educators fear rising property taxes, teacher layoffs and other troubles. TheState.com ***************************************************************** 47 The State: Yucca issue presents dilemma for Democrats 03/04/2007 Candidates cant please Nevadans and S.C. residents at same time By WAYNE WASHINGTON wwashington@thestate.com SAMMY FRETWELL/SFRETWELL@THESTATE.COM High-level radioactive waste that has been processed into glass logs is stored at the Savannah River Site for eventual disposal at Yucca Mountain, Nev. During a tour last October, SRS staffer Kim Hauer inspects sealed vaults containing the glass. * Yucca ... Or not? * What’s next for Yucca Mountain? * Where candidates stand Democratic candidates need more than quarters to play the political slot machine that is Nevadas January 2008 caucus. They need to oppose opening a nuclear waste repository in the state. While pulling that lever might be a winner in Nevada, its a clunker in South Carolina. Palmetto State residents and nuclear power officials long have expected to send tons of high-level waste from South Carolina to a site near Las Vegas. Next years Democratic caucus in far-away Nevada the second of three critical, early tests of a candidates strength increases the possibility that high-level nuclear waste currently being stored in South Carolina will remain here longer than planned. Most Nevadans are strongly opposed to a plan to open a national repository for waste at Yucca Mountain, a hollowed-out ridge about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. No Democratic candidate seems eager to tell Nevada voters Yucca should serve as a national repository. All have either voted against it or voiced concerns about the project. One candidate, former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., recently changed his position on Yucca. He voted to move forward with the project five years ago but now says he opposes Yucca and believes waste should be stored at the facilities where it is produced. Half of the Republican candidates who dont face caucus voters in Nevada support opening Yucca and have voted to do so. A couple former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would not say if they would open Yucca. The response of the Romney campaign to a pair of questions about Yucca and nuclear waste storage did not even include the word Yucca. Without a national repository or some other means of handling high-level waste from spent fuel, hundreds of tons of waste, stored at various nuclear facilities in South Carolina, would remain here and would not be shipped to Yucca, as energy officials here have long expected. Skeptics wonder if Yucca ever will open, noting the project has endured nearly 30 years of study and stalls. holding on Nuclear facilities across the Palmetto State long have had to store their own waste. It is not known precisely how much is stored here. Officials have said the amounts are significant. nSavannah River Site, the states most visible nuclear facility, has 36 million gallons of waste, said Julie Petersen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. nA Jenkinsville nuclear facility operated by South Carolina Electric & Gas produces about 26 tons of waste every 18 months, said Robert Yanity, a public affairs official at SCANA, SCE&Gs parent. nProgress Energys nuclear plant in Hartsville has stored 194 metric tons of waste, according to Andy Cole, a communications specialist for the company. nOfficials at Duke Energy, which operates five nuclear facilities in York and Oconee counties, cited security concerns in not revealing how much waste is stored at their plants. And as nuclear facilities here continue to run, they continue to produce more waste. Some nuclear power companies want to expand their facilities to meet what they believe will be a growing demand for energy that does not contribute to global warming. More nuclear power means more waste, however. Nuclear officials say waste in South Carolina is stored safely and their facilities have the capacity to continue storing waste for the short term. But they wont define short term. A report last year from the U.S. Senates Committee on Environment and Public Works estimated waste stored at nuclear plants across the country can be safely held there for 100 years. The problem is the federal government is breaking a promise to the nuclear industry and its bill-paying customers, said Progress spokesman Cole. Power companies and customers have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to the federal government as part of a 1982 agreement that called for the construction of a national repository. Progress Energys Hartsville plant has paid about $150 million over the past 25 years, Cole said. Power companies have sued the federal government over its failure to open a site. Some have settled claims for millions. However, the Senate report, compiled when Republicans held a majority, estimated the governments liability could reach $56 billion. It costs us a lot of money to store spent fuel, and that cost is passed on to our customers, Cole said. Its like paying your mortgage and renting your house at the same time. taking a risk Opponents of Yucca, however, question whether waste can be stored there safely. As Energy secretary, I saw no convincing scientific evidence that Yucca Mountain was an appropriate site for high-level nuclear waste, said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the Democratic presidential candidate who was Energy Department secretary during the Clinton administration. We learned rainwater travels from the surface down to the level where the waste would be stored much faster than anyone expected. That poses a risk that radiation could escape from Yucca Mountain and reach the aquifer below. While Richardson said he opposes Yucca, he did not kill the project when he was head of the Energy Department, a fact he will have to explain to Nevada voters. Yucca is a front-burner issue in Nevada, one of the first things candidates are asked about when they campaign in the state. Nuclear storage, though, does not generate the same passion in South Carolina. Some government officials in the state want to continue accepting low-level waste because it brings in revenue. But they and others want the high-level waste moved to Yucca. Nevadans remain fiercely opposed to having their state serve as, in their words, the nations nuclear dumping ground. Dina Titus, minority leader of Nevadas state senate, said Democratic presidential candidates have no chance of winning the Nevada caucus if they dont oppose Yucca. You need to be able to do that for two reasons, said Titus, a Democrat who has taught political science at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas for 30 years. First, theres popular opinion. Secondly, no leading political figures would endorse you if you dont oppose Yucca Mountain. Titus said caucus voters tend to be the most active members of their party and the most strongly opposed to Yucca. Still, supporting Yucca is apparently not a deathblow in a statewide general election in Nevada. Over the vociferous opposition of the states political leadership, President George W. Bush signed a law in 2002 designating Yucca as a national repository. Two years later, he carried Nevada on his way to re-election. Democrats looking to win Nevadas caucus next year and grab momentum toward their partys nomination must grapple with the challenge of keeping voters in Nevada and South Carolina happy when many want a different outcome on the same issue. Edwards change of heart on the issue illustrates the difficulty of that challenge. He is counting on success in his native states primary, which follows Nevada by a week. Edwards has attempted to keep himself balanced on the political high wire stretching from the Palmetto State to Nevada. To the extent possible, the waste should be stored where its created and neither Nevada nor South Carolina should serve as the nations dumping grounds, he said in a statement issued by his campaign. Waste can be safely stored where it is produced while we develop a long-term solution that will not put anyones health or safety at risk. Reach senior writer Wayne Washington at (803) 771-8385. ***************************************************************** 48 The State: Firm wants more space, more waste 03/04/2007 BARNWELL COUNTY NUCLEAR LANDFILL Proposal would nearly double dumps remaining capacity By SAMMY FRETWELL sfretwell@thestate.com LINDSAY SEMPLE/LSEMPLE@THESTATE.COM Casks are placed in a trench at S.C.s nuclear waste dump near Snelling. A company lobbying to keep South Carolinas nuclear waste dump from closing also wants approval to bury extra radioactive garbage in the landfill, a state environmental report shows. Under a plan before the states environmental protection agency, Energy Solutions proposes new disposal trenches that will nearly double the remaining capacity at the 36-year-old landfill. The proposal is important because it comes at the same time legislators are debating whether the landfill should close to the nation next year, as promised in 2000. Adding capacity would give the landfill more room to accept more waste from across the country. The company is pushing a bill that would allow the state-owned dump to remain open to the nation through 2023. Energy Solutions plan would add 1 million cubic feet of space for use by utilities, hospitals and other generators of atomic trash, according to a February report by the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. Citing a past leak to groundwater, conservation groups say the landfill should close as scheduled. Energy Solutions wants to make more money off of this, said Ann Timberlake, director of the Conservation Voters of South Carolina. But this an inappropriate place for more waste. Ben Johnson, chairman of the Atlantic Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact, said the Barnwell County landfill doesnt need extra capacity if the site closes to the nation next year as scheduled. State law says the landfill will be open only to South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey after July 1, 2008. Johnsons commission represents the three states. The landfills existing capacity is adequate for those states needs after 2008, he said PLAN SAFER, CHEAPER? Jim Latham, a vice president with Energy Solutions in Barnwell County, said the proposal for new types of burial trenches will help the environment and save his company money. Under the plan, pits dug for nuclear waste would be designed to be covered more quickly after refuse is dumped. That would mean less rain would come in contact with the radioactive waste. Energy Solutions, the parent company of site operator Chem-Nuclear, has been criticized for leaving open burial trenches that fill with water as the pits are slowly filled with nuclear waste. Latham also said changing the design of the trenches would save on maintenance costs. Its a better way to do business, he said. Barnwell Countys landfill is one of three commercial low-level nuclear waste sites in the U.S. But South Carolinas is the only landfill that accepts the most radioactive, low-level types of waste from utilities and hospitals across the country. Low-level nuclear waste includes lightly contaminated hospital gowns and gloves and more radioactive material, such as old nuclear reactor parts and resins. Energy Solutions plan to add capacity at the landfill needs approval from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, which regulates the landfill in Snelling. Since 1971, more than 28 million cubic feet of nuclear waste have been buried at the site, the agency says. In recent years, the volume of waste buried at the site has dropped, but the waste buried there has contained higher concentrations of radioactivity. Michael Moore, manager of infectious and radiological waste at the states environmental agency, said his department has given conceptual approval to the new trench plan. It will consider approving the design after receiving more detailed plans from Energy Solutions. WE ARE COMPLETELY IN THE DARK Barnwell Countys landfill has been a source of debate in South Carolina for years. Every time the state has proposed closing the landfill, nuclear waste lobbyists have persuaded legislators to keep the dump open. Despite criticism from environmental groups, the landfill is popular in Barnwell County. It generates about $2 million a year for the county. The landfill also has contributed $430 million for education in the state since 1995. In 2000, Gov. Jim Hodges helped persuade lawmakers to close the landfill in 2008 to all but three states. Connecticut and New Jersey were given 800,000 cubic feet of capacity to bury parts from old nuclear power plants and other low-level atomic waste. South Carolina is expected to use from 480,000 to 1 million cubic feet of capacity. The current bill before the Legislature would override much of the 2000 law. While a Tuesday meeting to discuss the bill is open to the public, the plan to increase the capacity is not open for public comment. Bob Guild, a lawyer who has challenged a new license for the landfill, said the state environmental agency should seek public reaction to the trench design proposal and request to increase Barnwells capacity. We are completely in the dark, he said. Nothing about this facility that involves expanding capacity and changing designs should be done behind closed doors. Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537. IF YOURE GOING The future of the Barnwell low-level nuclear waste landfill will be on the agenda of the House Environmental Affairs I subcommittee when it meets at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in Room 410 of the Blatt Building at the State House complex. ***************************************************************** 49 Sun News: Locals speak up for nuclear landfill 03/04/2007 Site provides funds for workers, schools By Seanna Adcox The Associated Press SNELLING - In this rural county beset by high unemployment, the soon-to-arrive day when the local nuclear-waste landfill closes its doors to nearly all debris is no cause for celebration. Chem-Nuclear, a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste from hospitals and power plants around the nation, offers some of the county's few high-paying jobs, provides roughly 10 percent of its overall budget and pumps $1 million a year into local schools. It has also handed out college scholarships and bought equipment for police and paramedics. The landfill has long been under attack from environmentalists, and a 2000 state law says that starting next year it can accept waste only from South Carolina and two other states. But now, as that date draws near, lawmakers are considering extending the deadline to 2023. Locals say it is vital to change the law and that outsiders don't understand how important the landfill is. "It's been in Barnwell so long, it's part of who we are," said Berley Lindler, a jewelry shop owner in the nearby town of Barnwell. "It's good for the economy. They're our friends." About 23,300 people live in Barnwell County, about 55 miles from Columbia in the southwestern part of South Carolina, near the Georgia state line. The county has no rail lines or interstate access. Unemployment stands at 10 percent. In the past few years, hundreds of jobs in the county have vanished with the closing of a gas-grill maker and a window manufacturer. The biggest employer, the Dixie-Narco vending machine company, has cut about 1,400 jobs over the past several years and was bought out last year, said Keith Sloan, chairman of the County Council. "We've really taken some hits," he said. Nuclear power plant debris and radioactive hospital clothing have been buried here since 1971 atop aquifers that run to the Savannah River. In its heyday from 1980 to the early 1990s, Chem-Nuclear employed hundreds of people. In 1980, it collected 2.4 million cubic feet of the solid, radioactive waste, which is stored in steel containers that are put in concrete vaults and then buried in long trenches. Bought last year by Utah-based EnergySolutions, it is now one of three landfills in the nation for low-level radioactive waste. Utah and Washington have the others. The landfill was last cited by state environmental regulators in 1983 for improperly unloading a shipment. In 1999, tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, was found on the grounds of a church next to the landfill. The levels were below those accepted by regulators, but the company dug up and replaced the contaminated soil. A year later, then-Gov. Jim Hodges led a campaign to wean South Carolina off radioactive waste. From about 120 miles away, residents of wealthier Beaufort and Hilton Head, which get drinking water from the Savannah River, added to the outcry. State lawmakers passed a measure to slowly choke off the amount of waste that could be sent to the landfill. This year, the cap is 40,000 cubic feet of waste, or enough to cover a baseball infield to a depth of 5 feet. Plant manager Jim Lathan said restricting the waste to South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey means the landfill will run a deficit and will probably have to lay off some of the 51 workers who are left. Local impact What | A House subcommittee will begin hearings on a proposal by Rep. Billy Witherspoon, R-Conway, to allow the low-level nuclear waste facility at Barnwell to take refuse from all states for another 15 years. It was to close to all but South Carolina, New Jersey and Connecticut next year. When | Hearing will be at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in Room 410, Blatt Building. ***************************************************************** 50 Columbus Free Press: Nuclear reprocessing: dangerous, dirty, and expensive by Dr. Ed Lyman March 3, 2007 Why extracting plutonium from spent nuclear reactor fuel is a bad idea Background: The Bush administration is requesting a FY2008 budget of $405 million for its major new nuclear energy initiative,the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which involves"reprocessing"the used (or "spent") fuel from nuclear power reactors. Reprocessing separates plutonium and uranium from other nuclear waste contained in spent nuclear fuel. The separated plutonium can be used to fuel reactors, but also to make nuclear weapons. Nearly three decades ago, the United States decided on non-proliferation grounds not to reprocess spent fuel from U.S. power reactors, but instead to directly dispose of it in a deep underground geologic repository where it would remain isolated from the environment for at least tens of thousands of years. While some supporters of a U.S. reprocessing program believe it would help solve the nuclear waste problem, reprocessing would not reduce the need for storage and disposal of radioactive waste. Worse, reprocessing would make it easier for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons materials and for nations to develop nuclear weapons programs. Reprocessing would increase the risk of nuclear terrorism. Less than 20 pounds of plutonium is needed to make a nuclear weapon. If the plutonium remains bound in large, heavy, and highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies (the current standard practice), it is nearly impossible to steal. In contrast, separated plutonium is not highly radioactive and is stored in a concentrated powder form. Some claim that new reprocessing technologies that would leave the plutonium blended with other elements, such as neptunium, would result in a plutonium mixture that would be too radioactive to steal. This is incorrect; neither neptunium nor the other elements under consideration are radioactive enough to deter or preclude theft. Moreover, commercial scale reprocessing facilities handle so much of this material that it is impossible to keep track of it accurately in a timely manner, making it feasible that the theft of enough plutonium to build several bombs could go undetected for years. A U.S. reprocessing program would add to the worldwide stockpile of separated and vulnerable plutonium that sits in storage today, which totaled roughly 240 metric tons as of the end of 2003enough for some 40,000 nuclear weapons. Reprocessing the U.S. spent fuel generated to date would increase this by more than 500 metric tons. Reprocessing would increase the ease of nuclear proliferation. U.S. reprocessing would undermine the U.S. goal of halting the spread of fuel cycle technologies that are permitted under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but can be used to make nuclear weapons materials. The United States cannot credibly persuade other countries to forgo a technology it has newly embraced. Although some reprocessing advocates claim that new reprocessing technologies under development will be "proliferation resistant," they would actually be more difficult for international inspectors to safeguard because it would be harder to make precise measurements of the weapon-usable materials during and after processing. Moreover, all reprocessing technologies are far more proliferation-prone than direct disposal. Reprocessing would hurt U.S. nuclear waste management efforts. First, there is no spent fuel storage crisis that warrants such a drastic change in course. Hardened interim storage of spent fuel in dry casks is an economically viable and secure option for at least fifty years. Second, reprocessing does not reduce the need for storage and disposal of radioactive waste, and a geologic repository would still be required. Plutonium constitutes only aboutone percent of the spent fuel from U.S. reactors. After reprocessing, the remaining material will be in several different waste forms, and the total volume of nuclear waste will have been increased by a factor of twenty or more, including low-level waste and plutonium-contaminated waste.The largest component of the remaining material is uranium, which is also a waste product because it is contaminated and undesirable for reuse in reactors. Even if the uranium is classified as low-level waste, new low-level nuclear waste facilities would have to be built to dispose of it. And to make a significant reduction in the amount of high-level nuclear waste that would require disposal, the used fuel would need to be reprocessed and reused many times with an extremely high degree of efficiencywhich is very expensive and would take years. For example, in 1999, the Department of Energy estimated it would cost $279 billion over a 118-year period to fully implement a reprocessing and recycling program for the entire inventory of U.S. spent fuel.[1] Finally, reprocessing would divert focus and resources from the U.S. geologic disposal program and hurtnot helpthe U.S. nuclear waste management effort. The licensing requirements for the reprocessing, fuel fabrication, and waste processing plants would dwarf those needed to license a repository, and provide additional targets for public opposition. What is most needed today is a renewed focus onsecure interim storage of spent fuel and on gaining the scientific and technical consensus needed to site a geological repository. Reprocessing would be very expensive. Reprocessing and the use of plutonium as reactor fuel is also far more expensive than using uranium fuel and disposing of the spent fuel directlyeven if the fuel is only reprocessed once. In the United States, some 55,000 tons of nuclear waste have already been produced, and existing reactors add some 2,000 tons of spent fuel annually. Based on the experience of other countries, a commercial scale reprocessing facility with an annual throughput of about 1,000 tons of spent fuel would cost anywhere from $5 billion to $20 billion to build. A facility with twice that capacity would be needed to process the new spent fuel produced; taking into account economies of scale, it would cost from $7.5 to $30 billion, excluding operating costs. A second facility would be needed to also reprocess the existing spent fuel over a period of some 30 years. For more information contact Dr. Ed Lyman, UCS Senior Staff Scientist: (202) 331-5445; elyman@ucsusa.org; UCS, 1707 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006 1."A Roadmap for Developing ATW Technology," Report of Accelerator Technical Working Group, ATW Roadmap, September 1999, LA-UR- 99-3225. All content 1970-2007 The Columbus Free Press ***************************************************************** 51 Aiken Today: Nuclear waste landfill future may be uncertain in Snelling AikenStandard.com Sat, Mar 3, 2007 Associated Press SNELLING ? In this rural county beset by high unemployment, the soon-to-arrive day when the local nuclear-waste landfill closes its doors to nearly all debris is no cause for celebration. Chem-Nuclear, a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste from hospitals and power plants around the nation, offers some of the county's few high-paying jobs, provides roughly 10 percent of its overall budget and pumps $1 million a year into local schools. It has also handed out college scholarships and bought equipment for police and paramedics. The landfill has long been under attack from environmentalists, and a 2000 state law says that starting next year, it can accept waste only from South Carolina and two other states. But now, as that date draws near, lawmakers are considering extending the deadline to 2023. Locals say that changing the law is vital and that outsiders just don't understand how important the landfill is. "It's been in Barnwell so long, it's part of who we are," said Berley Lindler, a jewelry shop owner in the nearby town of Barnwell. "It's good for the economy. They're our friends." About 23,300 people live in Barnwell County, about 55 miles from Columbia in the southwestern part of South Carolina, near the Georgia state line. The county has no rail lines or interstate-highway access, and unemployment stands at 10 percent. In the past few years, hundreds of jobs in the county have vanished with the closing of a gas-grill maker and a window manufacturer. The biggest employer, the Dixie-Narco vending machine company, has cut about 1,400 jobs over the past several years and was bought out last year, said Keith Sloan, chairman of the County Council. "We've really taken some hits," he said. Nuclear power plant debris and radioactive hospital clothing have been buried here since 1971 atop aquifers that run to the Savannah River. In its heyday from 1980 to the early 1990s, Chem-Nuclear employed hundreds of people. In 1980, it collected 2.4 million cubic feet of the solid, radioactive waste, which is stored in steel containers that are put in concrete vaults and then buried in long trenches. Bought last year by Utah-based EnergySolutions, it is now one of three landfills in the nation for low-level radioactive waste. Utah and Washington have the others. The landfill was last cited by state environmental regulators in 1983, for improperly unloading a shipment. In 1999, tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, was found on the grounds of a church next to the landfill. The levels were below those accepted by regulators, but the company dug up and replaced the contaminated soil. A year later, then-Gov. Jim Hodges led a campaign to wean South Carolina off radioactive waste. From about 120 miles away, residents of wealthier Beaufort and Hilton Head, which get drinking water from the Savannah River, added to the outcry. State lawmakers passed a measure to slowly choke off the amount of waste that could be sent to the landfill. This year, the cap is 40,000 cubic feet of waste, or enough to cover a baseball infield to a depth of 5 feet. Plant manager Jim Lathan said restricting the waste to South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey means the landfill will run a deficit and will probably have to lay off some of the 51 workers who are left since the state law was passed. Environmentalists say none of the changes should be a surprise. Ann Timberlake, executive director of the Conservation Voters of South Carolina, said the county should have used the $2 million it has received yearly since 2000 to prepare itself. 2005 The AikenStandard. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 52 Carlsbad Current-Argus: DOE to narrow GNEP site choices by 08 By Kyle Marksteiner Article Launched: 03/03/2007 08:56:06 PM MST CARLSBAD ? The U.S. Department of Energy may have some specific answers on where it would like to locate several facilities related to nuclear energy by the summer of 2008, a DOE official said Tuesday. Richard Black, Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Nuclear Energy, spoke at Tuesday's public scoping meeting in Carlsbad. The meeting included a period for public comment, but first, Department of Energy Officials gave a presentation explaining the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership project. A spot in Lea County, recommended by the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, has been submitted as one of 11 potential locations for a nuclear fuel reprocessing center and an advanced burner reactor. "This meeting is really for you," Black said Tuesday. "This is your opportunity to let us know as we begin this process." The presentation included an outline of nuclear basics, with Black noting that nuclear power provides 20 percent of electricity in the United States. A typical commercial nuclear power plant, he said, generates electricity by splitting uranium to produce heat and drive a turbine. After completing an operating cycle of 18-24 months, uranium fuel is considered to be spent and must be replaced with fresh fuel, he said. Such fuel is currently set aside for disposal, Black said, but it could be recycled if a reprocessing center were created. A nuclear fuel recycling center, Black said, would separate fuel into reusable and non-reusable components without separating pure plutonium. It would also fabricate fuel for use in a sodium-cooled fast reactor, which, would destroy transuranics while generating electricity. Such reactors have actually existed for a long time, noted Paul W. Lisowski, Deputy Assistant Secretary foe Fuel Cycle Management with the Office of Nuclear Energy. Neutrons react differently when they hit sodium than when they bounce off of water. Early reactors in the 1950s were sodium fast reactors, Lisowski noted. "But it is more complicated to cool a reactor with sodium than water," he said. "Our commercial reactors moved away from that back in the 1960s. It was a matter of it being a little easier to do with water." Other countries still use sodium-cooled fast reactors, Lisowski said, and developments in technology have eliminated many of the earlier problems encountered. "What we need to do is build a fleet of these fast reactors that can destroy waste so we can vastly reduce the amount of waste that goes into a repository," he said. The reactor and the recycling center could either be privately owned and operated or operated by the Energy Department. A separate fuel cycle research facility, however, would be built and operated at an existing Energy Department site. "We really need to restore our world-wide leadership in nuclear technology," Black said. The environmental impact statemetn is currently in its scoping phase. A draft programmatic environmental impact statement will be prepared by this summer. Non Department of Energy sites are currently conducting site studies to obtain more information about locations. "This is a broad program looking at multiple facilities possibly for multiple sites," Black said. "We are using a broader environmental impact statement." "What we're doing right now is bringing in hundreds of comments," said Tammy L. Way, Corporate Communications and External Affairs officer for DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy. "When we get to the draft and the formal public hearings at that time, we will look at individual comments and address them in the final resolution document." The Department of Energy will use a screening process to determine which sites are suitable. There will then be another public comment session, and a final statement is set to be issued by late spring of 2008. The Energy Department will issue its record of decision on location by June of 2008. In addition to helping the DOE decide on potential locations, the environmental impact statement will determine whether to proceed with the project at all, and what technologies and capacities to utilize. Another purpose of the scoping process is to look for alternate suggestions, Black said. The environmental impact statement includes an evaluation of the environmental issues of each location. A site next to a large metropolitan area, Way noted as an example, might have specific water concerns. "We don't know whether any of these sites will be screened out," Black said. "It is possible that one or more of these sites will not have the characteristics that we are looking for in these facilities." The ultimate political goal of GNEP is more than just nuclear research or nuclear energy. The final stage of the plan is to enter into partnerships with other nations that have developed nuclear capabilities. Recycled nuclear fuel would ultimately be given to developing nations if they refrain from pursing uranium enrichment and reprocessing programs of their own. "The complicated part is the global partnership," Lisowski said. "We're trying to get countries not to enrich or reprocess uranium. There are going to be hundreds of reactors built internationally. How are you going to influence how we provide fuel and take back fuel to these countries? The national security part of this is a very important part." And an essential component of the global aspect is that the United States develops its nuclear energy capabilities. "The difficulty is how do you take a leadership role in something you are not participating in?" Lisowski noted. Copyright © 2005 Carlsbad Current Argus, a MediaNews Group ***************************************************************** 53 Salt Lake Tribune: Walsh: Huntsman wilts when pressure on Tribune Columnist Article Last Updated: 03/04/2007 12:58:43 AM MST Rebecca Walsh Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. doesn't like to make a scene. He eats his peanut butter sandwiches at his desk. Press conferences make him itch. He shies away from rhetorical battles with lawmakers. But if ever there was a moment for the state executive to find his inner drama queen, the EnergySolutions giveaway was the time. Instead, the governor fled Capitol Hill for a memorial service. Mr. No Way No How, who pledged on the campaign trail to block EnergySolutions' and the Goshutes' plans to turn Utah into the nation's radioactive waste "dumping ground," disappeared. His very-public return of EnergySolutions President Steve Creamer's $40,000 donations and firing of two fundraisers who had an EnergySolutions side job faded. A thousand phone calls from angry Utahns were forgotten. In the end, Huntsman let his proxy, Environmental Quality Director Dianne Nielson, brave the cameras to announce a weaselly half-protest at the last possible minute: the governor would hold his nose and let the bill become law without his signature. Former Gov. Mike Leavitt used to do the same thing, supposedly expressing his displeasure with a bill while still allowing it to become law. In her one year in office, Olene Walker thought that was cowardly. She signed or vetoed every bill that came across her desk. Until now, Huntsman has taken the same stand. But state lawmakers presented the governor with a political quandary this year: Risk the embarrassment of a veto override, or hedge on a campaign promise. In the end, Huntsman saved face. With $40,000 in campaign donations - including $10,000 alone to House Speaker Greg Curtis - and piles of Jazz tickets lubricating their way, a dozen EnergySolutions lobbyists convinced lawmakers they had made a mistake more than a decade ago with the company's license. An oversight, they said. All legislators had to do was reinsert a grandfathering clause. The change would allow the company to stack radioactive dirt and debris eight stories high in a landfill 72 miles upwind of Salt Lake City - nearly doubling the size of the dump. Just a simple tweak, they said. In effect, lawmakers turned over the job of watching EnergySolutions to state bureaucrats, cutting the leaders Utahns actually pick themselves - lawmakers and the governor - out of oversight. The last state regulator entrusted with the job, former state Radiation Control Director Larry Anderson, shook down then-Envirocare owner Khosrow Semnani for a Park City condo, gold coins and cash - a total of $600,000. When the payments stopped in 1995, Anderson demanded another $7.6 million from Semnani. Radioactive waste, after all, is a lucrative business. That history is long-forgotten. Many lawmakers said they didn't want to micromanage EnergySolutions. Never did. They trust the company to do the right thing. For law sponsor Darin Peterson, who represents the area where the landfill is located, it was enough that EnergySolutions provides hundreds of so-called "head-of-household" jobs. But as the public began to cry foul, the bill turned moderate lawmakers into Jekyl-and-Hyde versions of themselves. Cottonwood Heights Democrat Karen Morgan whined that the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah was "misrepresenting" the legislation. And West Jordan Republican Steve Mascaro complained about getting calls from constituents. Huntsman was supposed to be above the influence of money and misinformation. But he wasn't immune to the potentially humiliating outcome of a power struggle. Lawmakers voted for the bill in veto-proof numbers. Rather than work to change some legislators' minds and put the veto to the test, the governor wilted. Sure, he has tried to salvage his image with a promise to ask federal regulators to cap EnergySolution's waste pile. That shrewd strategy could end up blowing the company's expansion plans after all. But I would have liked a show, perhaps a protest speech, a little grandstanding - just for the folks at home who will be looking askance at dust clouds over the west desert for the rest of their lives. walsh@sltrib.com © Copyright 2007, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 54 Salt Lake Tribune: Guv plans to cut off N-waste expansion EnergySolutions Huntsman may bypass new legislation and ask regulatory group to cap material coming to Utah The Salt Lake Tribune Article Last Updated: 03/04/2007 12:57:11 AM MST SNELLING, S.C. - In this rural county beset by high unemployment, the soon-to-arrive day when the local nuclear-waste landfill closes its doors to nearly all debris is no cause for celebration. Chem-Nuclear, a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste from hospitals and power plants around the nation, offers some of the county's few high-paying jobs, provides roughly 10 percent of its overall budget and pumps $1 million a year into local schools. It has also handed out college scholarships and bought equipment for police and paramedics. The landfill has long been under attack from environmentalists, and a 2000 state law says that starting next year, it can accept waste only from South Carolina and two other states. But now, as that date draws near, lawmakers are considering extending the deadline to 2023. Locals say that changing the law is vital and that outsiders just don't understand how important the landfill is. In its heyday from 1980 to the early 1990s, Chem-Nuclear employed hundreds of people. In 1980, it collected 2.4 million cubic feet of the solid, radioactive waste, which is stored in steel containers that are put in concrete vaults and then buried in long trenches. Bought last year by Utah-based EnergySolutions, it is now one of three landfills in the nation for low-level radioactive waste. Utah and Washington have the others. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. took blow after blow last week over his decision on a radioactive-waste oversight bill. Partisans on both sides used words like "wimp" and "coward" after he let SB155 go into law without his signature. Nuclear-waste company EnergySolutions congratulated itself and its friends in the Legislature for winning the latest round of Utah's waste wars. They had rolled the wildly popular governor and cleared the way for an expansion Huntsman vowed to block. Nuclear-waste opponents, revved by Huntsman's successful face-off over the federal government's Divine Strake, were bitterly disappointed he did not use a veto to make it clear, as he has said throughout his term, "our state will not become the dumping ground for other states' nuclear waste." Around 1,000 of them urged the governor to veto the bill. But, now that the fog of the 2007 Legislature has started to clear, it looks like Huntsman landed a sucker punch. He tucked a few lines in his SB155 announcement that basically say he will use another tool to rein in the nuclear-waste company. And, if he succeeds at capping waste coming to the company's mile-square landfill in Tooele County, EnergySolutions won't be open another 30 years, but maybe only a few. The move has the potential to ripple across a nation that has come to rely on Utah for affordable nuclear-waste disposal and to cripple a company built on 20-year contracts. "If Huntsman's good on his word," said Vanessa Pierce, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, or HEAL, "then this is going to be a fight to determine who has the real power when it comes to nuclear waste: the governor or EnergySolutions." Neither the Governor's Office nor EnergySolutions is willing to publicly admit as much. Huntsman's regulatory and legal team is drafting a promised letter to the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-level Radioactive Waste to seek its help in capping the waste allowed at the Utah site. In effect, he is using his role as a member of the federally established waste-control group to say "no" to further EnergySolutions expansion. Mike Mower, the governor's spokesman, declined to reveal what the letter will say or to predict how well the strategy would work. All Mower would say is, "Governor Huntsman is committed to keeping additional waste out of our state." EnergySolutions, the nation's largest nuclear-waste company, also had little to add. Greg Hopkins, vice president for public relations at the company, insists the company got what it wanted with the enactment of SB155. The bill protects his company from what other waste companies describe as an "intimidation provision," a section of Utah law that requires companies to receive the approval of local elected officials, the Legislature and the governor if they want to establish or greatly expand a waste site. "We're focused on maintaining our business and maintaining the path we've been on," said Hopkins, who used to be Huntsman's lead political fundraiser. Hopkins would not comment on whether EnergySolutions recognizes the cap Huntsman announced Tuesday. "We're not angry about it because we don't know what it means," he said. An answer to that could come in the next three months, when members of the Northwest Compact have their next meeting. The Northwest Compact is a radioactive-waste club with 11 member states, including Utah. Low-level radioactive waste produced within those states - in industry, medicine and research - all has a place to go, a disposal site in Richland, Wash. Commercial waste from outside the states is not allowed in. Congress set up this system in 1980 because the three states with disposal sites - Washington, South Carolina and Nevada - complained they had become the nation's radioactive-waste dumping grounds and they were tired of it. Although Congress carved up the states into 10 regions, only three regions established sites for their low-level radioactive waste. Nevada's site began leaking, and it was closed. But no new disposal was then built - until EnergySolutions, then called Envirocare of Utah, came along. In November 1991, Envirocare President Khosrow Semnani joined state Radiation Control Bureau Chief Larry Anderson in petitioning the Northwest Compact for permission to open the gates to Envirocare. And ever since, the Utah site has taken all but the hottest waste from outside the Northwest Compact. A few years later, Anderson and Semnani would be embroiled in a public extortion-bribery scandal that resulted in tax charges and fines for both and more than a year in federal prison for the retired regulator. And former Gov. Norm Bangerter, who was in office when Utah opened the gates for low-level waste, would repay a $65,000 personal loan that Semnani made to him shortly after he had left office. But Utah's oversight system for radioactive waste had been established. And, state regulators would grant more than 80 license changes at the site in its 19 years. The result: EnergySolutions has become the nation's biggest site, accepting all but a small fraction of the nation's low-level waste. More than 16.6 million cubic feet flowed to the Utah site last year through the Northwest Compact, including radiation-tainted dirt from government cleanups and commercial waste. Envirocare joined with lawmakers and the governor two years ago to ban the hotter Class B and C radioactive waste. But when the company announced plans to expand onto acreage adjoining its mile-square site, Huntsman said "no." The company's friends in the Legislature, determined to help a generous campaign contributor, passed a bill to take away the requirement that the governor approve new waste sites and expansions. But Huntsman vetoed the bill, and the veto held up. This year, with SB155, a veto-proof majority of the Legislature and the company insisted that political leaders need no say over what happens at the Tooele County site as long as it stays within current boundaries and as long as it takes only Class A waste. But, with one sentence in his SB155 announcement Tuesday, Huntsman asserted executive branch authority. Michael Garner, executive director of the Northwest Compact, would not predict what might happen when member-states consider Huntsman's request at their upcoming meeting. Pierce, the HEAL director, wondered aloud whether EnergySolutions would acknowledge the compact's authority and whether lawmakers would force the governor to let expansion continue at the Tooele County site without his interference. Her group has struggled, sometimes against the Huntsman administration's radiation regulators, to stanch the flow of waste to Utah. "We are cautiously hopeful that the governor is going to use every power at his disposal to limit the waste going" to the Utah site, she said. "If that sticks in the long term, it is more than we could have ever hoped for, but there are so many legal and political obstacles in the way." EnergySolutions could fight in court. Or it could take the fight all the way to Congress, where congressional representatives from 36 states might kill the compact system altogether to protect their access to nuclear disposal in Utah. "We could be gearing up," said Pierce, "to see a really nasty battle between EnergySolutions and the state." fahys@sltrib.com Low-level radioactive waste sites There are only three disposal sites for low-level radioactive waste in the United States. EnergySolutions owns two of them: one in Utah and one in South Carolina. * The Utah site takes most waste by volume, "Class A" waste the federal government considers "hot" for 100 years. * The South Carolina and Washington sites accept A waste, as well as Class B and C waste, which are considered dangerous for 300 and 500 years, respectively. For more information about the nation's disposal crunch, see the following Web sites: * The Government Accountability Office: www.gao.gov/new.items/d04604.pdf * The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov/waste/llw-disposal/locations.html © Copyright 2007, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 55 KnoxNews: Candidates sought for nuclear waste contract By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com March 3, 2007 OAK RIDGE - Just a few months after redoing Foster Wheeler Environmental's contract for processing highly radioactive wastes in Oak Ridge, the Department of Energy is preparing to put that contract out for bids. The plan apparently is to award a new five-year contract. In a Feb. 26 notice in FedBizOpps, a database of government contracting opportunities, the DOE said it is seeking qualified businesses - including possible teams or joint ventures - to operate and manage the Transuranic Waste Processing Facility in Oak Ridge. At this point, the DOE is only looking for expressions of interest, not actual bids or proposals. The responses are due by Friday. Foster Wheeler built the Oak Ridge plant with its own capital during the 1990s as one of several privatization initiatives attempted at various DOE sites. The DOE assumed ownership of the facility after the contract conversion, which reimbursed Foster Wheeler for some of its investment and established a new cost-plus-fee arrangement. The new deal was signed Sept. 6. John Shewairy, a spokesman in the DOE's Oak Ridge office, provided a brief response to questions about the reasoning for a contract competition. "The current contract period expires 5/14/08," he said by e-mail. "In light of the fact that it takes some time to go through a procurement process, many months in most cases, we are initiating actions now to keep us on track. The current contract will allow needed services to be provided while we work a competition." Tony Buhl, general manager of the Oak Ridge facility and president and CEO of EnergX, which operates the plant under a subcontract to Foster Wheeler, said the announcement took him by surprise. He declined further comment. The Oak Ridge facility processes nuclear wastes that are then shipped for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico or the Nevada Test Site. Foster Wheeler had complained that the original privatization arrangement and fixed-price contract were hardships because of massive uncertainties in the work. According to the DOE, a backlog of waste in various forms still needs processing, ranging from radioactive debris and dirt to super-hot sludges that require extensive shielding for workers. Some of the work already is under way, including the processing of "contact-handled" transuranic waste. Work with the hotter remote-handled work is scheduled to begin in February 2008. Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. Copyright 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 56 Times and Democrat: Wanting nuclear waste Future uncertain for S.C. landfill By SEANNA ADCOX Associated Press Writer Sunday, March 04, 2007 SNELLING – In this rural county beset by high unemployment, the soon-to-arrive day when the local nuclear-waste landfill closes its doors to nearly all debris is no cause for celebration. Chem-Nuclear, a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste from hospitals and power plants around the nation, offers some of the county’s few high-paying jobs, provides roughly 10 percent of its overall budget and pumps $1 million a year into local schools. It has also handed out college scholarships and bought equipment for police and paramedics. The landfill has long been under attack from environmentalists, and a 2000 state law says that starting next year, it can accept waste only from South Carolina and two other states. But now, as that date draws near, lawmakers are considering extending the deadline to 2023. Locals say that changing the law is vital and that outsiders just don’t understand how important the landfill is. “It’s been in Barnwell so long, it’s part of who we are,” said Berley Lindler, a jewelry shop owner in the nearby town of Barnwell. “It’s good for the economy. They’re our friends.” About 23,300 people live in Barnwell County, about 55 miles from Columbia in the southwestern part of South Carolina, near the Georgia state line. The county has no rail lines or interstate-highway access, and unemployment stands at 10 percent. In the past few years, hundreds of jobs in the county have vanished with the closing of a gas-grill maker and a window manufacturer. The biggest employer, the Dixie-Narco vending machine company, has cut about 1,400 jobs over the past several years and was bought out last year, said Keith Sloan, chairman of the County Council. “We’ve really taken some hits,” he said. Nuclear power plant debris and radioactive hospital clothing have been buried here since 1971 atop aquifers that run to the Savannah River. In its heyday from 1980 to the early 1990s, Chem-Nuclear employed hundreds of people. In 1980, it collected 2.4 million cubic feet of the solid, radioactive waste, which is stored in steel containers that are put in concrete vaults and then buried in long trenches. Bought last year by Utah-based EnergySolutions, it is now one of three landfills in the nation for low-level radioactive waste. Utah and Washington have the others. The landfill was last cited by state environmental regulators in 1983, for improperly unloading a shipment. In 1999, tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, was found on the grounds of a church next to the landfill. The levels were below those accepted by regulators, but the company dug up and replaced the contaminated soil. A year later, then-Gov. Jim Hodges led a campaign to wean South Carolina off radioactive waste. From about 120 miles away, residents of wealthier Beaufort and Hilton Head, which get drinking water from the Savannah River, added to the outcry. State lawmakers passed a measure to slowly choke off the amount of waste that could be sent to the landfill. This year, the cap is 40,000 cubic feet of waste, or enough to cover a baseball infield to a depth of 5 feet. Plant manager Jim Lathan said restricting the waste to South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey means the landfill will run a deficit and will probably have to lay off some of the 51 workers who are left since the state law was passed. Environmentalists say none of the changes should be a surprise. Ann Timberlake, executive director of the Conservation Voters of South Carolina, said the county should have used the $2 million it has received yearly since 2000 to prepare itself. “Everyone knew the volume would go down,” she said. “We’ve established a fair roadmap, and we need to stick to it.” State officials test the soil, air, surface and ground water four times a year, inspect shipments daily and show up unannounced for semiannual inspections. While tritium has been found in groundwater, it has been far below regulatory limits, said Michael Moore, the state’s environmental manager for infectious and radioactive waste management. But environmentalists still worry about the trucks carrying waste to Chem-Nuclear that pass through other counties, and the underground water that makes its way into the river. They worry, too, about the state’s image. “One county should not decide for South Carolina whether we should be the nation’s dump,” Timberlake said. Locals point out that the site has paid $430 million in fees to the state Education Department since 1995, provides jobs that pay an average of $49,500 a year, and has been a good corporate citizen in other respects. Plaques thanking Chem-Nuclear for paying for various projects pepper the walls of buildings and parks. “I don’t disagree we knew this was coming,” Sloan said. “But you know, one day you’re going to die, too. How are you going to prepare for it when you don’t have alternatives available?” Without Chem-Nuclear, residents, officials and educators fear rising property taxes, teacher layoffs and other troubles. “We’d be devastated without it,” said Barnwell schools Superintendent Carolyne Williams. “We would have leaky roofs. We wouldn’t have proper air conditioning.” ***************************************************************** 57 UK: News & Star: Another delay to Thorp's opening Published on 03/03/2007 By Kelly Eve THE reopening of the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at Sellafield has hit another delay. Thorp is now not expected to be fully operation until the second half of the year. Operators British Nuclear Group (BNG), was given consent to restart operations from the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) on January 10. It was expected the plant could reopen in April after checks were completed. But BNG stated in its February newsletter that the equipment checks are not now likely to be completed until ‘the middle of 2007’. Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (CORE) question why further investigations, which could prove costly and frustrating, are necessary – and after NII consent has already been given. Thorp was shut down after a large-scale spillage in April 2005 where 83,000 litres of dissolved reactor fuel, containing uranium and plutonium, leaked undetected over an eight-month period. Its reopening has been set back numerous times as a result of the extensive work needed to clean-up the area and modify the cells where the fuel was stored. Results of a probe about the leak published this week by the Health and Safety Executive heavily criticised management at the site. No-one was injured and no radiation escaped but a HSE report said failings had included staff ignoring alarms. BNG was fined £500,000 last year after it pleaded guilty to breaching aspects of the Nuclear Installations Act 1965. The HSE made 55 recommendations and actions for company improvements. A spokesman for BNG said many had already been implemented. He added: “The company appreciates that mistakes were made and enhancements to workforce training and responses to alarms have been made.” KEve@cngroup.co.uk ***************************************************************** 58 SF Chron: Lab's high-tech, nonexplosive weapons tests were vital to decision Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer Saturday, March 3, 2007 Since the United States stopped test-exploding nuclear weapons in the Nevada desert in 1992, nuclear scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have sought high-tech, nonexplosive ways to determine whether the nation's atomic arsenal still works. They've succeeded in doing so, they say. Their success is one basis for the Energy Department's decision Friday to have Livermore design a new generation of nuclear weapons, dubbed Reliable Replacement Warheads, with support from Sandia National Laboratories. Like a car or any other machine, nuclear weapons age over time and develop technical flaws. For example, the bomb's plutonium "pit" -- the fissionable material that gives the weapon its explosive kick -- undergoes natural radioactive decay, which forms helium gas. The gas accumulates inside the plutonium, forming cavities that might cause the bomb to "fizzle" if it is used in warfare. After bomb testing ended under President George H.W. Bush, weapons scientists sought technical ways to ensure that the thousands of nuclear weapons in the nation's post-Cold War arsenal would remain reliable for decades to come -- without being test-exploded, that is. In the 15 years since, they've developed multibillion-dollar solutions -- ranging from super-fast computers to lasers as big as office buildings -- that simulate nuclear blasts on a small scale. It's all part of a huge U.S. Energy Department program called stockpile stewardship. Computer simulations of nuclear blasts have become far more powerful than skeptics expected in the early 1990s, said a veteran nuclear weapons expert, Kent Johnson of the Livermore lab. "It's been a great success story. There were people who predicted this (computer modeling challenge) would be a tremendous hang-up," Johnson told The Chronicle on Friday. Nowadays, Livermore's computers are 10 million times faster than they were circa 1992. That means the lab can run a three-dimensional computer simulation of a nuclear weapon blast from beginning to end -- "from button to bang," as the scientists like to say -- in a mega-computer simulation that lasts six weeks. That might sound like a long time, but the same simulation would have taken 60,000 years on the computers available in the early 1990s, just after the end of the Cold War. "We were not able to do that at the start of the stockpile stewardship era," said Johnson, who received his physics doctorate at Cornell and has been at Livermore since 1972. "Now we do it routinely." Stockpile stewardship projects consume much of the work by today's scientists at Livermore and its sister nuclear weapons labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Sandia, which has branches in Livermore and New Mexico. These labs also simulate aspects of nuclear blasts in ways that include: -- Exploding chemical high explosives adjacent to disk-shaped pieces of plutonium inside caves about 1,000 feet beneath the Nevada desert, at the Nevada Test Site, where the United States conducted full-scale bomb tests from the 1950s until 1992. These small explosions, known as "subcriticality" tests, send shock waves through the plutonium. In turn, the plutonium emits radiation that is analyzed by sensitive instruments. In this way, scientists can test plutonium of different ages to determine whether its internal decays -- say, the formation of cavities -- would adversely affect its behavior in a full-scale bomb blast. -- "Snapping" super-high-speed, digital X-ray images of the chemical detonation of bomb components at Livermore's test site, known as Site 300, near Tracy. These experiments determine how well aging bomb components continue to perform in conditions of extreme pressure and heat, similar to conditions they would experience in the early moments of a real nuclear bomb blast. The images are taken at a rate of one per millionth of a second. E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com. This article appeared on page A - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle ***************************************************************** 59 KnoxNews: Wamp: Oak Ridge doesn't need more nuclear waste By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com March 3, 2007 OAK RIDGE - U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said Friday that he's opposed to any proposals that would bring the nation's spent nuclear fuel to Oak Ridge for processing. "I want waste leaving here, not coming here," Wamp said during a brief meeting with the news media at the Y-12 National Security Complex. Oak Ridge is a candidate site for three proposed facilities as part of the Bush administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. Two of those facilities - a reprocessing plant and a reactor that burns reprocessed fuel - would involve tons of highly radioactive nuclear fuel. The third would be a research center for the nuclear programs, and Wamp said he doesn't have a problem with that one. Wamp said he's concerned that the GNEP proposals could have a negative effect on other new projects targeted for Oak Ridge. "Some of our new missions you don't even know about yet, and they're coming here," the congressman said. He declined to be specific about the missions, but he said they would broaden the base of the work currently done in Oak Ridge. Wamp is known as a strong nuclear advocate, and some Oak Ridge officials have suggested that he's taking the anti-GNEP stance because he doesn't want the waste issue "around his neck" if he decides to run for governor. Asked about that, Wamp said, "I can tell you unequivocally that issue never crossed my mind." Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. Copyright 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. 2007 - Knoxville News Sentinel ***************************************************************** 60 SF Chron: Bomb gurus ponder non-nuclear future / New U.S. weapons could make arsenal a relic of Cold War James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, March 4, 2007 Nuclear weapons policy discussions in this country tend to feel obscure, cerebral and, more often than not, gentlemanly. The subject may involve degrees of annihilation more vast than anything ever experienced, but, a new thrust of the debate is being launched, even as the Bush administration announced on Friday that it had accepted the design of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for a new generation of nuclear weapons, known as "reliable replacement warheads." During a discussion in San Francisco recently on the future of the United States nuclear arsenal -- which in other times might have involved little more than a dry excursion into this dense topic -- specialists provided an extraordinarily tough critique of the Bush administration's nuclear weapons programs and added fuel to the growing efforts to drastically reduce, or eliminate , the stockpile. C. Bruce Tarter, the former director of the Lawrence Livermore and now head of a group evaluating proposals for a new generation of warheads, complained during the panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science two weeks ago that it was almost impossible to make judgments about future weapons needs because the White House had failed to articulate "a clear, transparent" statement on its nuclear strategy and there was no consensus in Congress. Further, he said, the Bush administration's proposal to resuscitate the weapons production complex "means nothing" because the White House has not provided either a firm timetable or a budget for the program. "You damn well better have bipartisan support" for the new weapons program before moving ahead, he warned. Another speaker, Gen. James Cartwright, head of the Pentagon's Strategic Command, which manages nuclear war planning, was also blunt. He said that while Stratcom, as the command is known, has developed an array of new tools and strategies for defending the country, including space and cyber defenses, nuclear policy was largely stuck in a Cold War mode. He endorsed, at least in principle, steps toward eliminating the stockpile, in part because the United States has so many new weapons to defend itself that it is far less reliant on nuclear warheads than in the past. "We ought to grade our homework by the path we're taking in that direction," meaning the direction of nuclear disarmament, Cartwright said. The exercise is far from academic. At one time, Congress more or less accepted what the administration said the country needed in weapons systems and provided the funding. But now, many in Congress on both sides of the aisle are skeptical about the Bush administration's efforts to start manufacturing new generations of replacement nuclear bombs. "There is at present no clear, coherent weapons policy supporting RRW," or Reliable Replacement Warhead, said Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that controls nuclear weapons spending. "Without a comprehensive strategy that includes the mission, the threat, and the specific U.S. nuclear stockpile necessary to achieve the strategic goals, it is impossible for Congress to appropriate funding for RRW in a responsible and efficient manner." Visclosky also sought to put disarmament on the agenda. Given the need to halt weapons programs in countries such as Iran and North Korea, he said, "the lack of attention the administration has given to developing a policy that explains the role of RRW in our broader national nuclear weapons strategy may result in Congress eliminating funding for the program." None of the senior officials involved in the debate proposes quick elimination of the nuclear stockpile. What they are encouraging is the first thorough debate in years on whether the country even needs nuclear weapons, and, if so, what kind. Disarmament is being discussed not just by arms-control zealots but by the people who build and manage the nuclear strike force. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, now chairwoman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Forces Committee, says she plans to push for ratification of the long-stalled Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. President Clinton signed the treaty in 1996, but the Republican-controlled Senate rejected it and the Bush administration has said it has no intention of seeking ratification. Tauscher says she believes the United States still needs a nuclear deterrent for the time being, even if it is far smaller than the current arsenal of some 5,000 warheads, but she says the new political climate means the country can finally have a real debate about the long-term need to replace nuclear warheads with precision conventional weapons, special forces teams and the like. "We have a chance to not only get the size of our stockpile to a significantly reduced level but to move toward elimination," she said. "We have a chance to regain the high ground on nonproliferation and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction." E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com. This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle ***************************************************************** 61 Tennessean: Oak Ridge develops deluxe dust rag - Nashville, Tennessee - Sunday, 03/04/07 - Tennessean.com Coating lets cloth pick up particles too small to see By DUNCAN MANSFIELD Associated Press OAK RIDGE This is one cleaning that could pass anybody's white-glove test. A high-tech dust rag developed by a research chemist at a nuclear weapons plant can pick up potentially deadly beryllium particles "beyond detectable levels." That's about 20 times smaller than can be seen with the naked eye. Ron Simandl at the Y-12 nuclear plant in Oak Ridge believes there could be an even bigger market for his invention, from cleaning up industrial accidents to wiping down semiconductor "clean rooms" to car care. Simandl, who is used to working in a secretive environment, is a little reticent about the ingredients in his special cloth coating formula. "There is a good, but not necessarily obvious reason why they work," he said. "My cloths were thoroughly tested before I submitted the patent application." Rag may find market Look out Swiffer dusters. Simandl's "Negligible-Residue Non-tacky Tack Cloth" could be bound for the consumer market, albeit with a catchier name. Marilyn Giles, technology transfer director for Y-12's managing contractor, is shopping the dust rag around. "We will need a technical champion before we can find a business champion because it is kind of hard to comprehend that it can actually do what he says it can do," Giles said. "But it would not be a very expensive process to put in place for a company who already does this." The Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology, an industry group based in Rolling Meadows, Ill., that is involved in setting clean room standards, sounded intrigued. "The product is interesting, but there are a number of questions ... that many professionals would have," institute spokeswoman Heather Dvorak said in an e-mail. Beryllium is a light but strong metal used in nuclear weapons. Exposure can lead to chronic respiratory problems and cancer. The Y-12 plant, which has been making nuclear bomb parts since World War II, doesn't take beryllium lightly. The government has paid out millions to compensate sick nuclear plant workers, including about 140 past and present Y-12 workers identified with beryllium sensitivity, an early stage of the illness. "I have been thinking about this for 30 years," said Simandl, virtually his entire career at Y-12. "Other people have, too, and it has just evaded us. It is just a real difficult problem. You are trying to clean up invisible stuff, but it's at levels that industrial hygiene people say is harmful." Physics are complex Commercial cleaners and wipes failed to pick up all the beryllium and left a residue. The organic solvent-based cloth treatment that Simandl and partner Scott Hollenbeck came up with yields a dry coating that doesn't feel tacky to the touch "yet retains very high tackiness on the microscopic level" and leaves no trace. "The physics of tackiness is very complex," Simandl said. The dust rag may work like a dirt magnet, but "magnetism is not involved," he adds. "That is just allegory or poetic license." They've tested the treatment with cheesecloth at the weapons plant for six months with great success, he said. Metal, ceramic, plastic, fibers, radiological contaminants all have been picked up. Simandl also tried out the cloths at home. Using his simple instructions "Use dry, rub hard," Simandl dry-buffed the alloy wheels on his car. "The stubborn brake and road dirt came right off and left the wheels bright and showroom-shiny," he said. "You could even polish your titanium golf clubs with them." Tennessean.com Ron Simandl, a research chemist at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, holds one of his high-tech dust rags in this photo provided by the Department of Energy installation. He developed it to clean up potentially deadly beryllium particles. (ASSOCIATED PRESS) Copyright 2007, tennessean.com. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 62 SF Chron: Livermore lab picked to design warhead James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, March 3, 2007 The Energy and Defense departments have chosen the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to design the country's first new nuclear warhead since the Cold War, giving the Bay Area institution the central role in a program that could involve billions of dollars. The decision, announced Friday, was a clear victory for Livermore, which bested its storied sister lab, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, in a competition to lead the research. Officials said Los Alamos -- where the first atomic bombs were designed and built in the Manhattan Project during World War II -- would still be involved in nuclear weapons design but in an unaccustomed subordinate role. The Sandia National Laboratories, an engineering program with facilities at Livermore and in New Mexico, also will be a partner with Livermore as the United States develops the most important, if strongly contested, nuclear weapons program in a generation. The program -- called the Reliable Replacement Warhead -- is likely to have a modest initial impact on the lab, which is managed by the University of California. Officials said there would be no significant increase in staffing or spending in the short term, and the next step would involve developing detailed budgets. For all the excitement over Livermore's victory -- and clear disappointment at Los Alamos -- the question of whether the new nuclear weapons actually will be built is still far from settled. The announcement was an important symbol of the Bush administration's efforts to revive the entire nuclear weapons production complex, based on an argument that the old stockpile is growing more difficult to maintain and should be replaced. But there is substantial resistance in Congress, among both Republicans and Democrats, and among some weapons experts. Some argue that the current stockpile -- an estimated 6,000 warheads -- remains in excellent condition and will satisfy U.S. defense needs for decades to come. Others have expressed deep concern that a ramped-up manufacturing program could encourage other countries, such as Iran and North Korea, to push ahead with their own bomb programs. "What worries me is that the minute you begin to put more sophisticated warheads on the existing fleet, you are essentially creating a new nuclear weapon, and it's just a matter of time before other nations do the same thing," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "In fact, this could serve to encourage the very proliferation we are trying to prevent." Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., the chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee, which controls nuclear weapons spending, described the weapons effort as having a "make-it-up-as-you-go-along character" and as an example of misplaced priorities. "This announcement puts the cart before the horse," Visclosky said. "Although a lot of time and energy went into determining the winning design for a new nuclear warhead, there appears to have been little thought given to the question of why the United States needs to build new nuclear warheads at this time. My preference is that the Department of Energy would have spent their resources reconfiguring the old Cold War complex and dismantling obsolete warheads." Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, whose district includes Livermore, said she shared some of those concerns. "I have to admit that I'm thrilled that Livermore won," said Tauscher, the chairwoman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. But she agreed it was not clear that any new weapons were needed, and she insisted that Congress would hold the weapons complex on a tight leash by scrutinizing budgets carefully. "This is just one step in what could be a long series of steps," she said. Visclosky and Tauscher said they planned to hold hearings on the new weapons program soon. Lab and government officials, well aware of the skepticism in Congress, went out of their way Friday to stress that the program remained in a preliminary phase. "This is absolutely not an announcement to build a new warhead," said Thomas D'Agostino, the acting director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the weapons complex. "This is absolutely proceeding on a design effort. ... This is not about starting a new arms race." D'Agostino also stressed that, if the United States were to build and deploy the new weapons, the increased reliability would mean the country could sharply reduce its stockpile down to levels not seen since the 1950s. The Reliable Replacement Warhead program involves building weapons that would, in principle, be more reliable and safer than existing warheads but would fit on existing missiles. The first warheads would replace those on Trident missiles, which are carried on nuclear-powered submarines. Congress has mandated that the weapons be built without any underground testing -- a technical feat that has never been tried before -- and that they could not involve new capabilities or new military missions. Underground testing has been banned since 1992. The Bush administration has requested $119 million to support design studies for fiscal 2008. Government officials did not estimate the total cost of replacing the nation's nuclear stockpile, but experts generally agree that it would be a multibillion-dollar endeavor over several decades. Both Republicans and Democrats have insisted they will fund the research efforts on a year-to-year basis to ensure that the new weapons are built only if they are needed and can be deployed without testing. But assessments of the program's designs by outside experts have undercut some of the government's assertions, and some experts have complained about the lack of a timetable or firm plan for how many new weapons would be needed. C. Bruce Tarter, a former director of the Livermore lab and head of a team of outside scientists that has been reviewing the designs, said at a scientific conference two weeks ago that there is no empirical evidence that the old weapons are deteriorating and need to be replaced. He also said the design just approved would be the first in a series of new generations of warheads to be built over a span of decades. Only a small number of the claimed benefits of the new warheads, Tarter added, would be included in the first of the new warheads; it would take many generations and many years for all the promised benefits to be realized. In addition, D'Agostino insisted Friday that the warhead was in an initial design phase. However, lab officials said researchers not only have produced extensive designs -- each lab prepared more than 1,000 pages of testing and design specifications -- but they have already conducted non-nuclear tests of the critical detonation devices and other components. They have even begun to plan in detail how the weapons would be manufactured. The officials said the designs presented by Los Alamos and Livermore had some critical differences. The Livermore design was based on a weapon that was built and actually tested during the Cold War but never deployed. This "robust test pedigree" gave Livermore the advantage, D'Agostino said. The Los Alamos team designed a weapon that used previously tested elements, but it combined them in a more innovative way and incorporated more safety features. D'Agostino said the Livermore design was chosen because "it is the more conservative approach," but the more innovative features of the Los Alamos bomb might be incorporated later. Either way, he said, Los Alamos would continue to have extensive involvement in the design effort. That was not much consolation for Los Alamos' proud scientists. Los Alamos has been criticized in recent years for a string of security lapses, and some officials there had believed it would be impossible to let Los Alamos win for political reasons. Brad Holian, a retired Los Alamos scientist who still works part time in the weapons division, said the "team is thoroughly demoralized." He described as "dog treats" the idea that Los Alamos scientists could participate by reviewing Livermore designs and working on some secondary components. E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com. This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle ***************************************************************** 63 lamonitor.com: LANL takes warhead consolation prize The Online News Source for Los Alamos ROGER SNODGRASS Monitor Assistant Editor The National Nuclear Security Administration named the winning design team for the Reliable Replacement Warhead Friday morning and it was not Los Alamos. Acting NNSA Administrator Thomas D'Agostino told reporters that the "very robust test pedigree" of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory blueprint provided the winning margin. The competition was to find a better substitute for the W-76 warhead used on submarinelaunched ballistic missiles. NNSA acknowledged that both designs met all the requirements, but D'Agostino emphasized that there was a higher degree of confidence that the Livermore design could be certified without underground testing, and that gave them the edge. He called it "the most conservative approach." D'Agostino said some of the highly innovative features developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory will continue to be developed in parallel with the effort at Livermore and may even be introduced into the RRW design as it progresses. Glenn Mara, the head of the weapons program at LANL, greeted the news with some relief. "There is excitement that we are moving forward in this next phase," he said in a post-announcement press conference. "The deliberations have taken longer than anyone expected." He said LANL would continue to play a key role, not only in developing some of its innovative designs, but also because of its exclusive capacity to make the plutonium pits that any replacement warhead will need as the primary trigger. The runner-up will also be among the first to provide peer reviews for the California plan as it develops. Mara said about 200 people at LANL had been involved in one way or another with the two-year effort, but he saw no major shifts or changes at LANL. "There always are minor shifts that are easily accommodated within the program," he said. In hindsight, some might speculate that LANL's attempt to take a more innovative approach in the contest could have been a handicap. When questioned by a congressional analyst last September, the LLNL team responded that "all components in their design" or components "very similar" to their design "have been nuclear tested." They continued, "For example, the primary uses a tested design with a modest and very well understood modification of the pit to provide added margin. Thus there is direct nuclear test proof that the (California RRW) design will perform properly." They said the California design drew on over 100 other nuclear tests to assure confidence in materials, components and features. Further, they told Jonathan Medalia, who was preparing the first of two Congressional Research Service reports, that LLNL "made basic design choices that ease certification without testing." In subtle but revealing contrast, LANL said they "began with an exhaustive evaluation and statistical analysis of nuclear test data that led to design choices made to improve the margin ... for performance parameters dramatically while avoiding known failure modes." While the LANL design may be more "reliable," Livermore clearly succeeded in establishing that its design was better "tested." Sen. Jeff Bingaman expressed additional consolation for the runners-up. "Notwithstanding this decision, LANL clearly is home to some of the best scientists in the world and will continue to play a major role in ensuring we have a safe, reliable and secure stockpile, and in advancing basic science and technology R&D," he said in announcement Friday. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. saw it as round one of a longer contest, as the nuclear weapons complex enters a period of change. "This is not the end of our RRW effort. One system is not equivalent to a transformation and we need to move on a second design competition, one that should give priority consideration to pit reuse," he said in a prepared statement. Now that a decision has been made, attention is expected to turn next to independent reviews, congressional hearings and public debate. 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************