***************************************************************** 06/06/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.132 ***************************************************************** 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 [NYTr] Think Bush Is Evil Now? Wait'll He Nukes Iran 2 MWB: Bush tries to downplay differences at summit 3 RIA Novosti: U.S. missile defense should defend all of continental E 4 US: Bennington Banner: Sensible nuke alternatives 5 Guardian Unlimited: PM seeking 'frank talks' with Putin 6 Guardian Unlimited: Bush Says Russia Won't Attack Europe 7 Guardian Unlimited: Bush invites Russian generals to inspect Pentago 8 RIA Novosti: Putin to leave for his last G8 summit -1 9 RIA Novosti: Relations with Russia eclipse real problems at G8 summi 10 RIA Novosti: G8 summit - national differences likely to dominate des 11 RIA Novosti: Clouds over G8 summit 12 BBC NEWS: US rejects German G8 climate goal 13 Post Chronicle: Nuclear Futures -- Part 2 - Security&Terrorism 14 AFP: Dark days for Putin-Bush friendship at G8 summit - 15 UPI: Analysis: Cold War at G8? 16 UPI: Gorbachev calls missile plans 'arrogant' 17 ITAR-TASS: Russia's modern weapons protect from blackmail, pressure 18 The Statesman: TN super six in Upper House NUCLEAR REACTORS 19 The Hindu: Nuke issue: India, US keen to resolve differences 20 US: NRC: William Raymond Named NRC Senior Resident Inspector at Seab 21 PerthNow: Anti-nuclear stance becomes law | 22 Guardian Unlimited: Blair hope on climate change deal | 23 The Hindu: UAE asks India to play greater role in Gulf issues 24 The Hindu: Improving nuclear energy share 25 US: Houston Chronicle: Fish Impact Snags Nuclear Plant License | 26 US: SanLuisObispo.com: State bill could slow Diablo Canyon relicensi 27 The Hindu: Cong. may not clear if Indo-US deal 'renegotiated' - Cohe 28 US: Platts: Uranium costs may lead to more regular refuelings - Exel 29 Platts: Russia's new nuclear holding company to start operations Jul 30 WNN: First half of GE, Hitachi alliance begins operations 31 US: ALBANY BUREAU: Nukes, coal create energy roadblock 32 Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter: Plant reactor removed from service 33 US: Rutland Herald Online: Yankee cracks concern state 34 US: recordonline.com: Indian Point's bid for license renewal generat 35 Prague Daily Monitor: Austria demands new talks on Czech nuclear pla 36 WNN: Finnish companies unite to build nuclear plant 37 Reuters: Climate change battle could spell new disasters 38 US: Daily Press: Drill set at Surry nuclear station 39 US: Arizona Republic : Public invited to safety talks on Palo Verde 40 Deccan Herald: US wants Nuke deal with India at the earliest 41 AFP: Climate accord fight and Russia-US tensions cloud G8 summit - 42 US: Reuters: U.S. opposes fixing greenhouse gas cuts at G8 | 43 Asia Times Online: China to open nuclear industry to investment 44 US: The Olive Press: Spain faces nuclear disaster - 45 US: PBP: FPL seeks zoning for two additional nukes at Turkey Point 46 Prague Daily Monitor: Czech net power exports up 63 pct yr/yr in Q1 47 IHT: Brazil to complete third nuclear plant, minister says - 48 US: TheDay.com: Windfall-profits Tax Plan Fails In House 49 US: NRC: NRC Chairman Dale E. Klein Remarks Prepared for Delivery Go 50 AU ABC: Premier opposed to nuclear power. 51 US: NRC: NRC to Discuss 2006 Performance at Comanche Peak Nuclear Pl 52 Irish Post: Irish nurse's appeal for Chernobyl victim 53 Bulgaria: Bulgarian Prosecutors To Probe Belene N-plant 54 IAEA: World Environment Day Spotlights Global Warming Issues 55 US: NRC: NRC to Discuss 2006 Performance at South Texas Nuclear Plan NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY 56 Depleted Uranium - A Way Out? 57 [DU-WATCH] Our PoisonPlanet Conference on DU and Nuclear Pollution v 58 Guardian Unlimited: Who else was poisoned by polonium? 59 US: Pahrump Valley Times: Cleaning up after atom tests the topic 60 US: KOLO: 3 Exposed to Dose of Plutonium During Work at Nevada Test 61 US: DaytonDailyNews.com: Senators upset over compensation law 62 barrow in furness: Radiation discharge reducing NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 63 IPS-English INDIA/US: Impasse Over Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Rights 64 Nevada Appeal: Yucca Mountain not dead after all? 65 The Hindu: New front rejects 123 agreement 66 US: Daily News Journal: Commissioners oppose dumping at landfill 67 US: Ventura County Star: More radioactive waste found at Halaco 68 US: THE ENTERPRISE: Cleanup to resume at Norton's Shpack dump 69 UPI: Russian nuclear waste said dangerous PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 70 Rocky Mountain News: Senators seek Flats inquiry 71 KnoxNews: USEC inks 5-year deal with TVA 72 KnoxNews: Munger: Upcoming contract talks affect hundreds of guards 73 DOE: DOE to Compete Management & Operating Contract for its 74 Hanford News: Fortune Magazine ranks PNNL in employer list 75 Denver Post: Salazar: Flats' ill workers deserve hearing ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [NYTr] Think Bush Is Evil Now? Wait'll He Nukes Iran Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 17:58:10 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Information Clearing House - Jun 6, 2007 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17834.htm If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran by Paul Craig Roberts The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American military officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq during the first year of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an option. Our best hope, Gen. Sanchez says, is bto stave off defeat,b and that requires more intelligence and leadership than Gen. Sanchez sees in the entirety of our national political leadership: bI am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time.b More evidence that the war is lost arrived June 4 with headlines reporting: bU.S.-led soldiers control only about a third of Baghdad, the military said on Monday.b After five years of war the US controls one-third of one city and nothing else. A host of US commanding generals have said that the Iraq war is destroying the US military. A year ago Colin Powell said that the US Army is babout broken.b Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn says Bush has bpiecemealed our force to death.b Gen. Barry McCafrey testified to the US Senate that bthe Army will unravel.b Col. Andy Bacevich, Americabs foremost writer on military affairs, documents in the current issue of The American Conservative that Bushbs insane war has depleted and exhausted the US Army and Marine Corps: bOnly a third of the regular Armybs brigades qualify as combat-ready. In the reserve components, none meet that standard. When the last of the units reaches Baghdad as part of the presidentbs strategy of escalation, the US will be left without a ready-to-deploy land force reserve.b bThe stress of repeated combat tours is sapping the Armybs lifeblood. Especially worrying is the accelerating exodus of experienced leaders. The service is currently short 3,000 commissioned officers. By next year, the number is projected to grow to 3,500. The Guard and reserves are in even worse shape. There the shortage amounts to 7,500 officers. Young West Pointers are bailing out of the Army at a rate not seen in three decades. In an effort to staunch the losses, that service has begun offering a $20,000 bonus to newly promoted captains who agree to stay on for an additional three years. Meanwhile, as more and more officers want out, fewer and fewer want in: ROTC scholarships go unfilled for a lack of qualified applicants.b Bush has taken every desperate measure. Enlistment ages have been pushed up from 35 to 42. The percentage of high school dropouts and the number of recruits scoring at the bottom end of tests have spiked. The US military is forced to recruit among drug users and convicted criminals. Bacevich reports that wavers bissued to convicted felons jumped by 30 percent.b Combat tours have been extended from 12 to 15 months, and the same troops are being deployed again and again. There is no equipment for training. Bacevich reports that bsome $212 billion worth has been destroyed, damaged, or just plain worn out.b What remains is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under these circumstances, bstaying the courseb means total defeat. Even the neoconservative warmongers, who deceived Americans with the promise of a bcakewalk warb that would be over in six weeks, believe that the war is lost. But they have not given up. They have a last desperate plan: Bomb Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney is spear- heading the neocon plan, and Norman Podhoretz is the planbs leading propagandist with his numerous pleas published in the Wall Street Journal and Commentary to bomb Iran. Podhoretz, like every neoconservative, is a total Islamophobe. Podhoretz has written that Islam must be deracinated and the religion destroyed, a genocide for the Muslim people. The neocons think that by bombing Iran the US will provoke Iran to arm the Shiite militias in Iraq with armor-piercing rocket propelled grenades and with surface to air missiles and unleash the militias against US troops. These weapons would neutralize US tanks and helicopter gunships and destroy the US military edge, leaving divided and isolated US forces subject to being cut off from supplies and retreat routes. With America on the verge of losing most of its troops in Iraq, the cry would go up to bsave the troopsb by nuking Iran. Five years of unsuccessful war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israelbs recent military defeat in Lebanon have convinced the neocons that America and Israel cannot establish hegemony over the Middle East with conventional forces alone. The neocons have changed US war doctrine, which now permits the US to preemptively strike with nuclear weapons a non-nuclear power. Neocons are forever heard saying, bwhatbs the use of having nuclear weapons if you canbt use them.b Neocons have convinced themselves that nuking Iran will show the Muslim world that Muslims have no alternative to submitting to the will of the US government. Insurgency and terrorism cannot prevail against nuclear weapons. Many US military officers are horrified at what they think would be the worst ever orchestrated war crime. There are reports of threatened resignations. But Dick Cheney is resolute. He tells Bush that the plan will save him from the ignominy of losing the war and restore his popularity as the president who saved Americans from Iranian nuclear weapons. With the captive American media providing propaganda cover, the neoconservatives believe that their plan can pull their chestnuts out of the fire and rescue them from the failure that their delusion has wrought. The American electorate decided last November that they must do something about the failed war and gave the Democrats control of both houses of Congress. However, the Democrats have decided that it is easier to be complicit in war crimes than to represent the wishes of the electorate and hold a rogue president accountable. If Cheney again prevails, America will supplant the Third Reich as the most reviled country in recorded history. [Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and contributing editor of National Review. He is author or co-author of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon chair in political economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and senior research fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.] * ================================================================ .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 ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 2 MWB: Bush tries to downplay differences at summit McClatchy Washington Bureau | 06/06/2007 | By William Douglas McClatchy Newspapers ROSTOCK, Germany - On his first full day at the Group of Eight summit in Germany, President Bush tried Wednesday to soften the war of words with Russian President Vladimir Putin over a proposed U.S. missile defense system in Europe and to downplay differences with his G-8 partners over reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Bush stressed U.S.-Russian friendship on the eve of his Thursday one-on-one meeting with Putin. The two men are expected to discuss Putin's pique over Bush's drive to install a sophisticated radar system in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland to safeguard against a nuclear attack from a rogue state such as Iran. Putin has charged that the missile-defense system would be geared toward stopping Russian missiles and would upset the balance of forces in Europe. He threatened last weekend to aim Russian missiles at European sites if the system is built. "Russia is not going to attack Europe," Bush told reporters at the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm. "The missile-defense system is not aimed at Russia. As a matter of fact, I believe it would be in Russia's interest to participate with us, and have made that offer and will continue to make that offer." Bush also insisted that the dispute isn't injuring his relationship with Putin. "It's a complicated relationship," he said, referring both to U.S.-Russia and himself and Putin. "We've had issues before. I think if you look at the history of our relationship, there's been some moments where we've agreed and moments where we've disagreed." Some analysts, though not all, believe that the U.S.-Russia missile-defense flap illustrates that Bush has misread Putin throughout their six-year relationship. The two leaders have sparred over Moscow's backsliding on democratic reforms, Russia's use of energy supplies to intimidate its neighbors, the war in Iraq and the future of Kosovo. Uri Ra'Anan, director of the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and Policy at Boston University, said Bush has overemphasized personal chemistry in dealing with Putin. Following his first meeting with Putin in 2001, Bush famously said he looked Putin in the eye and found him to be "straightforward and trustworthy." "I was able to get a sense of his soul - a man deeply committed to his country and the interests of his country," Bush said afterward. It seemed like a profound line at the time, but now it comes back to haunt the White House every time Bush has a diplomatic dust-up with Putin. "There's no question that (Bush's) advisers understand Putin," Ra'Anan said. "The problem is the president. He's intelligent, but he is naive. He actually believes that foreign policy can be done on personality and charm. Putin views that as weakness." Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to former President Jimmy Carter, echoed Ra'Anan's assessment. "It's the product of several miscalculations both by us and by the Russians," Brzezinski said on Bloomberg Television. "I think at our end we overestimated the importance of the personal relationship between Bush and Putin. It was always a little bit of fiction, pumped up so much, that it obscured some of the lingering problems in the relationship." But Charles Kupchan, former director for European Affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations, believes that Bush and Putin did have a good personal relationship that has evolved as Russia became wealthier through oil and natural gas revenues. "I think it's less of a question of a misreading by Bush than a gradual combination of Putin's growth in power and disgruntlement with U.S. policy. If it were just missile defense, the difficulty wouldn't be so acute. But it's NATO expansion, Kosovo, sanctions on Iran. Russia has said, `Enough, we're pushing back.'" Bush spent his first full day here having a working lunch with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, this year's G-8 host, and meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Climate change dominated Bush's talks with Merkel. The president expressed optimism that the G-8 partners would reach an agreement on efforts to cut greenhouse gases. "I come with a strong desire to work with you on a post-Kyoto agreement about how we can achieve major objectives," Bush said. "One, of course, is the reduction of greenhouse gases. Another is to become more energy independent - in our case, from crude oil from parts of the world where we've got friends and sometimes we don't have friends." For her part, Merkel said she and Bush had "a very intensive and very good conversation" about climate change, "a very good debate." She said she trusted that they would "work out joint positions on that." White House officials said they believe they're moving toward consensus with Merkel, who's made climate change the summit's signature issue. But Bush still rejects Merkel's proposals to set firm national goals to reduce greenhouse gases and lower global temperatures by two degrees in coming decades. Still, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said Bush is moving toward his G-8 partners on climate change because all sides agree that: -Climate change needs to be addressed. -There's a recognized need for an agreement or framework for dealing with the climate change when the Kyoto agreement expires in 2012. -All G-8 leaders must commit themselves to leading the design of a post-Kyoto framework. -All the world's major polluters, including India and China, need to participate in the process. However, Hadley said the Bush administration wouldn't agree at this G-8 summit on specific goals for reducing greenhouse gases, because non-G-8 nations such as China and India wouldn't be able to participate. He said this summit's achievement would be setting up a post-Kyoto process for future decisions by the end of 2008. ***************************************************************** 3 RIA Novosti: U.S. missile defense should defend all of continental Europe - NATO 20:20 | 06/ 06/ 2007 BRUSSELS, June 6 (RIA Novosti) - The U.S. missile defense system should finally be able to defend all of continental Europe, NATO's secretary general said Wednesday. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told journalists in Brussels after talks with Polish President Lech Kaczynski that the entire European continent and all NATO allies wherever they are geographically should be covered by the U.S. missile defense elements in Europe. The U.S. national missile defense system currently deploys missile interceptors at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and at Vandenberg, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles. The United States is also planning to expand its missile shield to sites in the Czech Republic and Poland. The Kremlin has responded angrily to U.S. plans, announced in January, saying U.S. missile bases in Europe could become targets of its pinpoint strikes. Russia last week tested a new ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads and a new cruise missile, saying the tests were part of Moscow's response to U.S. anti-missile plans. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 4 Bennington Banner: Sensible nuke alternatives Columnists, Article Launched: 06/04/2007 02:57:10 AM EDT The futile "nuclear debate" seems interminable. Does nuclear power produce "clean energy?" Is it economical? Is it safe? Of course not. The nuclear industry, while generously funded by subsidies and tax breaks, continues to produce electricity from over-aged reactors, making mountains of dangerously radioactive waste and storing it indefinitely on site. The 40-plus year old Yankee nuclear reactor operates at high stress levels and 20 percent above its design capacity while producing over 30 percent of Vermont's electricity. Chances of a catastrophic accident increase with reactor age. Consider a sudden metal failure at Yankee with uncontrolled loss of coolant, escape of radioactive gases, and partial meltdown of the reactor core. Radioactive waste escapes into the atmosphere forming a plume which quickly spreads across Massachusetts and the Boston area, eventually crossing the Atlantic Ocean to rain down on the people of Western Europe and converting the fallout region into a radioactive wasteland, uninhabitable for centuries. Then there is the highly radioactive waste which is stored in dry casks next to the Connecticut River in Vernon. Still, nobody has found a viable way to safely store or dispose of the waste while it slowly degrades over thousands of years. Hopes for opening the Yucca Mountain (Nevada) nuclear waste repository fade as local resistance grows. It may never open. Will some miraculous discovery permit safe storage of high-level nuclear waste for thousands of years? Not likely. Who will pay the huge cost of reactor decommissioning and waste isolation ? our grandchildren and their grandchildren? Do we just let it accumulate indefinitely at reactor sites all over the world? And we should not overlook nuclear waste from aircraft carriers, submarines, etc. Since plutonium ? one of the components of nuclear waste ? can be used to make nuclear weapons, there is a high probability that some it will someday be used to kill large numbers of people. During the centuries that the nuclear waste will be hazardous, some type of disastrous "nuclear accident" is virtually inevitable. Without question, the use of enriched uranium for reactor fuels and weapons is suicidal in the extreme. So, what are the alternatives? We still have choices. We can gradually abandon nuclear and fossil fuels while incrementally adopting sustainable energy sources, or we can wait for disaster to make it happen. Whether planned or catastrophic, the transformation is inevitable. Assuming our choice is a voluntary transition, we first need to minimize our energy demand through vigorous conservation. Electricity and fuels should be made too expensive to waste. During this phase we must reduce the use of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum). Let's say that we can reduce our total energy consumption by 15 percent in 20 years. Meanwhile, we tax the producers of nuclear and fossil fuel-based electricity while giving business, homeowners, and industries breaks for saving energy and incorporating solar and wind-based electrical systems everywhere, while decentralizing power production. Our industry would shift away from building nuclear reactors, refineries and power lines to building local solar arrays and wind farms. This transformation, if properly incentivized, could occur in 25 years. We should be able to make every home, business, and industry a model of energy efficiency. Combined with development of an efficient mass transport system and greatly enhanced local production and sale of goods and services, we could eliminate the specter of fossil fuel dependence within this century, while cutting our carbon emissions by at least half. We can do it. And we haven't mentioned its benefits in slowing global warming. Paul Myers, a member of vermontpeacetrain and a geologist by profession, lives in Peru. ***************************************************************** 5 Guardian Unlimited: PM seeking 'frank talks' with Putin Press Association Wednesday June 6, 2007 9:48 AM Tony Blair will seek a "frank conversation" with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his increasingly fractious relations with the West at the G8 summit. The Prime Minister said he wanted to discuss issues including the US's plans for a missile shield and the murder of Alexander Litvinenko when the men meet at the event in Germany. However, Mr Blair insisted that he did not believe the tensions would result in "some great confrontation" because it was not in Russia's interests to have a "scratchy or difficult" relationship with international partners. The row over nuclear arms is threatening to overshadow the three-day summit, where leaders are hoping to strike a key deal to tackle climate change which includes both America and China. US President George Bush on Tuesday sought to calm the row with President Putin - who has threatened to target European cities with nuclear arms if America presses ahead with developing a missile shield - by inviting Moscow to co-operate in the project. Mr Blair said the US had promised to be "completely transparent" and "share the technology". "The fact is this has always been about the danger of rogue states. The truth of the matter is that, for all sorts of reasons, it is not something that is really about Russia at all and yet suddenly it is put up by Russia in this way, in quite a confrontational way," he told the BBC. "Now I think the sensible thing, and this is what I'll do certainly when I meet President Putin, is to have a frank conversation about the state of the relationship between not simply Britain but Europe and Russia." Mr Blair - who will be attending his last G8 as Prime Minister before stepping down later this month - insisted people would see there was a "difficulty" with Russia's relationship with the outside world. He added: "I don't really think that in the end it will be in the long-term interest of Russia to have a relationship with Europe or with the Western world that is scratchy and difficult." © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2007, All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 Guardian Unlimited: Bush Says Russia Won't Attack Europe From the Associated Press Wednesday June 6, 2007 1:01 PM By TERENCE HUNT AP White House Correspondent HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (AP) - President Bush on Wednesday discounted Vladimir Putin's threat to re-target missiles on Europe, saying ``Russia is not going to attack Europe.'' Bush, in an interview with the Associated Press and other reporters, said that no U.S. military response was required after Putin warned that Russia would take steps in response to a U.S. missile shield that would be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic. ``Russia is not an enemy,'' Bush said, sitting in a sun-drenched garden. ``There needs to be no military response because we're not at war with Russia. Russia is not a threat.'' Bush and Putin will meet Wednesday at the opening of the summit of industrialized nations. Asked if he anticipated a tense encounter, Bush replied ``Could be. I don't think so ... I'll work to see that it's not a tense meeting.'' Bush talked with reporters for nearly an hour, touching on subjects from global warming to Iran, the suffering in Darfur to the war in Iraq. The president said he would like to see other countries follow the United States in taking steps against the government of Sudan to stop the misery in Darfur. ``I'm frustrated because there are still people suffering and the U.N. process is moving at a snail's pace,'' Bush said. Bush seeks a U.N. resolution to apply new international sanctions against the Sudanese government. It would seek to impose an expanded embargo on arms sales to Sudan, prohibit Sudan's government from conducting offensive military flights over Darfur and strengthen the U.S. ability to monitor and report any violations. On climate, Bush said he would not give ground on global warming proposals that would require mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, he backed his own proposal that the United States and other nations that spew the most greenhouse gases meet and - by the end of next year - set a long-term strategy for reducing emissions. Bush's plan addresses ``life after'' 2012, the expiration date for the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States didn't sign. Bush wants to bring India, China and other fast-growing countries to the negotiation table. He envisions that each country will set goals on how they want to improve energy security, reduce air pollution and cut greenhouse gases in the next 10 to 20 years. ``The United States can serve as a bridge to help find a solution,'' Bush said. He said that the summit, running Wednesday through Friday, would produce a consensus for a post-Kyoto framework after the landmark treaty expires in 2012. Putin rattled nerves in Europe with his weekend declaration that he would retarget missiles on Europe in response to the missile defense shield. ``I don't think Vladimir Putin intends to attack Europe,'' Bush said. Bush cited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declaration that it was ``too late'' to stop Iran's nuclear program as justification for the U.S. missile defense system. ``Therefore, let's build a missile defense system,'' Bush said, adding that it was time to return to the U.N. Security Council to tighten pressure on Iran to give up its suspected weapons program. Bush insisted anew that Russia has no reason to worry about a missile shield. He said Moscow has an arsenal of nuclear rockets ``that could overwhelm any defense system.'' Instead, Bush argued that an antimissile system would be intended to protect against rogue states like Iran and North Korea. The president has angered Putin in the past by criticizing Russia's spotty progress on democratic reform and human rights - a theme Bush expressed in a speech just one day ago. Still, Bush said that Russia has ``advanced a long way from the old Soviet era.'' Asked if Putin was trying to play to public opinion at home with his tough talk, Bush said he could not be sure, but added: ``When public opinion influences leadership, it indicates there is an involvement of the people.'' Bush said that despite all the problems, the United States has a friendship with Russia. He said the fundamental question is whether it makes sense to have good relations with Russia. ``It does,'' Bush said. ``There will be disagreements,'' Bush added. ``That's the way life works.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: Bush invites Russian generals to inspect Pentagon's central European project Ian Traynor in Prague Wednesday June 6, 2007 Russia's new intercontinental ballistic missile takes off from Plesetsk launching pad. Photograph: Reuters George Bush intervened yesterday in the worst dispute between Russia and the west since the end of the cold war, offering to cooperate with Vladimir Putin on the Pentagon's missile defence project. With the row over the "Son of Star Wars" project threatening to derail the G8 summit, Mr Bush appealed to the Russian leader to relent in his fierce criticism of the missile shield. "The cold war is over, it ended. Russia is not the enemy," Mr Bush told journalists at Prague castle after discussing the Pentagon's plans with the Czech president and prime minister, Vaclav Klaus and Mirek Topolanek. Mr Bush arrived in central Europe, where the Pentagon wants to station parts of the shield, days after the Russian leader accused Washington of initiating an arms race in Europe reminiscent of the 1980s. Mr Putin has delivered several attacks on the US administration and on the missile shield plan in recent weeks, warning at the weekend that Russia could target European cities with nuclear missiles for the first time since the end of the 45-year cold war. Mr Bush sought to woo Mr Putin saying that the Kremlin had nothing to fear from the US plans to site silos of 10 interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar base in the hills south of Prague. "My message will be: 'Vladimir - I call him Vladimir - you shouldn't fear a missile defence system. As a matter of fact, why don't you cooperate with us on a missile defence system?"' Mr Bush said. "Please send your generals over to see how such a system would work. Send your scientists," he told Mr Putin. The Kremlin has dismissed offers of cooperation carried to Moscow by the US defence secretary, Robert Gates. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, also went to Moscow to try to calm the dispute and came away declaring that both sides had agreed to tone down their hostile rhetoric. But since then, the criticism has only increased. While Mr Bush yesterday mentioned the Russian leader by his first name and insisted Russia was not an enemy, in recent weeks Mr Putin has likened the Bush administration to the Nazis and accused the US of trying to take over the world. The Russians will also be incensed by Mr Bush's visit to Prague yesterday and to Poland on Friday, with the missile defence plans the key issue under discussion. The Polish prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said yesterday that the talks with Mr Bush would be critical to the future of the missile shield and accused Mr Putin of reviving hostile rhetoric not heard from the Kremlin for more than 40 years. Despite a majority of the Czech public being opposed to the shield, President Klaus emphasised his government's support for the Americans. "We are aware that the US bears high responsibility for the situation in the world, and I would like to stress that the United States and President Bush have our support in that," he said. Mr Bush reiterated the Pentagon's assertions that the 10 missile interceptor rockets to be deployed in Poland were a "purely defensive measure" directed not against Russia, but against "true threats". Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 8 RIA Novosti: Putin to leave for his last G8 summit -1 12:22 | 06/ 06/ 2007 (Recasts, adds details in paras 3, 4,) MOSCOW/HEILIGENDAMM, June 6 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will cede power next year, will leave for Germany Wednesday for a three-day summit of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations. The meetings, hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are set to address climate change, development aid to Africa, Iran's nuclear program, and aid to Darfur, but are likely to be overshadowed by a dispute between Moscow and Washington over U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense shield in Europe. The summit at Germany's Baltic resort of Heiligendamm will also involve the leaders of G8 members Japan, Canada, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom. Leaders from China, Brazil, India, South Africa, and Mexico have also been invited to the summit. U.S. President George W. Bush raised tensions ahead of the meeting, criticizing at a speech in Prague Tuesday what he called the derailing of democratic processes in Russia. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told U.K. media he would confront Putin over Russia's refusal to extradite a suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-FSB officer and British national murdered in London last November. The Kremlin said it expected the 33rd summit to yield interesting discussions, as there will be one new and two outgoing leaders participating, with Putin stepping down as president next year, when his term of office comes to an end. Igor Shuvalov, Russia's "sherpa" at the summit - the head of state's personal representative who prepares the agenda and agreements at the talks - said Putin would be feeling more confident than certain other G8 leaders. The British prime minister, who steps down June 27, will have an opportunity to be more open, Shuvalov said. "He will be responsible for his nation in the longer term, and will not be concerned about disciplinary penalties from his own party or his Cabinet." France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was elected mid-May, is expected to make "interesting" statements, as documents for the summit have been drafted without his participation, Shuvalov said. At the summit, Putin will hold bilateral meetings with U.S. President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese leader Hu Jintao. In an interview with the press from the G8 countries ahead of the summit Putin described the G8 forum as "a useful and interesting event" for coordinating opinion on the key issues on the global economy and international agenda. In an interview last Thursday, Bush said he would try to persuade the Russian and Chinese leaders to toughen sanctions against Iran. At their second bilateral meeting since the APEC summit last November Putin and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will discuss the Kuril Islands. Japan considers that the four southern islands of the archipelago were illegally seized by the Soviet Union after World War II, and wants their return as a condition for signing a peace treaty with Russia. Putin said although he did not consider the Kurils disputable, Russia understands Japanese motives and wants to find a solution to the problem. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 9 RIA Novosti: Relations with Russia eclipse real problems at G8 summit Opinion & analysis - 16:52 | 06/ 06/ 2007 MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Marianna Belenkaya) - Relations between Russia and the West, primarily the United States, are the focus of attention at the G8 summit in Germany. At least, this is the impression created by the media and statements by high-ranking G8 officials. This subject is attracting much more attention than debates on climate change and aid to Africa, thereby getting in the way of the G8's main mission - joint decision-making with a view to countering global challenges. On the eve of the official opening, the discussion is centered around the following questions: Does Russia deserve to be a member of this influential club of industrialized democracies? To what extent is it possible for the West to cooperate with it? When should it be cut down to size? In the run-up to the summit, U.S. President George W. Bush said that Washington had common interests in some areas where it was cooperating with Moscow and Beijing, whereas in other fields they had serious differences. The areas of common interest between Russia and America, as well as the West as a whole, are well known. German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke about them in an interview with a Russian television channel. These include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, and developments in the Balkans. "We depend on each other, and this will dominate the spirit of Heiligendamm," she said. It will be great if this is really so and other G8 countries see in Russia a partner that shares with them a common responsibility. The German chancellor spoke about this as well. But how effective is this cooperation if disputes arise daily over these or other issues? It is enough to mention the frustrating search for a common Russian-U.S. position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the difficulty of holding talks with Iran and North Korea, the desperate situation in Kosovo, and the loads of time wasted on resolutions on Iraq. The list goes on and on. In their final statements at different international forums, Russian and Western leaders have mentioned their common approach to global threats and ways of countering them. But is it possible to fight international terrorism in the atmosphere of mutual suspicion surrounding the potential deployment of an American ABM system in Europe? How effectively can the G8 help developing nations or countries hit by acute political crises when practically every agreement on regional conflicts contains so many reservations? It is enough to mention the UN Security Council resolution approving the formation of a tribunal to investigate the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Harari. The United States, Britain and France voted in favor, while Russia and China abstained. G8 members' views on supporting the reforms in the Greater Middle East are also very different. Judging by statements made by high-ranking policymakers, G8 countries are overcoming these differences and their mutual mistrust for the sake of common goals. But what is the point then of creating this atmosphere of mutual criticism that has accompanied every Russian-American and Russian-European meeting? Is this being done to influence the voters who are watching television in Russia, the United States and Europe? Needless to say, the deployment of an ABM system in Europe and the state of democracy in Russia are important issues, but a G8 summit is not the right venue for sorting out relations between members of the club. The world expects the club to meet the challenges of today. The situation in Darfur, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon is much more urgent than the hypothetical threat of a new Cold War and arms race between Russia and America. No ABM system will help curb the growth of extremism in the Middle East and its spread to other regions. Nor will it stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or help prevent terrorist attacks. European security is extremely fragile - it is sitting on numerous time bombs like Kosovo, immigration and problems of European identity. These issues override any pointless bickering within the club. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 10 RIA Novosti: G8 summit - national differences likely to dominate despite common interests Opinion & analysis - 18:37 | 06/ 06/ 2007 MOSCOW. (Ian Pryde for RIA Novosti) - Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has tried hard to concentrate on "Growth and Responsibility" as the theme for this week's G8 summit in Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast. Everyone wants growth, but as the summit begins, responsibility has been pushed aside and rhetoric and mutual recriminations are the order of the day. Moreover, sovereignty understood as carte blanche to pursue narrow national interests cannot work in today's world, for as Lenin said, "everything is connected to everything else." But while the United States and China, the two biggest polluters on the planet, feel at liberty to damage their own countries, they can hardly be expected to cooperate on implementing effective solutions on the environment. And yet, despite the common threats of global warming, energy security and terrorism, there are countless common opportunities. Russian rhetoric and nuclear weapons - a zero-sum game The agreement in May between Russia and the West to tone down the rhetoric proved short-lived. In a conference with several foreign journalists earlier this week, President Putin warned that if America stationed ABM systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia would retarget its nuclear weapons at Europe. This is not difficult technically, so in that sense his comment changes nothing - but has Putin forgotten that Britain and France are also nuclear powers which could just as easily (re)target Russia? This kind of approach, however, is obviously a zero-sum game, which the West is unlikely to play, and Putin's threat unleashed a wave of international condemnation from Europe, Russia's main trading partner, and the United States. Although both Putin and the Russian elite claim their country is democratic and a member of the civilized (read Western) world, this kind of rhetoric merely serves to increase international distrust toward Russia and isolate it even more, giving it less leverage than it would like in international affairs. While the Kremlin moved quickly in an attempt to defuse the situation by pointing out that the Russian president had replied to a hypothetical question, Putin had made clear his anger at the American plan to the Portuguese prime minister and the Greek president during their visits to Moscow last week. In contrast to George W. Bush, however, Putin is bright, articulate and extremely well-briefed, but he is also forthright, irascible and "takes no prisoners." In other words, this was not the kind of lapse that Bush makes so often. Contrary to the view of the more pro-American Western media, however, some of Putin's claims are valid. He is right to point out that NATO has expanded into Eastern Europe - something the Russians did not expect when they agreed to withdraw from the region and which they feel goes against the spirit of the negotiations at the time. The Americans, however, claim they made no such commitments. Yes, some of the countries in Eastern Europe are distrustful of Russia, but this is more for historical reasons than because of any threat Russia now poses, or is likely to pose. As a result, NATO remains an organization in search of a mission since it was never designed for "out-of-area" action in places such as Afghanistan and faces no real threat from any comparable conventional forces, which are in any event woefully inadequate to cope with the "asymmetric threat" of terrorism by non-state actors. Russia's foreign policy - time for a new approach Unfortunately, Russia's new-found and much vaunted role as energy superpower has led it to overreach itself somewhat. Moscow has still to understand the concept of interdependence - "everything is connected to everything else." While some observers believe that Russia is pursuing a "divide and rule" policy by trying to drive a wedge between European countries and/or between Europe and the United States, such tactics will fail if pushed to the limit. The European Union and NATO rushed to support Estonia recently over the dispute with Russia and helped defend it against the recent attacks on its computer systems which apparently emanated from Russia. And now Russia is complaining that Britain has internationalized the Litvinenko/Lugovoi affair by invoking EU support. If Russia wishes to avoid this kind of concerted response, which was, after all, completely predictable, it needs to avoid rhetoric and actions that confirm the stereotype. American unilateralism - a problem for itself, Europe, Russia and the world One American official condemned Putin for his statement that Moscow would retarget nuclear weapons and rightly pointed out that the Russia-NATO Council provides a forum to discuss the issue. However, it is no secret that on a wide range of issues such as energy, security, space and international justice, the United States prefers a unilateral approach. This is perfectly acceptable - after all, the United States is a sovereign nation and can do as its likes - as can Russia, Estonia, China and all the other 190-odd countries in the world. But in that case, the UNITED STATES should not be surprised and disappointed to find that other countries disagree with its policies and will resist them. A recent BBC poll showed that in many countries a majority believes the United Sates exerts a negative influence on global politics, which should be equally worrying to the American leadership. No surprise, then, that America, like Russia, cannot get the support it wants when it finds it cannot go it alone - welcome to the real world. America's failed energy policies Every American president since the first oil crisis in 1973 has tried to implement his own national energy policy. Every policy, however, has been ineffective - countless Americans remain addicted to oil and continue to emulate the brief and largely mythical wild-west lifestyle by buying gas guzzling SUVs and pickups. America has failed utterly to learn from the far more sensible Japanese. When America passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Big Three Detroit carmakers called in their lawyers - the Japanese manufacturers brought in their engineers. Now, nearly 40 years on, Toyota, one of the best companies in the world, is sweeping past Detroit's lumbering giants, exposing their total lack of strategic vision and showing how industry and companies can benefit from environmentally sound products as increasing numbers of Americans become convinced of the need for action on global warming. But despite this grass roots pressure and action at state level to reduce emissions, the administration continues to stall. On the eve of the G8 summit, the United States announced its own counter-proposal on climate change. Once again it refused to join the Kyoto process within the framework of the United Nations and accept limits on emissions. The result? Like Russia, America finds itself rather isolated. China and India - partners in crime Against this background, it is hardly surprising to see countries such as China and India arguing that since the rich countries are responsible for most carbon emissions, they must bear the brunt of the efforts to reduce them. China's per capita production of carbon, for example, is only one fifth of America's, but it produces 70% of its electricity from coal, so it is likely to become the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world this year, overtaking the United States. Even so, China's own climate plan announced on the eve of the G8 summit focuses on energy conservation measures rather than on reducing emissions. China, like America, argues that caps on emissions would reduce growth at home (and in other emerging economies). But the growing scientific consensus that the situation is becoming critical means action needs to be taken if sharply reduced economic growth and all sorts of unpleasant and unpredictable consequences are to be avoided. The time for applying the precautionary principle "just in case" has therefore passed and inaction is a recipe for disaster - and that applies to the United States, China and India in equal measure. China and India can insist as much as they want that the United States and Europe begin to reduce carbon emissions before they take action, but poor countries such as themselves will suffer far more from global warming than the rich and technologically advanced countries of the northern hemisphere. Prospects and solutions Russian rhetoric, America unilateralism and emerging countries bent on development - all these make it more difficult to achieve the concerted international action needed for Growth and Responsibility. Too many countries are still insisting on their own "sovereignty" and "national interest," and as a result do not always see the medium and long-term consequences of their actions. Estonia, for, example, would have done better not to antagonize Russia, and Moscow would have done better not to indulge in silly rhetoric against Estonia as if such a small country represented a threat to one of the biggest and most populous countries on the planet. Like America, Russia could learn much from Japan, which has taken countless Western ideas and improved upon them to build the second-largest economy in the world. For much of its history, however, Russia has borrowed Western ideas and adapted them to Russian conditions, usually diluting and distorting them in the process. Russia then proceeds to tell everyone that it is implementing these ideas just as well or even better than the West itself - the results are well-known. Russia's current position is curiously inconsistent and at odds with its stated goals - the desire to develop and be accepted as an equal member of the Western club and "civilized" world. Constant talk of democracy and a market economy at home and of international friendship and partnership is intermingled with rhetoric and actions that are widely perceived both in Russia and abroad as proving the exact opposite. At the same time, the West is often too quick to dismiss legitimate Russian grievances. The American people at both state and grass-roots levels are increasingly concerned about global warming, while more and more companies in America (and Europe) see it as a business opportunity. So with the Bush administration in denial and abdicating its responsibility and emerging countries keen to develop, it will be left to Europe and grass roots pressure in the United States to help bring about change and push for a concerted international effort, including the sale of advanced environmentally technology to emerging countries. This would in turn help to put real pressure on China and India. Despite the views of the conspiracy theorists and the Cold Warriors in the United States and Russia, there are in fact no real conflicts of interests between the two sides despite all the unpleasant rhetoric of recent months. In fact, the opportunities and potential benefits from joint action on the major issues facing the world are huge and include much closer economic ties. Energy security, for example, has a rarely mentioned flipside - consumers such as Europe, the United States, China and India need more certainty, but so do suppliers such as Russia. In order to break the current impasse - especially the differences between Russia and the West - far greater statesmanship, dialogue and mutual understanding are required. Unfortunately, these seem sadly lacking at the moment as countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia, backed up by some of the sillier and often less informed serious media on both sides, insist on the default position that they - and they alone - are right. Ian Pryde is CEO of Eurasia Strategy & Communications, Moscow. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 11 RIA Novosti: Clouds over G8 summit Opinion & analysis - 19:22 | 06/ 06/ 2007 MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov) - The G8 summit in Heiligendamm, a German spa on the Baltic coast, is both similar to previous forums and different from them at the same time. It has the same concise agenda that includes major subjects of paramount importance for the world - climate change, poverty in Africa, socially acceptable forms of globalization and issues of regional security - Kosovo, Iran and the Middle East. It differs from the previous summits in the higher level of confrontation. The eight leaders have very divergent positions on almost every item on the agenda. Climate change is one of the most disputed issues. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and Germany and a number of other European countries demand a new agreement with even tougher restrictions on hothouse emissions - cutting them down by half by 2050. The United States, which has not signed the protocol, is against this. George W. Bush is trying to replace the idea of a new agreement with a conference of 14 countries on environmentally clean technologies, but this initiative has not met with enthusiastic support. The G8 countries are seriously divided on Kosovo's future status. Russia is against the plan that would tear it off from Serbia by giving it artificial independence. There is no agreement on the Iranian nuclear program - some countries, including Russia, believe that further toughening of sanctions against it is counterproductive and would like to continue the talks. But the highest point of confrontation is not mentioned in the official agenda although it is hovering over the summit like a thunderous cloud. This is the deterioration of relations between Russia and the West, primarily the United States. It seems only recently Moscow and Washington were exchanging assurances of strategic partnership. But in June 2007, they are lashing out at each other before the eyes of the jittery world. At a conference in the Czech Republic Bush said that Russian democracy was derailed, while Vladimir Putin told journalists from G8 countries that the U.S. ABM elements in Europe might upset the global strategic balance. Some Russian experts are blaming this return to unfriendly rhetoric on objective factors, for instance, the nuclear arsenal from the Cold War era. No matter what policymakers may say, it is probable that American and Russian deterrents continue to be targeted against each other. In a bid to justify the existence of nuclear weapons, generals from both countries are pressing their commanders in chief, the presidents, into periodic exchange of loud criticism. But this argument is not convincing. Nuclear arsenals existed five and ten years ago but did not prevent Russia and the United States from uniting in the face of international terrorism. Quite the reverse, the chill is occurring at a time when American strategic weapons are undergoing a major metamorphosis that few have noticed. For the first time in history, inalienable components of the U.S. nuclear potential may appear in Europe. Deployment of interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic may change the entire configuration of world security, dooming Russia to countermeasures. In Moscow's view, the United States has failed to explain why its ABM components designed to rebuff a hypothetical attack by Iran or North Korea should be placed near Russia rather than the potential enemies, all the more so since they have no means of attack, that is, missiles with a range of 5,000 km-8,000 km. Moscow is adamant that the American ABM system in Europe is targeted against Russia and creates an illusion of protection in American eyes, thereby enhancing the risk of a nuclear conflict. It is also bound to trigger off a new round of the arms race. Moscow is also perplexed by the conduct of the European Union. It regards low-quality Polish meat (as it has transpired Germany does not want it, either) as a good excuse to remind everyone of European solidarity. But the idea of two EU newcomers to host elements of the U.S. nuclear potential in Europe does not prompt the EU to discuss the principles of solidarity. That said, neither Bush, nor Putin consider today's differences a disaster, but are trying to use every opportunity to reach a compromise. They will look for them in Heiligendamm. Regrettably for both leaders, their wings are cut. This is the last G8 summit for Putin and the one but last for Bush. Both leaders feel the implacable approach of the presidential race when international problems are relegated to background and domestic attitudes come to the fore. The prevailing attitudes in Russia are as follows - we are too soft on America; we are being ignored and circled with bases and missile silos. Similar nationalistic slogans are gaining momentum in America as well. The summit in Germany will show whether the leaders will manage to protect mutual interests of strategic partnership. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 12 BBC NEWS: US rejects German G8 climate goal Last Updated: Wednesday, 6 June 2007, 15:47 GMT 16:47 UK Protesters are determined to make their views heard Washington says it will not agree to a deal on slashing greenhouse gas emissions at the G8 summit in Germany. A top US climate official said the G8 should not dictate members' policies, but President Bush said he still had a "strong desire" for a post-Kyoto plan. Washington's row with Moscow over US plans for a shield in two former Soviet satellites also looms over the summit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hosting the summit, has set what is seen as an ambitious personal goal of persuading the leading industrialised countries to commit to cutting emissions by 50% by 2050. She also wants them to increase fuel efficiency by 20% and limit the world's temperature rise to 2C. However, President George W Bush's senior climate adviser said on Wednesday that a number of countries - including the US - would not sign up to those commitments. James Connaughton insisted that there had been significant progress and consensus on the issue of climate change. But he made clear the US did not believe the G8 should be the forum for setting targets. "There is significant agreement that those should be established on a national basis, and the only area of disagreement is that the G8 should dictate the national policies of its members," he said. Anti-poverty talks Mrs Merkel is using the hours before the summit opens to meet the leaders of the Group of Eight club individually. Speaking ahead of his meeting, Mr Bush said that instead of backing the proposed emissions caps he favoured his own plan that the worst CO2 emitting nations, including the US, China and India, meet before the year is out to put together a new long-term strategy to tackle the problem. It is Nicolas Sarkozy's first time representing France at the talks "The United States can serve as a bridge to help find a solution," Mr Bush said. Anti-poverty campaigners are also hoping for action at this year's G8 summit. On Wednesday evening Mr Bush, accompanied by his wife Laura Bush, will meet Live8 organiser Bob Geldof and U2 front man Bono to discuss poverty in Africa. BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says meetings of the world's most powerful leaders are always difficult, but this one looks especially tough. Mrs Merkel is going to have to decide how far the most contentious issues can be pushed. She is operating against a backdrop of increasingly fractious relations between some of the G8 members. Russian threat Mr Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have been trading threats and accusations ahead of the meeting, sparked by Washington's plans to build a missile defence shield. I think behind the scenes at the G8 there will be the opportunity for people to have a frank conversation about Russia, with Russia Tony Blair Blair warning over Russia Diary: On tour with Bush The Czech Republic is the planned site for a radar base, while interceptor missiles are due to be deployed in Poland. Mr Bush, who is expected to meet Mr Putin on the sidelines of the summit, insists that the new system is a "purely defensive measure, aimed not at Russia but at true threats". However, Mr Putin has scoffed at US claims that the shield is designed to counter threats from states such as North Korea and Iran, and warned that if the US pressed ahead with its plans, Russia would target its weapons at Europe. On Wednesday Mr Bush dismissed the warning, saying "Russia is not going to attack Europe". "Russia is not an enemy," he said. "There needs to be no military response because we're not at war with Russia. Russia is not a threat." Violence fear UK Prime Minister Tony Blair entered the debate in a BBC interview on Wednesday, saying it was not in Russia's interest to have a "scratchy" relationship with Western countries. Protesters equipped with wire cutters have been trying to breach security He vowed a "frank discussion" with Mr Putin about his warning. Tensions are equally high outside the summit where several hundred anti-globalisation protesters have gathered near the fence protecting the building where the leaders of the eight top industrialised nations are due to meet. Others are trying to block the roads from the airport, where several delegations have yet to land. Police are also said to be using tear gas, but there have not been reports of any arrests or injuries. Some 16,000 officers have been deployed to deal with what are currently estimated to be around 6,000 protesters. The police are keen to avoid the disturbances seen last weekend in the city of Rostock, where protests turned violent and some 1,000 people were injured. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 13 Post Chronicle: Nuclear Futures -- Part 2 - Security&Terrorism Outside View: Outside View: Nuclear Futures -- Part 2 By Alexander Khramchikhin Jun 6, 2007 As during the Vietnam War, Russia can exploit America's problems but has not done this so far. The U.S. strategic nuclear force has remained unchanged for the past 15 years with a few insignificant exceptions, such as the withdrawal of MX missiles and a portion of B-52 bombers, and the replacement of ballistic weapons with cruise missiles on four Ohio nuclear submarines. Russia is reducing its strategic nuclear weapons quickly. Interestingly, in the moneyless 1990s, Moscow managed to maintain its strategic nuclear potential almost at the same level as it was immediately after the Soviet Union's disintegration; in the 21st century strategic arms are rapidly dwindling even despite a sharp growth in defense expenditures. Unlike the United States, which has not acquired new strategic carriers for a long time, Russia has been building its mobile, and since the late 1990s, silo-based Topol ICBMs. However, the problem is that the Topol missile has only one warhead, whereas the old Soviet models carried from six to 10 warheads, but they are now being decommissioned as their service life expires. This means that the number of warheads on sea- and ground-based missiles has been halved during 2000-2007. Russia is trying to upgrade the sea leg of its strategic nuclear arsenal, but the new Bulava SLBM has not passed a single successful test. Substantial cuts in offensive arms are creating an entirely new military-strategic situation not only in Russian-U.S. relations but also in the world as a whole. First, with fewer strategic carriers and warheads, the ABM system may prove effective. The current ABM systems -- either Russian, or even less so, the half-virtual American -- are incapable of parrying a massive nuclear strike. In fact, there is no sense in trying to do this. But a tangible reduction in the number of potential targets may prompt some people to think that the game is worth the candle. One can invest in the development of a really effective ABM system and first-strike weapons, for example, in conventional high-accuracy systems. The final goal is to create a capability for a disarming first strike (nuclear, non-nuclear or mixed) at the enemy's strategic nuclear potential. ABM will finish off whatever survives the first blow. To sum up, reduction of offensive arms, lack of restrictions on defensive weapons and rapid development of non-nuclear high-accuracy systems may destabilize the world situation. Second, 35 years ago, either the Soviet or the American potential were many times bigger than the British, French and Chinese nuclear arsenals put together. Now the situation has changed. More countries have nuclear weapons, whereas both Russia and the United States now have fewer carriers and warheads than before. Moreover, only these two countries are bound by a treaty on medium and shorter-range missiles. This makes further bilateral treaties pointless. Any new nuclear arms reduction agreements should cover all nuclear countries, including unofficial members of the club -- Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. This is a much bigger problem for Russia than for the United States. All other nuclear countries are in Eurasia, and the bulk of nuclear weapons are targeted at Russia. China, for instance, has a few ICBMs that can reach America, but many more medium-range missiles that are aimed at Russia and India. Maybe this is how the Moscow-Delhi-Beijing triangle manifests itself. Today, mutual security requires an entirely new approach, but nobody is likely to adopt it. Moreover, the bad situation is getting worse. Having become the world's only leader in the early 1990s, the United States has uprooted a system of international law, thereby inflicting heavy damage on itself. We are watching the demise of the unipolar world. It is not becoming multipolar and is only breeding chaos. Russia does not have a clear-cut foreign policy concept and is clinging to the old Soviet line in a completely different geopolitical situation. None of the other countries is ready to play first fiddle in world affairs. Under the circumstances, many countries may be tempted to take part in the new race for nuclear missiles and other weapons. Alexander Khramchikhin heads the analytical department at the Institute of Political and Military Analysis. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti. (c) UPI © Copyright 2004-2007 by Post Chronicle Corp. ***************************************************************** 14 AFP: Dark days for Putin-Bush friendship at G8 summit - by Sebastian Smith Wed Jun 6, 11:49 AM ET HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (AFP) - Six years after they first met, and US President George W. Bush reported gazing into Russian President Vladimir Putin's soul, the two leaders face tense talks here at the G8 summit on Thursday. Bush's strong personal ties with Putin have been at the heart of US-Russian relations since a summit in Slovenia in June 2001, when Bush emerged declaring: "I was able to get a sense of his soul." Now bitter disagreement over US military plans in Europe and Russia's democratic record overshadows the George-and-Vladimir show as the presidents prepare to meet at the Group of Eight summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. Trust is collapsing and a dispute over a proposed US anti-missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland is rapidly intensifying. Ahead of the summit, Putin warned that Russia would respond to the shield by targeting nuclear missiles at Europe, as during the Cold War. "We are, of course, returning to this era," he said. Putin, whose petrodollar-fuelled country is brimming with new confidence, has also recently labelled White House policies as imperialist, colonialist and arrogantly "unilateral." On the eve of the G8, Bush struck back, accusing Putin of "derailing" democratic reforms and pledging to go ahead with the anti-missile shield, which he insisted was not aimed at Russia. However, the rivals are still talking and on arrival in Heiligendamm, Bush responded calmly to Putin's missile warning, saying: "Russia is not going to attack Europe." He said that Russia is not a threat. In addition to Thursday's session, the two will meet again in three weeks at a more relaxed setting of the Bush family home at Kennebunkport in Maine. A senior Kremlin official said Wednesday the rancour was not impeding cooperation on wider G8 issues, such as African poverty relief and global warming. "We're discussing the G8 agenda, not (missiles) and not democracy," Putin G8 advisor Andrei Kondakov told journalists. "These issues are important but can be dealt with at bilateral (meetings) or on the margins of the G8." "I don't feel any pressure sitting at the table," he said. The two presidents, both of whom leave office in 2008 at the end of their second terms, may even rekindle the back-slapping warmth of previous days, when Bush revelled in folksy talk about his "friend Vladimir." Observers point to curious symmetry in the presidencies of outwardly very different men. Both were defined by self-declared wars against "terrorists" -- Chechnya for Putin and the US response to the September 11, 2001 attacks for Bush -- that critics saw as trampling over human rights. Both are known for macho rhetoric and both have pushed for strong presidential powers, albeit to a far more extreme level in Putin's case. But friendly chats are unlikely to overcome a widening East-West rift. In addition to the missile shield row Putin is at loggerheads with the European Union over energy exports and trade, and is accused of bullying pro-Western former Soviet republics such as Georgia. Britain's extradition request for an ex-KGB officer accused of last year's radiation poisoning of a Russian ex-agent in London will also weigh on Putin's G8 talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin will answer any concerns -- and raise his own. But "laying out worries does not mean a crisis situation." Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 15 UPI: Analysis: Cold War at G8? United Press International - International Intelligence - Analysis Published: June 6, 2007 at 12:08 PM By STEFAN NICOLA UPI Germany Correspondent HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, June 6 (UPI) -- Wednesday's Group of Eight summit meeting is heading for a clash between Russia and the West over the country's backsliding democracy, a U.S. missile defense system planned in Eastern Europe and the mysterious murder of a former Russian spy-turned-Kremlin critic. Recently, both Washington and Moscow further turned up the heat in their war of words. U.S. President George W. Bush, a day before he was due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G8 summit, rebuked Russia for its deteriorating democratic record. "In Russia, reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development," Bush said as he spoke in Prague, Czech Republic, a country that wants to be a part of the controversial U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe. Over the weekend, Putin had launched the most daunting threat against the West yet, when he said the U.S. system, which foresees 10 bunker-protected rockets to be stationed in Poland and an accompanying radar unit in the Czech Republic, would force him to retarget Russia's nuclear rockets toward Europe. Russia sees the missiles as a threat against its territory, despite U.S. pledges that Moscow needn't be worried. "As a matter of fact why don't you cooperate with us?" Bush asked in Prague. U.S. officials have repeatedly extended an invitation to Moscow to join the system, with no results. Western diplomats are increasingly frustrated over Putin's unwillingness to move -- not even an inch -- on any issue, be it energy, democracy, independence of Kosovo or the U.S. missiles. The missile system has even managed to disunite Europe; politicians across the continent have either praised the missile shield as an important security asset or bashed Washington for not informing Russia ahead of time. "Ten interceptors threatening Russia's entire nuclear arsenal? That's the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time," John Hulsman, trans-Atlantic and Europe expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International in a Wednesday telephone interview. "But even when the Americans are right with their policy, nobody trusts them. That's the price you pay for Iraq." "We will likely see a lot of fireworks at this G8 summit," he added. The big question is: What is Putin gaining from his current confrontational policy? "That's the question we are all asking ourselves," Hannes Adomeit, Russia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, told UPI Wednesday. Adomeit said it was most likely a combination of several issues: -- Putin wants to elevate Russia's defense standing; that strategy goes hand-in-hand with the United States' lessened clout after Iraq and the growing self-confidence of Moscow because of its energy assets. -- Putin is tired of being lectured on democracy, and has thus dropped a boulder of blockage against the missile system into the Atlantic, "watching how it's drawing its circles." -- Putin wants to rebuke the Baltic and Eastern European states who have joined the European Union and NATO. -- Putin wants to pave the way for December's parliamentary elections and the presidential elections next March. "Putin's self-confident rhetoric toward the United States goes down well with the Russian public," Adomeit said. Hulsman, a former senior fellow at the conservative Washington-based Heritage Foundation, offered another theory: "In the 1980s, Putin was a very able KGB spy," he said, adding that the main goal of the time was to secure and spread Russian influence through its gas supplies, and to try to divide the alliance over missile defense. "So there really is no change in the playbook," he said, arguing that Putin's strategy was also aimed at disuniting the West and that he was testing "how far he can go." Adomeit said that behind the scenes, talks on issues that the West and Russia agree upon -- namely Iran -- will continue. Most Western leaders, including Bush on Tuesday, have stressed that Russia remains an important ally and that the days of the Cold War with its hair-raising nuclear confrontations are over. Adomeit stressed there is no need for hysteria. "Rhetorically, it is heating up, but it's not a real crisis yet," he said. It could turn into one during the summit, however. Outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced he will send some tough words in the direction of Putin as a diplomatic row has developed with Moscow over the murder of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned last November in his exile in London. British prosecutors last month said they had enough evidence to charge Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB spy, with the poisoning of Litvinenko, calling on Russia to extradite the man so he can be brought before a British court. However, the Russian constitution forbids extraditing Russian citizens. "If they didn't know (about the constitutional prohibition) it's a low level of competence and thus we have doubts about what they're doing there. And if they knew and did this, it's simply politics," Putin said in a recent interview released by the Kremlin. "This is bad and that is bad -- from all sides it's the same stupidity," Putin said. On Tuesday, Russia's Ambassador to Britain in an interview with the Financial Times accused London of fueling the conflict with "megaphone diplomacy." Yet observers say Britain is right to remind Russia of its obligations in the spy murder. "Even if nothing happens, Blair is right to make a point on this," Hulsman said. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 UPI: Gorbachev calls missile plans 'arrogant' United Press International - NewsTrack - Top News - Published: June 6, 2007 at 5:12 PM MOSCOW, June 6 (UPI) -- Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev Tuesday warned a new Cold War could develop as a result of U.S. "arrogance" over a missile defense system for Europe. In an interview with CNN, Gorbachev said U.S. plans to site the missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic would make Europe a target. "I do hope the Cold War is not going to be repeated," he told CNN. "We must take advantage of opportunities to avoid that." "There is the possibility that self-confidence, arrogance, will lead to a situation similar to that with the war in Iraq. The U.S. is driving itself into a corner -- they've lost credibility in the world." Gorbachev backed Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said the missile system will set Europe against Russia and spark an arms race. The former Soviet leader also told CNN a nuclear Iran should be opposed but warned a war to stop Tehran would be a "catastrophic mistake." © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 17 ITAR-TASS: Russia's modern weapons protect from blackmail, pressure - Ivanov 06.06.2007, 16.46 MOSCOW, June 6 (Itar-Tass) - Russia is developing modern armaments to protect itself from blackmail and pressure, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov stated on Wednesday. "Russia wishes to be sure that it can defend itself effectively under any scenario, so that nobody could blackmail or put pressure on us," Ivanov said answering a question from a youth organization representative about the deployment of U.S. anti-missile defense facilities in Europe. "In military terms, we can ensure our security only with modern technologies and modern armaments, not with masses of people," he said. "We aren't creating new bases. Actually, no sane person would claim that Russia poses a military threat to someone," he said. "At the same time, we see new bases appearing. It's not a matter of radars, but the appearance of an element of U.S. strategic nuclear forces in Europe," the first deputy premier said. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, store ***************************************************************** 18 The Statesman: TN super six in Upper House Thursday, 7 June 2007 Statesman News Service CHENNAI, June 6: All six names proposed for Rajya Sabha from Tamil Nadu were today cleared by the Chief Electoral Officer here after scrutiny. The DMK-led DPA takes four seats a Heat rises in north India Chandigarh, June 6: With the monsoon a far cry, people in northern India continued to sweat it out under the blazing sun today as the mercury rose to 43.4 degrees Celsius in Hisar in Haryana. The rai NCP seeks deputy CM’s post Panaji, June 6: The NCP expects the deputy chief minister’s post in the new Goa government, party observer for the state, Mr Gurunath Kulkarni said here today. “Obviously, we expect the earlier arrang India scuttles polio jab plan, for now Statesman News Service NEW DELHI, June 6: India has managed to scuttle an international resolution asking for mandatory polio vaccination for all travellers to and from India, but the reprieve is onl Budhia walkathon comes a cropper Statesman News Service BHUBANESWAR, June 6: It was high drama at the Kala Mandap area today as the much hyped 500 km “walkathon” of wonderkid Budhia Singh to Kolkata ended in a protest dharna in whic Don exam ghostwriter confesses Press Trust of India Muzaffarpur, June 6: A man who was on the run for over two years surrendered today and confessed that he wrote answer scripts in a law examination for controversial Rashtriya Jana Blasts case: Three more sentenced Statesman News Service Mumbai, June 6: The designated Tada court judge Mr Pramod D Kode today sentenced three more convicts in the March 1993 serial blasts case to imprisonment ranging from five yea Indo-US nuke plans denounced HYDERABAD, June 6: A group of regional political parties denounced a much-touted nuclear civilian deal between India and the USA yesterday, saying the pact would undermine New Delhi’s atomic weapons p Who will be President? Parties wait ’n watch Statesman News Service NEW DELHI, June 6: The three major blocks ~ UPA-Left, NDA and the “third front” ~ have stuck to a “wait-and-watch policy”, shying away from revealing their cards about the next Raje ignored Intelligence reports Statesman News Service NEW DELHI, June 6: The week-long violence and caste riots between Gujjar and Meena communities appears to have subsided but the failure of the state government in handling the Jaya fears tax raid on residence Statesman News Service HYDERABAD, June 6: AIADMK leader Ms J Jayalalithaa today feared that there would be Income Tax raids on her residence at Chennai and places belonging to her associates. “We have No child labourer in plantations: Report Statesman News Service NEW DELHI, June 6: No child labourer has been found employed in the plantation industries of tea, coffee and rubber plantations. This has been stated by the Labour Bureau in Primary success for education NEW DELHI, June 6: The country is approaching near universalisation of enrolment at the primary level of education with overall enrolment going up to 94 per cent in the 6 to 14 age group, according to Ecstasy row DUBAI, June 6: No trace of the so-called “party drug” Ecstasy was found in blood and urine samples of an Indian music arranger (of sorts) who was detained at the Dubai airport yesterday for allegedly ***************************************************************** 19 The Hindu: Nuke issue: India, US keen to resolve differences Thursday, June 7, 2007 : 0315 Hrs Berlin, June 7 (PTI): With both India and US keen on early wrap up of talks on the civil nuclear agreement, officials of the two countries will seek to resolve the differences over the pact ahead of the meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W Bush on Friday. A number of new proposals have been made and these will be discussed by officials before the summit meeting between the two countries at Germany's Heliigendamm sea-side resort on the sidelines of the G-8 summit. The proposals have come up as part of efforts to veer around the differences, particularly on the reprocessing right, that have prevented any breakthrough in the year-long negotiations on the 123 agreement. Key negotiators of the two countries-- Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns-- met in New Delhi last week but failed to conclude negotiations as differences persisted. The two sides are looking for a political push at the highest level to break the logjam in talks, which could come at the brief meeting between Singh and Bush. In the backdrop of Singh and Bush affirming their commitment to the July 18, 2005, agreement on civil nuclear cooperation and the March 2, 2006 Separation Plan, the two sides are hoping for an expression of intent coming at the end of the "pull aside" meeting of the two leaders. The two countries are aiming at sorting out differences particularly on issues like reprocessing right, perpetuity of fuel supplies and continuance of the civil nuclear cooperation if India were to conduct an atomic test. India has been insisting on having the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and is not ready to accept any legally binding clause in the agreement that could cap its strategic nuclear programme. Under the US law, Washington will have the right to seek return of material and equipment in the event of India carrying out nuclear tests. The US contention that Presidential waiver could be a way out of the binding under the American law doesn't find much favour on the Indian side which argues that future Presidents could overturn the waiver. Both sides have maintained that while some progress has been made at the recent talks, there was still distance to cover. Against this backdrop, officials are unwilling to raise expectations of any breakthrough at the Singh-Bush meeting. The 123 agreement being negotiated will operationalise the July 18, 2005 civil nuclear deal, ending a 30-year nuclear freeze. Both sides are in the process of exchanging formulations well aware that the final agreement has to secure the approval of the US Congress and the Indian Parliament. The Prime Minister, who is accompanied by National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, Foreign Secretary and senior officials, will tomorrow meet Chinese President Hu Jintao during which the two sides will review progress on the ongoing talks between the Special Representatives on the border issue besides covering the entire gamut of bilateral relations. The issue of climate change is also expected to figure prominently at the Singh-Bush meeting. India has been insisting that developed countries share the burden and allow access to technology to developing countries. He will also have separate meetings with UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon and Presidents of Mexico and Nigeria. Singh will attend a meeting of leaders of five outreach countries comprising India, China, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico. They will discuss issues ranging from global economy, climate change, protection of intellectual property rights, energy and environment. India, China and Brazil share similar views on climate change. New Delhi has no objection to going along with certain elements of Bush's recent address on climate change relating to clean technologies, energy security and sharing of IPR regime. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. ***************************************************************** 20 NRC: William Raymond Named NRC Senior Resident Inspector at Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant News Release - Region I - 2007-033 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials in King of Prussia, Pa., have appointed William J. Raymond as the new Senior Resident Inspector at the Seabrook nuclear power plant. He joins Resident Inspector Steve Shaffer at the Seabrook, N.H., plant. Raymond succeeds Glenn Dentel, who was promoted to a branch chief in the Region I office. “Bill Raymond has extensive technical and regulatory experience, and has demonstrated the dedication to safety to carry out NRC’s commitment to protect people and the environment," said NRC Region I Administrator Samuel J. Collins. “He is our eyes and ears on site, monitoring daily operations.” Two NRC resident inspectors are assigned to Seabrook. Raymond began his NRC career in 1975 as a reactor engineer in the NRC’s Region I office in King of Prussia. He was a member of the NRC’s Onsite Support Group following the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979. He has been the Senior Resident Inspector at the Haddam Neck nuclear plant in Haddam, Conn., Millstone Station in Waterford, Conn., Vermont Yankee in Vernon, Vt., Yankee Rowe, in Rowe, Mass., Indian Point 2 in Buchanan, N.Y., and most recently at Pilgrim in Plymouth, Mass. He also worked in the Regional Office as a Senior Reactor engineer in the Division of Reactor Safety. In 1985 and in 2002, Raymond was awarded the "NRC Meritorious Service Award" for his performance as a resident inspector. Prior to joining the NRC, Raymond worked for Babcock and Wilcox Company as a lead startup engineer at Three Mile Island Unit 1; and as a startup engineer at Oconee 1 and 2 near Seneca, S.C. He also worked as a reactor operator/research associate at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He earned a bachelor of science degree in physics from Fairfield University (Fairfield, Conn.), and a masters in nuclear science and engineering from Virginia Tech. He also attended the graduate liberal studies program at Wesleyan College in Conn. NRC news releases are available through a free list server subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. Wednesday, June 06, 2007 ***************************************************************** 21 PerthNow: Anti-nuclear stance becomes law | NEWS.com.au | Jim Kelly June 05, 2007 09:00am Article from: AAP PREMIER Alan Carpenter will introduce legislation this month to the WA Parliament banning a nuclear industry in WA. Legislation to prohibit the construction of a nuclear power plant in WA, ban the transportation of certain materials used by the industry and outlaw the use of nuclear generated electricity. The laws are designed to thwart any moves by the Commonwealth to override the States on the development of nuclear reactors. Mr Carpenter said his government remained strongly opposed to uranium mining and nuclear energy. "I will do all I can to ensure WA remains free of nuclear power facilities,'' he said. Mr Carpenter said the legislation would allow for a referendum to be held if the Commonwealth tried to override the new State laws. "The people of WA will then be able to have their say on the issue if the Commonwealth moves to develop nuclear power facilities in this State,'' he said. "In other words, it could be at the Commonwealth's political peril if they ever proceeded with such a move.'' Copyright 2007 The Sunday Times. All times AWST (GMT + 8). ***************************************************************** 22 Guardian Unlimited: Blair hope on climate change deal | From Press Association Wednesday June 6, 2007 5:58 AM Prime Minister Tony Blair insists he believes it will be possible to get a deal on climate change that includes both America and China at the meeting of the G8. Mr Blair said a global agreement leading to a "substantial cut" in greenhouse gases could be reached at the three-day summit in Germany, where the leaders of countries accounting for 70% of emissions are gathering. And he played down suggestions that his final - and possibly most important - G8 as Prime Minister would be overshadowed by tensions with Russia over nuclear arms. US President George Bush on Tuesday sought to calm the row with Moscow by inviting Vladimir Putin to co-operate with America in the development of a missile defence system. Mr Blair said that the "doors are open" for good relations with Russia, and said President Putin's threat to target European cities with nuclear arms would not split the trans-Atlantic alliance. Speaking to The Guardian ahead of the G8 summit in the north German resort town of Heiligendamm, Mr Blair said he believed the USA was "on the move" over global warming. Mr Bush's call last week for a "new global framework" on climate change was "significant and important", but it was now necessary to "flesh out what it means", he said. And he spelt out his aims for the G8: "The key elements of this are an acceptance that the climate is changing in a dangerous way as a result of human activity, secondly we need a global agreement that includes all the main players, including China and America, and at the heart of that there has to be a global target for a substantial cut in emissions. "I believe it is possible to get all that way. "You could have a situation where this is agreed at the G8 - which is my preference - or you could see how it is agreed in principle, but you have to work out the details of it later." © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2007, All Rights Reserved. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 23 The Hindu: UAE asks India to play greater role in Gulf issues Wednesday, June 6, 2007 : 2210 Hrs New Delhi, June 6 (PTI): Observing that Iraq situation and Iran's nuclear issue were major long term peace and security concerns, United Arab Emirates (UAE) today asked India to play an increased role on issues affecting the Gulf and neighbouring countries. At an India-UAE Joint Commission meeting here, visiting Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan stressed the need for the two countries to work "more and more closely" on bilateral and regional issues. "At the regional level, we also look forward to an increased involvement by India in issues affecting the Gulf and neighbouring countries," Nahyan said at the meeting where the Indian side was led by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee. "There are major concerns about long term peace and security in Iraq, about Iran's nuclear programme and, more generally, about stability and security in the Arabian Gulf," the UAE minister said. He also pointed out that the Middle East peace process was "faltering" if "not already stalled". "We also share with you concerns about the situation in Afghanistan," Nahyan said. Favouring increased broad-based engagement between the two countries, the UAE minister said his country was embarking on a new phase of its growth, while the Indian economy was one of the fastest growing in Asia with an impact on global economy. "There is today, perhaps more than ever before, great scope for further deepening and diversification of our relations in all fields," Nahyan said. He said UAE looked forward to early conclusion of agreements, like on protection of investments, customs and security affairs. UAE also hopes for early signing of the Free Trade Agreement between India and the Gulf Cooperation Council, he said. "Once in place, these, and other agreements, such as the recently-concluded one on labour issues, will consolidate the framework of cooperation between us," Nahyan said. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. ***************************************************************** 24 The Hindu: Improving nuclear energy share Thursday, Jun 07, 2007 NEW DELHI : The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) has urged the Union Government to amend the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, to facilitate the entry of private players into nuclear power generation and ensure that the share of nuclear energy goes up by 10-12 per cent by 2012 from the present level of three per cent. A study on `India's nuclear energy: unfolding possibilities,' has highlighted that the projected level of nuclear generation percentage could be achieved from 3 per cent currently as in future crude oil and other existing sources of energy would not be available in abundance. India would have to lay greater focus on nuclear power generation. There will be two options for India to enhance its nuclear power generation? one through imported uranium and the other by way of harnessing thorium, for which it will have to commercialise the technology, states the study. According to Assocham president Venugopal N. Dhoot, the Indo-U.S. Agreement on nuclear issue needs to be facilitated to boost the nuclear energy programme. He said India's finite sources of uranium could be a constraint. New sources of uranium need to be located quickly and mined. The maturing of the country's technological capabilities, and the impressive performance of the 16 operational nuclear reactors and past data shows that efficiency had varied from 74 per cent to only once 90 per cent in 2002-03 in the plants run by NPCIL. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the ***************************************************************** 25 Houston Chronicle: Fish Impact Snags Nuclear Plant License | Chron.com - June 6, 2007, 2:33PM By WAYNE PARRY Associated Press Writer LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Concerns about leaky liners, terrorist attacks and meltdowns have dominated the debate over whether the nation's oldest nuclear power plant should be allowed to continue operating until it is 60 years old. But considerations as mundane as anchovies, crabs and turtles have derailed plans by the owners of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station to extend its operating license _ at least for now. The state Department of Environmental Protection has rejected the plant's contention that it can operate for another 20 years without causing significant harm to marine life. Until the plant's operators, AmerGen Energy Co., address that issue, the relicensing plan cannot go forward, said Elaine Makatura, a spokeswoman for the DEP. "They cannot get a permit if they are not in compliance" with the federal Coastal Zone Management Act, she said. The law is designed to protect the marine environment. AmerGen has several options available to it, including seeking mediation with the DEP, or appealing directly to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to overturn the state decision. Leslie Cifelli, a company spokeswoman, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Wednesday. Activated in 1969, Oyster Creek is the oldest nuclear power plant in the nation, along with one in upstate New York that went online the same day. Its license expires in April 2009, and AmerGen is seeking as 20-year extension that would make the plant 60 years old at the end of the extension. Oyster Creek is a boiling water reactor, with a design that is now considered obsolete and is barred in construction of new nuclear plants. In addition, there is concern about corrosion of a metal safety liner that keeps superheated radioactive steam inside the reactor. But those issues will now have to wait until AmerGen can prove assertions it made to the state that Oyster Creek's impact on marine life is "small." Located on the Oyster Creek, the plant draws water from the creek to help cool the reactor, and discharges warmer water afterward. Periodic fish kills have occurred near the plant, and various marine life have been sucked into or up against intake pipes, killing them. ***************************************************************** 26 SanLuisObispo.com: State bill could slow Diablo Canyon relicensing 06/06/2007 | If passed, the bill would put the power plant’s relicensing on hold until the Energy Commission completes a nuclear study By David Sneed - dsneed@thetribunenews.com The Assembly’s Appropriations Committee has approved a bill that would put the relicensing of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on hold until a study on the future of nuclear power in California is completed. The bill by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would forbid the state Public Utilities Commission from approving any further use of electricity ratepayer money for costs associated with nuclear plant relicensing until the state Energy Commission completes a study into the price of storing high-level nuclear waste at Diablo Canyon and the San Onofre nuclear generating station in northern San Diego County. The legislation was prompted by a Public Utilities Commission decision to allow Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to charge ratepayers $16.8 million for a study into the feasibility of renewing Diablo Canyon’s two operating licenses even though they will not expire until after 2020. “Moving nuclear plant reauthorizations forward 15 years before expiration of their current licenses and without a careful and deliberate analysis that is independent of vested interests is bad public policy,” said Leno, who chairs the Appropriations Committee. The bill leaves money for the PG&E study intact but forbids any further spending until the Energy Commis- sion study is complete. The estimated $800,000 study is scheduled to begin in July and be complete by the end of 2008. PG&E opposes the legislation, saying it is unnecessary because the Public Utilities Commission has required that the findings of the Energy Commission’s report be incorporated in PG&E’s feasibility study, said Sharon Gavin, a spokeswoman for PG&E. “The bill could prevent a utility from even initiating the relicensing process until the study is complete,” she said. The Energy Commission study was mandated by a bill authored last year by Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo, and approved by the Legislature. In addition to determining the cost of storing nuclear waste, the study will look at the vulnerability of major electrical generating stations like Diablo Canyon to disruption by earthquakes or aging components. Blakeslee has not taken a position on the Leno bill, said Christine Robertson, his chief of staff. It will be heard in the Assembly’s Utilities and Commerce Committee next week. It has the backing of local nuclear watchdog groups and the Sierra Club. “This bill reasonably asks utilities to wait until the review is completed before rushing to relicensure,” said Rochelle Becker, executive director of the San Luis Obispo-based Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility. Diablo Canyon’s two nuclear reactors generate 1,100 megawatts of electricity, or about 10 percent of the state’s power needs. Reach David Sneed at 781-7930. Should Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant be relicensed? ***************************************************************** 27 The Hindu: Cong. may not clear if Indo-US deal 'renegotiated' - Cohen Wednesday, June 6, 2007 : 2210 Hrs Washington, June 6 (PTI): Amidst the haggling over the 123 Agreement, a top former US official has warned that if the deal is "renegotiated" the Congress may not clear it which will be a setback for the Indo-US defence ties. "It is my personal view that if there are any significant changes that would have to be renegotiated then this agreement would not go forward. That is simply the political reality of where we are today," former Defence Secretary in the Clinton administration William Cohen said. "President Bush had to expend considerable political capital and that capital is going to be in continuous decline as we approach 2008, as it is only to be expected. We don't really have a strong level of support to come back for a vote," Cohen said addressing a meeting organised by the US India Business Council. "This USIBC really worked hard... we were able to get the support of Capitol Hill," Cohen said adding that he hoped the civilian nuclear deal initiative would not have to go for any renegotiations. "Now we have American aerospace defence companies that are eager to invest in India and to have joint ventures. So, I think that will be setback. It is not irreversible, but it will be a setback somewhat for sometime," Cohen said. "If that agreement doesn't go through would it terminate our defence relations ? No. Whether it would set it back a year or two or more ? I think the answer is yes," he said. "We have a shift in the political dynamics of this country from Republicans to Democrats... It may change in 2008. It is hard to predict how it will play out in international globalised relations," Cohen said. The function was organised to mark USIBC's ties with CII and to welcome its new President Sunil Bharti Mittal. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. ***************************************************************** 28 Platts: Uranium costs may lead to more regular refuelings - Exelon exec 007-5J Washington (Platts)--5Jun2007 Rising prices could see utilities revert to 12-month nuclear fuel replacement cycles to save on uranium costs, according to Haksoo Kim, acting director of fuel supply at Exelon Nuclear. Kim, speaking at the World Nuclear Fuel Market conference in Athens Tuesday, said it is a "myth" that there is nothing utilities can do to reduce uranium demand. "We could reduce uranium demand by 15% to 20% if we go back to 12-month fuel cycles," he said. The industry "couldn't afford" 12-month fuel cycles when refueling outages lasted 60 days, he said, but he proposed a scenario of an 18-day outage one year, followed the next year by a seven-day refueling-only outage. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Electric Utility Week at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/index.xml?src=story or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=2_31&products_id=48 Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 29 Platts: Russia's new nuclear holding company to start operations July 1 London (Platts)--5Jun2007 Russia's new nuclear holding company Atomenegroprom will start operations July 1. Atomenergoprom will combine all of Russia's commercial nuclear companies into a government-owned public stock company, effective July 1, according to Liudmila Zalimskaya, deputy director general of Techsnabexport. Techsnabexport, or Tenex, is one of the companies to be combined into the new Russian commercial nuclear company, along with TVEL, Atomstroyexport and Rosenergoatam. Tenex supplies uranium and enrichment services; TVEL makes nuclear fuel; ASE exports nuclear plants; and REA is Russia's nuclear utility. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/index.xml?story or subscribe now athttp://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=22_41&products_id=67 Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 30 WNN: First half of GE, Hitachi alliance begins operations 05 June 2007 The first half of General Electric and Hitachi's plans to form an alliance of their nuclear businesses has come to fruition with the launch of GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, which will operate throughout the world outside Japan. GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, part of the venture, officially began business on 4 June. Led by GE's current nuclear business executives, it is 60% owned by GE and 40% owned by Hitachi. The second half of the alliance, covering operations in Japan, is due to begin operations in early July under the name Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy and will be 80.1% owned by Hitachi and with GE holding 19.9%. It will be led by Hitachi's current nuclear executives. The companies have a long history of collaboration in developing reactor projects. Hitachi took out a licensing agreement on GE's boiling water reactor (BWR) designs in 1967, and the companies have worked together in developing advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR) designs in Asia. The new alliance "complements and optimizes GE's and Hitachi's respective strengths," according to GE Energy president John Krenicki. The combined nuclear businesses aim to become the world's foremost provider of ABWR plants and related services, but will also offer key equipment and services for pressurized water reactors (PWRs). According to GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy's president and CEO, Andy White, the new business model should enable the companies to capitalize on business synergies and add value for customers. "While GE and Hitachi have collaborated for decades in developing advanced BWR projects, there are relatively few overlapping areas in our respective nuclear businesses", he said. GE and Hitachi are owners, along with Toshiba, of Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF), a nuclear fuel design and manufacturing joint venture. GNF is not part of the newly created alliance. Further information GE Energy Hitachi WNN: GE and Hitachi move closer to a nuclear marriage ***************************************************************** 31 ALBANY BUREAU: Nukes, coal create energy roadblock Tuesday, June 5, 2007 By YANCEY ROY ALBANY - State rules regarding power plants expired four years ago - and the issue has been deadlocked since. Yesterday, rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats experienced first-hand why it's been so tough to find a middle ground. The setting was a conference committee meant to hash out differences over a proposal to streamline energy regulations. But after easily agreeing to some basic goals, they hit a roadblock on whether to allow nuclear plants and every variety of coal plant to qualify for fast-track approval. Senate Republicans insisted that the new law be "technology neutral." That is, any power source could qualify as long as it meets existing pollution standards. Democrats who control the Assembly say they don't want to include nuclear power because the federal-approval process for such plants effectively supersedes state rules. They also want to strictly limit what type of coal plant qualifies. Back and forth they went until they hit this point: "What other topics do you want to discuss since we're not getting anywhere on coal or (energy) diversity?" asked Assembly Energy Committee Chairman Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, Montgomery County. "Maybe it's best we call it a day," replied his counterpart, Sen. James Wright, R-Watertown, Jefferson County. At issue is Article 10, a power-plant siting law that expired in 2003. Because of the gridlock, just a small amount of power supply has been added to the grid while demand has climbed. Gov. Eliot Spitzer has made Article 10 a key component of his energy strategy and of his plans he says will help the upstate economy. High energy costs frequently have been cited as reason the economy has lagged. The governor also has called for allocating $295 million for "clean," renewable power projects - especially wind - and for reducing electricity consumption 15 percent by 2015. Spitzer has put himself between environmental groups and energy groups on coal, by saying that one type of production process (gasification) meets the criteria for "clean coal" and, therefore, fast-track status. Power producers and Senate Republicans want a broader definition. Some environmental groups don't think any type of coal production should qualify. "Shouldn't you incentivize the technologies that have the most benefits to the state?" said Jason Babbie of the New York Public Interest Research Group. "By opening the gates to any and all technologies, you don't know what you're going to get." Reach Yancey Roy at Yroy@gannett.com Copyright © 2007 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York. ***************************************************************** 32 Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter: Plant reactor removed from service Posted June 6, 2007 Herald Times Reporter TWO RIVERS — Operators at Point Beach Nuclear Plant in Two Rivers manually shut down unit 1 at 3:17 p.m. Tuesday, according to a news release from the Nuclear Management Company, which operates the plant. The reactor was removed from service due to a valve malfunction in a non-radioactive area of the plant, the release said. All plant systems responded to shut the plant down as designed. Plant operators are investigating the cause of the trip and will make necessary repairs before returning the plant to service. Point Beach unit 2 continues to operate at 100 percent power. The two-unit Point Beach site generates 1,036 megawatts of electricity. Point Beach is owned by We Energies in Milwaukee. Contact us at 920-684-4433. htrnews.com is a Gannett Company website. Use of this site signifies your agreement to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, updated April 11, 2007., updated June 7, 2005. ***************************************************************** 33 Rutland Herald Online: Yankee cracks concern state June 06, 2007 By Susan Smallheer Herald Staff VERNON — The Department of Public Service wants more information about new cracks in a key component at Vermont Yankee that it suspects developed since the nuclear reactor boosted power production last year. Sarah Hofmann, director of public advocacy for the Department of Public Service, said Tuesday the state is concerned about five cracks on components of the steam dryer and wants additional information about them from plant owner Entergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "There are some cracks we are interested in that are possibly caused by stresses from the power uprate," Hofmann said. Hofmann said William Sherman, the state's retired nuclear engineer, reviewed tapes of the underwater inspection of the dryer Tuesday and came away concerned about the five cracks. Sherman is acting as a special consultant to the state, she said. Entergy Nuclear staff told an NRC panel Tuesday that new cracks were discovered during a more detailed inspection of the steam dryer during the plant's refueling and maintenance outage. The NRC said there were 24 new cracks or beginning indications of cracks in the steam dryer. Hofmann said the state was not concerned about 19 of the 24 cracks, which Sherman believes were due to stress corrosion cracking or the normal wear and tear on the plant's components. There were 64 cracks in the steam dryer reported in November 2005, during the previous refueling outage and inspection. Hofmann said she didn't know the dimensions of the cracks. Hofmann said the state was primarily interested in the condition of the steam dryer because the component had caused costly problems and lengthy shutdowns in other, similar reactors that had undergone similar power boosts. The state has a guarantee from Entergy Nuclear on the reliability issue, but it expires in about 60 days. Robert Williams, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, said the cracks were not an indication of anything wrong. "The dryer is in great condition," he said. In fact, he said 13 of the cracks first identified in 2005 are not visible any longer because of the normal corrosion on the stainless steel. Williams was repeating a picture painted by Entergy Nuclear's Director of Nuclear Safety Assurance John Dreyfuss, who told a subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, that the plant was in great shape due to substantial capital investments Entergy had made in the reactor. The Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards is reviewing Entergy's application for a 20-year extension of its license to operate Vermont Yankee. Williams said the state's concerns centered on a provision in Entergy's state permit for the power boost, which addresses the reliability of the steam dryer. "This is about reliability, not safety," Williams said. Under the state's agreement with Entergy, the state's utilities have a right to be reimbursed if the plant shuts down unexpectedly and the shut down can be traced back to the steam dryer. The steam dryer was a major point of contention during the power boost regulatory hearings. Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the NRC, said the 24 new cracks would be further investigated by the company. "We have reviewed the preliminary information and are satisfied no immediate operability issues exist," Sheehan said. He said the company did not have information on the dimensions of the cracks, noting that Entergy Nuclear would file a report on the cracks within 60 days. According to Dreyfuss, Entergy Nuclear called in General Electric experts to look at the steam dryer during the outage and shutdown, and they were convinced the cracks were a result of minor manufacturing flaws in the steam dryer. The steam dryer, which is made of stainless steel and is 17 feet wide, removes moisture from the steam coming off the reactor before it goes into the plant's turbines, which generate the electricity. The cracks in the steam dryer have been an ongoing problem, as four cracks were discovered in 2004, and the company eventually increased the number to 16. A more detailed inspection brought the number to 62, and now 75. Raymond Shadis, senior technical advisor for the anti-nuclear New England Coalition, said he was unaware of the new cracks discovered during the recent shutdown and inspection. The coalition has long raised issues about the reliability and safety of the steam dryer, pointing to problems at sister reactors to Vermont Yankee in Illinois. "We have been denied access to basic documents," he said, and were unaware of the new cracks. © 2007 Rutland Herald ***************************************************************** 34 recordonline.com: Indian Point's bid for license renewal generates much heat in court of public opinion Entergy wants to operate Indian Point’s nuclear reactors for another 20 years. By Greg Bruno Times Herald-Record June 06, 2007 Buchanan — As emergency officials were tracking the source of radioactive water found in sewage here last month, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore was in Manhattan, ticking off reasons why Indian Point should operate for another 20 years. Not the best timing, perhaps. But Moore's controversial message was not completely clouded by the ill-fated coincidence. He did manage to get a few glowing editorials, and was proclaimed "one of the sanest people on the issue of climate change" by The New York Sun. Such is the battle for public opinion at Indian Point. In the five weeks since Entergy Nuclear Northeast submitted an application for the 20-year renewal of its licenses, which expire in 2013 and 2015, press releases and pronouncements have flown from plant supporters and critics alike. Paul Newman, of Hollywood and salad dressing fame, became the latest celebrity to throw his name behind the plant. Some scoffed at Newman's credentials, and The Record's own editorial board labeled the Hollywood icon a propagandist. But Jim Steets, a spokesman for plant owner Entergy, defended Newman's observations. "Paul Newman is much more engaged in environmental and specifically nuclear issues than The Record gives him credit for," Streets wrote in an e-mail. On the other side of the aisle, most Hudson Valley lawmakers have sought to legislate their way to a closed power station. Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, has said Entergy's decision to seek relicensing "defies reason" because of a rash of recent problems at the plant. And independent advocacy groups have stepped up their campaign to close the twin reactors, which sit on the Hudson River 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. On Monday, Riverkeeper, a Tarrytown-based environmental group, called on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject Entergy's renewal application outright. Public opinion has always been a player in the Indian Point debate. Fancy Web sites and corporate sponsorship — Entergy's support of Yankees baseball, for example — have saturated the regional media market before. But since Sept. 11, 2001, the PR battles have become more heated, and more costly, observers say. According to The Center for Public Integrity, Entergy spent over $13.5 million on lobbying between 1998 and 2004. It is unclear how much money the multibillion dollar corporation has thrown at Indian Point advertising, but it's clear the company is not shy about spending to promote. In 2003, an Entergy-funded coalition of pro-Vermont Yankee supporters spent about $200,000 in advertisements, according to newspaper reports. Closer to home, Entergy spent an undisclosed amount the same year to help form the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance. That coalition of business and labor interests was founded to counter Indian Point critics. David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the current PR war is aimed squarely at the NRC license renewal process. "What's going on at Indian Point is likely to determine how many questions the NRC asks, how many additional things the company has to do or promise," he said. Lochbaum isn't confident the anti-plant public relations blitz will be effective. The NRC has never rejected a plant renewal application. But NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the high-profile of Indian Point is raising public awareness. And it's the public, ultimately, that could hold the key to Indian Point's future. Record Online is brought to you by the Times Herald-Record, serving New York"s Hudson Valley and the Catskills. Phone: (845) 341-1100 ***************************************************************** 35 Prague Daily Monitor: Austria demands new talks on Czech nuclear plant's safety - By Prague Daily Monitor/CTK / Published 5 June 2007 CTK Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer gestured talking to Czech PM Topolánek in April, now he only sends letters to Prague. Vienna, June 4 (CTK) - Austria has called on the Czech government to discuss the open questions relating to the safety of the nuclear plant Temelin, South Bohemia, in a letter sent by Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer to Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek today, the Austrian news agency APA writes today. The letter, also signed by Austrian Environment Minister Josef Proell, was recommended to the Austrian government by a commission of legal experts that was to assess whether an international complaint can be filed against the Czech Republic. The commission arrived at the conclusion that it was all but impossible to lodge the complaint. The Austrian government voices the opinion in the letter that from its viewpoint the 2000 agreement on Temelin's safety was not quite fulfilled and it calls on the Czech government to reopen the talks on the open questions. The view is supported by an expert report by government nuclear safety expert Helmut Hirsch. It says that there are "still some unsettled questions" in all seven safety areas from the Melk protocol. From the Austrian viewpoint, the targets set in the agreement have not been fulfilled, the letter says. "As a result, Austrian calls on the Czech Republic to start the talks with a view to putting an end to the conduct that conflicts with the agreement, to ensuring that the conduct will not repeat and to fulfilling the agreed obligations," the letter writes. The Czech Republic says it has fulfilled all tasks agreed on in the Austrian town of Melk. Austrian activists say Temelin, situated some 60 km away from Austria, is not safe and that the Czech Republic breaches agreements on the plant the two countries have reached. They want to bring the Austrian government to file a complaint under international law against the Czech Republic. This story is from the Czech News Agency (CTK). The Prague Daily Monitor and Monitor CE are not responsible for its content. Copyright 2007 by the Czech News Agency (CTK). All rights reserved. Copying, dissemination or other publication of this article or parts thereof without the prior written consent of CTK is expressly forbidden. copyright 2007 monitor ce media services s.r.o. | all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 36 WNN: Finnish companies unite to build nuclear plant 06 June 2007 A consortium of Finnish industrial and energy companies will establish a joint venture company, to be known as Fennovoima Oy, to construct a new nuclear power plant in Finland. The group consists of stainless steel producer Outokumpu, mining and smelting company Boliden, energy utilities Rauman Energia and Katterno Group, and electricity supplier EOn Suomi (the Finnish subsidiary of Germany-based EOn). Fennovoima aims to construct a new 1000-1800 MWe nuclear power plant, to start operating between 2016 and 2018. It will provide electricity for its owners at production cost, with each partner getting a share of output in proportion to its share of ownership in Fennovoima. One-third of generating capacity will be reserved for Finnish industrial, manufacturing and service companies, one-third will be for regional and local energy companies, and one-third will be for EOn Suomi. About half of the capacity will be offered to companies currently not partners in the Fennovoima project. The consortium said that it has started talks with companies needing long-term procurement of stable-priced power. Fennovoima will immediately start studies on the construction of the new nuclear power plant. Apart from site selection, these include safety, technological, and nuclear waste management issues. Suitable site locations have been identified in various parts of Finland. After suitable sites have - together with the respective municipalities - been guaranteed, Fennovoima will complete environmental impact assessments (EIAs). The project is ultimately dependent on the approval of the Finnish government and parliament. Outokumpu's CEO, Juha Rantanen, said: "By participating in Fennovoima, Outokumpu aims to secure a significant portion of its electricity needs in the years to come. In investing in our own energy production we can have a reliable electricity supply at production cost. Our aim is to have up to 150 MWe of the new nuclear power plant's capacity. This translates into some 1.2 TWh of electrical energy per annum which is more than half of what the Tornio Works currently requires." Outokumpu's Tornio stainless steel plant currently consumes some 2.1 TWh of electricity per year. "Boliden's objective, through this project, is to secure long-term electricity supplies for our Finnish smelters. If we are to maintain competitive production, electricity is a raw material of strategic significance. Energy currently accounts for 18% of Boliden's total costs and our energy requirement is 3.5 TWh," said Boliden's president & CEO, Jan Johansson. Boliden's proposed share corresponds to 80 MW, or approximately 46% of the energy consumed at the company's Finnish units - the Kokkola zinc smelter and the Harjavalta copper smelter. At the beginning of June, Fortum launched an EIA for a third reactor at the Loviisa nuclear power plant. The EIA will consider the construction of a new 1000-1800 MWe plant at the site. The previous week, Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO) submitted its EIA program for a fourth reactor at the Olkiluoto plant. TVO's EIA will also consider the construction of a 1000-1800 MWe unit at the site. In May, the city council of Loviisa voted 16-11 against a preliminary agreement to sell land to EOn, on which the German utility had proposed to construct a nuclear power plant. In mid-April, the City Board gave initial approval to sell 112 hectares of land located north of the existing two-unit plant owned by Fortum to EOn for Eur6.5 million ($8.8 million). Further information Boliden EOn Suomi Katterno Outokumpu Rauman Energia WNA's Nuclear Energy in Finland information paper WNN: Fortum launches Loviisa 3 EIA process WNN: TVO submits EIA program for Olkiluoto 4 WNN: Loviisa says 'no' to EOn nuclear plant ***************************************************************** 37 Reuters: Climate change battle could spell new disasters Tue Jun 5, 2007 7:10PM EDT By Gerard Wynn LONDON (Reuters) - Rich countries meeting in Germany this week will agree that they need to confront climate change, but unpleasant tradeoffs are already emerging. Unless properly managed, a rush to reshape the world's economy to arrest climate change could end up trampling the lifestyles of the rich, the livelihoods of the rural poor, and the earth's most vulnerable habitats. A tequila shortage is perhaps one of the least-expected results of planting lucrative, "climate-friendly" biofuels -- as Mexican farmers set ablaze their fields of cactus-like agave to make way for corn, a feedstock for ethanol. Biofuels are also blamed for raising food prices and destroying forests. The result of misguided climate policies could be to undermine public support for action and discourage businesses from buying in. "Definitely there'll be tradeoffs between climate change and the local environment, and with energy security," said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises rich countries. "We are not in the luxury of being able to choose from hundreds of energy types." Just how mankind plans to battle climate change is still sketchy, but one buzz word is "scaling up" -- for example by boosting research into and deployment of clean energy technologies like wind and nuclear power and biofuels. Urgency has been spurred by a series of U.N. climate reports this year confirming threats like desertification, droughts and rising seas and calling for action now to cut the long-term cost. But evidence is emerging of the repercussions. British charity Christian Aid says Colombian rebel groups are forcing poor people off their land to grow lucrative palm oil for biodiesel, likening it to diamonds financing African wars. "You could have blood biofuels in the same way as blood diamonds. It's a classic case of exploiting natural resources behind the veil of conflict," said Christian Aid climate policy analyst Andrew Pendleton. "Unscrupulous private sector operators, rebel groups, are keen to make a fast buck." Biofuels already occupy an area equal to all of the arable land in France, says the IEA, and they are blamed for raising the cost of corn, sugar and other foods they compete with for land. But negative repercussions are hard to prove. A hike in the price of tortillas, a Mexican staple, was blamed on biofuels and sparked riots, but may have more to do with the monopoly power of dominant tortilla producers, says Annie Dufey, research associate at Britain's International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Such fears risk fatalism and favor the status quo, said Bert Metz, chair of a major U.N. report published last month on policy options. "Problems of land ownership and poor people are there, let's do something about it, but not blame it on climate change," he said. "There's no basis for supposing climate policies will create more problems than they solve, provided they're put in place wisely. I'd view that as another excuse for doing nothing." The report did not weigh the cost and benefit of the recent consumer fad of boycotting air freight and travel to reduce carbon emissions, which could inadvertently hurt African exports and tourism. "It's inequitable, tokenism," said the IIED's Bill Vorley of such consumer concerns. Fresh fruit and vegetable exports from sub-Saharan Africa accounted for less than 0.1 percent of total British greenhouse gas emissions, but supported more than one million people, the IIED estimates. Reuters Pictures Photo Editors Choice: Best pictures from the last 24 hours. View Slideshow SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL On energy supply, a focus on small-scale distribution is the answer to fighting climate change and poverty both at once, say non-governmental and U.N. organizations. In an interview with Reuters, Clemens Betzel, the president of Cardiff-based solar power company G24 Innovations, put on a table a bendy, solar power generator the size of a sheet of paper. It produces enough power to run a mobile phone or light bulb, but there's plenty of demand for that, he said. "People sit on a street corner selling power from a car battery. They're paying $60 to a $100 a year for kerosene to light their home," said Betzel, who said he could market his product for $20. "We're going into Africa, India, China." Small-scale biomass and solar power projects could also work in rich countries, reducing the need to switch to big, low-carbon alternatives like nuclear, hydroelectric and wind power, all of which face some opposition. Environmental group Greenpeace says that a renewed focus on nuclear energy could divert political and financial capital from longer-term, renewable energy alternatives, although operators such as France's EDF point to affordability.. Meanwhile, hydropower could itself become a victim of global warming as rainfall patterns change, while it brings old problems of obliterating homes and wildlife. On June 1, a Brazilian court allowed the Estreito hydroelectric power project to move forward, over the opposition of indigenous and other groups. Similarly, projects like burying greenhouse gases underground -- so-called carbon capture and storage (CCS) -- could simply delay the phase-out of coal and its associated effects on human health and the landscape. "The biggest negative spin-off is that people continue to mine coal, so if you happen to live in Kentucky they'll strip-mine your backyard," said Stuart Haszeldine, professor of geology at Edinburgh University. The worry that CO2 could leak from underground and asphyxiate people above was almost unfounded, however, he added. Another proposal, installing mirrors or other reflective objects in the earth's atmosphere to reflect the sun's light and heat back into space draws short shrift from critics for its excessive complexity. That would be like calming a rocking boat by rocking the sea, said clean energy entrepreneur Bill Joy. © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 38 Daily Press: Drill set at Surry nuclear station Hampton Roads, Virginia - June 7, 2007 1:55 AM BY DANIELLE ZIELINSKI 757-247-7870 June 6, 2007, 10:38 AM EDT SURRY -- The Virginia Department of Emergency Management will simulate a radiological emergency at the Surry Power Station on June 26. This drill will help state and local governments test their response procedures in the event of a radiation release from the nuclear power station. Response agencies and local government representatives will role-play their emergency operations functions from state and local government emergency operations centers. Participating localities include the counties of Charles City, Isle of Wight, James City, New Kent, Surry and York and the cities of Hampton, Newport News, Poquoson and Williamsburg. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will monitor the progress of the drill and analyze the results, detailing areas needing improvement. FEMA will review the results at a public meeting 11 a.m. on June 29 at the Omni Hotel in Newport News. Annual exercises rotate between the Surry and North Anna power stations and usually last about six hours. Multi-day drills are conducted every six years, with the next one in 2008. Copyright ©2007 Daily Press ***************************************************************** 39 Arizona Republic : Public invited to safety talks on Palo Verde June 6, 2007 The Arizona Republic Arizonans have two opportunities this week to learn what's being done to make the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station safer. Palo Verde, 55 miles west of downtown Phoenix, was downgraded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February to just short of a shutdown. The commission will meet with utility officials today at 6:30 p.m. at the Saddle Mountain Unified School District administration building, 38201 W. Indian School Road, Tonopah. The meeting is public. The commission also will hold a "town hall" meeting with the public at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. That meeting will be held at Ruth Fisher Elementary School, 38201 W. Indian School Road, Tonopah. Copyright © 2007, azcentral.com. All rights reserved. Users of this ***************************************************************** 40 Deccan Herald: US wants Nuke deal with India at the earliest Wednesday, June 6, 2007 Washington, UNI: State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said there is going to be a follow up to the talks that US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns had in New Delhi on the issue last week. The Bush administration has reiterated that it would like to clinch the Indo-US civil nuclear deal as early as possible, disclosing that there is going to be a follow up to the talks that US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns had in New Delhi on the issue last week. State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack, who gave this information in reply to question yesterday, however, did not spell out the precise scheduled for the proposed follow-up meeting. During his three-day stay in New Delhi, Burns had had several rounds of discussions with Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shanker Menon on the 123 agreement, which is required to put through the deal that President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had signed two years ago. McCormack, in reply to question about the progress in the discussions that Burns had with Menon and other officials in New Delhi, said, ''Well, I think that if we can get the terms of the nuclear deal right, that it will move through.'' He, however said, ''these are some pretty tough negotiations. We'd like you to know, you had Nick Burns there (in New Delhi) recently. We made some progress. And we would like to get this deal done as quickly as we possibly can. There are going to be follow-up conversations.'' McCormack also said that the two sides aired some of their differences over a couple of the issues. Copyright 2007, The Printers (Mysore) Private Ltd., 75, M.G. Road, Post Box No 5331, Bangalore - 560001 Tel: +91 (80) 25880000 Fax No. +91 (80) 25880523 ***************************************************************** 41 AFP: Climate accord fight and Russia-US tensions cloud G8 summit - by Simon Morgan Wed Jun 6, 7:56 PM ET HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (AFP) - Wrangling over global warming and Russia-US tensions overshadowed the start of the Group of Eight summit Wednesday as police fought anti-globalisation demonstrators. Even before an official dinner formally launched the summit, police battled protesters trying to get to the 12-kilometre (seven-mile) long barbed wire fence surrounding the luxury hotel on the Baltic coast where the leaders were meeting. Some 10,000 protesters gathered around the barrier, according to one anti-globalisation group. Eight police were injured in new disturbances as police fired water cannon to disperse demonstrators who fought back with a hail of stones. Police said they arrested 141 people on Wednesday. Two Spaniards and a German were jailed for up to 10 months for violence at a major pre-summit march in Rostock at the weekend. Activists said they had called off a major demonstration planned for Thursday after it was banned by German authorities. But political tensions also emerged inside the security zone over climate change and other key issues. One of the main points of friction between the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States was global warming. Summit host German Chancellor Angela Merkel had wanted fellow leaders to agree to limit the global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent compared with 1990 levels by 2050. But the United States refuses to sign up to any agreement that entails concrete targets. Merkel put on a brave face when appearing for cameras before the summit dinner and insisted the atmosphere in Heiligendamm was "constructive." "Many parties have taken some steps forward," she told German television, while conceding there was no immediate consensus on climate change. Bush, too, was keen to appear conciliatory. "I come with a strong desire to work with you on a post-Kyoto agreement and about how we can achieve major objectives," the US president said after a bilateral meeting with Merkel. "One of those of course is the reduction of greenhouse gases, another is becoming more energy independent, in our case from crude oil." Bush spoke after a top aide, Jim Connaughton, chairman of the US government's Council on Environmental Quality, said all key polluting nations had to be involved in any deal. "We've not sat down with China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa," Connaughton said. "We have not sat down with Australia, South Korea and a number of the other major emitting countries on this issue and so until we've got everyone in the room and until we have consensus among all of them you won't see a collectively stated goal on that yet, but it's coming." Merkel's chief environmental advisor, Hans Joachim Schnellnhuber, said the German hosts would be content with any reasonable and concrete benchmark that all the member states could support. The summit atmosphere had also been soured by rows between the United States and Russia over a missile defence system that Bush's administration wants to establish in central Europe. Bush, who will hold talks with President Vladimir Putin Thursday, accused Russia of letting reforms slip before arriving in Germany, a charge rejected by the Kremlin. Moscow describes the US missile shield as an aggressive step which would threaten its security. Putin has threatened to turn his missiles on European targets if it is built, and US offers to open up the system to Russian inspections have failed to ease Moscow's anger. But again Bush sought to ease the tensions, saying Russia was not a threat. "Russia is not going to attack Europe," he told reporters. The US president also held talks with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, making his G8 debut, and the two agreed on the need for the G8 final declaration to take a tough line on North Korea's nuclear weapons. Chinese President Hu Jintao and counterparts from five emerging economies -- Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa -- will hold a meeting in Berlin Thursday before participating in some sessions in Heiligendamm, highlighting their growing weight in international affairs. British Prime Minister Tony Blair intends to use his last G8 summit before leaving office to urge fellow leaders to make good on pledges to help Africa and the world's poor that were agreed at the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland. The summit will also be the last for Putin while newly-elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy is another making his first appearance. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 42 Reuters: U.S. opposes fixing greenhouse gas cuts at G8 | Wed Jun 6, 2007 5:35PM EDT By Caren Bohan and Tabassum Zakaria HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, June 6 (Reuters) - The United States said on Wednesday it opposed setting firm targets for greenhouse gas cuts at a G8 summit but offered reassurance that its plan for fighting climate change would not undermine U.N. efforts. U.S President George W. Bush's stance prompted hard bargaining at the June 6-8 meeting where German Chancellor Angela Merkel hopes to win a commitment from major powers to halve greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century. Police turned water cannon on protesters near the summit venue on the Baltic coast as world leaders gathered for talks also likely to tackle missile defence and aid for Africa. Bush told reporters that Russia did not pose a threat to Europe despite a vow by Moscow to target the continent if the U.S. deploys a missile shield in central Europe. "Russia is not going to attack Europe," Bush said. Summit host Merkel has been pushing for cuts of 50 percent in greenhouse gases by 2050 to curb a rise in temperatures that scientists say could cause more droughts, heatwaves, floods and rising seas. But Washington said it was not ready to sign up to such fixed goals in Heiligendamm where Bush will meet leaders of Japan, Russia, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada. "At this point in time we are not prepared to adopt that proposal," said James Connaughton, a senior White House adviser, when asked about Merkel's emissions target. French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested Europeans would press Washington until the very end on the divisive issue. "We need quantifiable targets in the final text," Sarkozy told reporters. "It is an extremely important point and I intend to talk to the president of the United States about it as early as this evening," he added. It appeared the United States could accept language calling for "substantial" reductions in global emissions in the long term, according to a draft G8 document written in late May. FOSSIL FUELS Bush said his plan announced last week for talks among the top 15 emitters of greenhouse gases with the aim of agreeing long-term reductions by the end of 2008 would "fold into the U.N. framework" on tackling climate change. Many European nations had expressed concerns that Bush's plan might undermine U.N. talks on a global deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the main U.N. plan until 2012 for curbing greenhouse gases released mainly by burning fossil fuels. The United States is the only G8 nation outside Kyoto. "I also come with a strong desire to work with you on a post-Kyoto agreement about how we can achieve major objectives" including cuts in greenhouse gases, Bush told Merkel after a lunch of veal schnitzel and asparagus. Merkel, who brokered an EU deal in March which includes binding cuts in emissions, has also been pushing for a G8 pledge to limit warming of global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), seen as a threshold for dangerous changes. But she may have to settle for an expression of U.S. support for United Nations efforts to combat climate change and an agreement to tackle emissions at a later date. "I think we all know that the goals agreed by the European Union cannot be accepted by the entire world," she said. Officials were also involved in last-minute wrangling over commitments to fighting poverty in Africa, another of Merkel's G8 priorities. Leaders will refer to pledges made at the Gleneagles summit in 2005 to double development aid by 2010. But Italy and Canada are resisting concrete language in the communique on a pledge to lift overall annual aid by $50 billion by 2010 and also, with Japan, blocking country-specific figures. Near the venue, police used water cannon to disperse groups of protesters and clear roads, detaining some 160 activists. Eight police officers were injured in the clashes. Some marchers damaged a rail track used to shuttle officials in and out of the summit site. Others blocked roads, temporarily cutting off all ground access to the venue. "We had a super plan and we surprised the police, who didn't know how to stop us," said Gunar Finke, a student from the southern German city of Freiburg. (Additional reporting by Erik Kirschbaum, Christian Lowe, Madeline Chambers, David Ljunggren and Crispian Balmer) © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 43 Asia Times Online: China to open nuclear industry to investment Jun 7, 2007 BEIJING - To help meet the country's growing demand for electricity, China will boost nuclear-power generation by opening the industry to private and foreign investors. China's draft nuclear-energy law is being revised so that domestic and foreign companies can invest in the country's nuclear-power-generating projects but cannot hold a controlling stake, said Wang Yiren, a senior official with the State Commission of Science and Technology for National Defense Industry. According to China's longer-term development plan for the nuclear power industry, capacity will increase to 40 million kilowatts in 2020, with construction work beginning on at least three nuclear power-generating units in each of the coming 10 years. Currently, there are 10 commercial nuclear power-generating units operational in China, including the No 1 unit at the Tianwan nuclear power station in eastern China's Jiangsu province, which came on stream on May 17. Their combined installed capacity stands at 8 million kilowatts. The other nine units include Qinshan, Dayawan, and Phase 2 and Phase 3 of Qinshan and Lingao. Four units are being built for the second phase of the Lingao project in southern China's Guangdong province and the second phase of the Qinshan project in eastern China's Zhejiang province. According to Wang, China's nuclear industry generated 54.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity last year, less than 2% of the nation's total. The government wants the nuclear industry to contribute 4% of the nation's energy needs by 2020. Wang said the government has strict controls on prospecting and mining of uranium ore but allows foreign experts to assist Chinese geological authorities in their prospecting efforts. China now has more than 300 research institutions and production firms devoted to nuclear technology, employing about 50,000 people. In general, China's electricity output is expected to grow by 14% year on year in the first half of 2007, but demand continues to outrun supply in some areas, according to the nation's top economic planner. Power output will reach 1.45 trillion kilowatt-hours between January and June, said a report released by the Economy Operation Department of the National Development and Research Commission (NDRC). The output increase will help meet surging power demand in the world's second-largest energy consumer, but power crunches continue to affect such provinces as Guangdong, Zhejiang, Hainan, Shanxi and Liaoning, said the NDRC. Earlier Xinhua News Agency reported that the bustling southern province of Guangdong was facing major electricity shortages for the fifth summer in a row. "In April, we were short of 4 million kilowatt-hours of power, far above the 2.55 [million] to 3.69 million kilowatt-hours predicted," said an official in charge of electricity-resources management. China generated 701 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in the first quarter of the year. The output represented an increase of 15.5% from a year ago, 4.4 percentage points higher than the same period last year, according to the report. Electricity used by industry grew 17% in the first three months, said the report, adding that industrial power consumption accounted for 76% of the nation's total power consumption, up 3.4 percentage points from 2000. (Asia Pulse/XIC) © Copyright 1999 - 2007 Asia Times Online (Holdings), Ltd. Head Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East, Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau: 11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110 ***************************************************************** 44 The Olive Press: Spain faces nuclear disaster - Jun 06, 2007 at 04:12 PM Warnings of radiation leak “1,000 times” worse than Chernobyl DETERIORATING key components at Spain’s nuclear stations could lead to a disaster worse than Chernobyl, according to a leading environmental group. In its study The Dangers of Nuclear Reactors, Greenpeace also slammed “the permissive stance” of the Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear (CSN) regulator towards the poor security at nuclear reactors around the country. The report concluded the government should close Spain’s nuclear power stations to prevent “a radiation leak 1,000 times worse than Chernobyl.” A reactor exploded at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine in 1986. Scientists disagree at the extent of human casualties with the World Health Organisation believing only 50 people have lost their lives. A Russian medical agency, however, claims the figure is much higher with 200,000 dying as a result of the disaster. Relaxed security Greenpeace believes security has been the first victim of cost-cutting measures among Spain’s nuclear power station owners – leaving them open to terrorist attack. Spokesman Carlos Bravo said: “The culture of security has been relaxed to save money. It is much cheaper to pay fines [for poor security] than implement tighter controls.” Greenpeace alleges there have been 47 breaches of security at power stations in Spain this year alone. A spokesman for the CSN refused to comment on this figure. To draw attention to the poor levels of security, the group organised a 30-strong protest outside the Almaraz power plant in Extremadura last month. One activist was arrested as he parachuted into the security perimeter of the station. A statement issued by the CSN after the protest said security at the country’s nuclear power plants was “adequate.” Circuits and materials at many of Spain’s nuclear power stations are in a state of “degradation” due to rust and wear and tear, the report also claims. There are nine nuclear power stations currently in service in Spain, all with an average age of 25 years. The oldest working station is the Santa María de Garoña station in the north of the country, which was opened in 1971. Its 36 years of service far exceeds the 25-year limit many experts claim a nuclear power plant should be in operation. Chief of Greenpeace Campaigns in Spain, Mario Rodríguez, added: “Our security and wellbeing are at risk because of our nuclear centres.” The publication of report coincided with the temporary two-day suspension in service of the Ascó-II station in Tarragona due to “a serious design fault.” A spokesman for the station confirmed a vapour generator was to blame for the closure. © 2006 The Olive Press ***************************************************************** 45 PBP: FPL seeks zoning for two additional nukes at Turkey Point By Kristi E. Swartz Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 06, 2007 UPDATED: 6:51 p.m. June 06, 2007 One day after regulators told Florida Power & Light Co. it couldn't build a 1,960-megawatt coal-fired plant in Glades County, the utility formally asked Miami-Dade County to zone up to two additional nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point plant. "It's the step we have to take to be able to continue to evaluate the site," FPL spokesman Tom Veenstra said today. "We have to pass this milestone to continue it further. If we don't get past this, we have to continue looking elsewhere." FPL, owned by FPL Group Inc. (NYSE: FPL, $59.93) of Juno Beach, has been bullish on nuclear power, saying it's a cleaner form of energy and one that costs less to produce. But the plants are expensive to build and must go through a number of local, state and federal reviews. Also, the issue of where to safely store nuclear waste over the long term has yet to be solved. FPL may be thankful that nuclear power is an option given that the Florida Public Service Commission on Tuesday denied the utility's coal plant 4-0. While environmentalists declared victory, the utility threw up its hands in confusion: What does the state mean when it says utilities need to produce electricity from different sources of fuel? "The answer on fuel diversity is, you need the coal plant, and the answer on how you do the coal plant is pretty close to what FPL is doing," said Frank Maisano, an energy lobbyist and spokesman for Bracewell & Giuliani LLP. FPL thought so. The utility on Tuesday said it "obviously misread" the PSC's intentions for fuel diversity. Copyright © 2007, The Palm Beach Post. All rights reserved. By using PalmBeachPost.com, you accept the terms of our visitor ***************************************************************** 46 Prague Daily Monitor: Czech net power exports up 63 pct yr/yr in Q1 - By Prague Daily Monitor/CTK / Published 6 June 2007 Prague, June 5 (CTK) - Czech net power exports rose by 63 percent year-on-year to 4.1 terawatt-hours in the first quarter of the year, the Energy Regulation Office (ERU) said today. Exports grew by 15.9 percent to 7.2 TWh and imports fell by 15.7 percent to 3.1 TWh. Gross power output in the Czech Republic rose by 1.6 percent year-on-year to 23.55 TWh in the first quarter, which was a slower pace than GDP growth for the period, estimated by analysts at over 6 percent. Interest from industrial companies and increased demand for power from foreign customers was offset by lower demand for power from small consumers, above all households, caused mainly by a mild winter. Net domestic consumption dropped by 6.1 percent year-on-year to 16.1 TWh in the first three months of the year. Households bought 4.4 TWh of power in the period, 12 percent less than a year ago. The largest Czech power producer CEZ increasingly turns to the East and South. Exports to Germany fell by over 20 percent in the first quarter, while sales to Slovakia jumped by 114 percent and exports to Austria rose 47 percent. Michal Skalka from the state-run CEZ said strong demand in Central Europe was due above all to a lack of power in Slovakia and the Balkan States, caused in turn by shutdowns of the Jaslovske Bohunice nuclear plant in Slovakia and its rival Kozloduy in Bulgaria. The Czech Republic has been posting surpluses in power trade for a long time, but the trend should change gradually. Experts expect Czech consumption to be equal to output in 2012-2015 because of ageing production facilities and a lack of new sources. This story is from the Czech News Agency (CTK). The Prague Daily Monitor and Monitor CE are not responsible for its content. Copyright 2007 by the Czech News Agency (CTK). All rights reserved. Copying, dissemination or other publication of this article or parts thereof without the prior written consent of CTK is expressly forbidden. copyright 2007 monitor ce media services s.r.o. | all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 47 IHT: Brazil to complete third nuclear plant, minister says - International Herald Tribune The Associated Press Published: June 5, 2007 RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: Brazil has decided to complete construction of its long-delayed third nuclear plant, a senior official told the government's news agency Tuesday. Science and Technology Minister Sergio Resende said the decision to finish the plant had been made by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government and that a formal announcement would be made later this month, according to the official Agencia Brasil news service. Brazil currently has two operating nuclear plants, Angra 1 and Angra 2, with an installed capacity of about 2,000 megawatts. The plants are near the coastal city of Angra dos Reis, 180 kilometers (110 miles) west of Rio de Janeiro. Work on Angra 3 — which would raise capacity to 3,300 megawatts — began in 1984 but was stopped because of financing problems and concerns over security and the viability of nuclear power. Copyright © 2007 the International Herald Tribune All rights ***************************************************************** 48 TheDay.com: Windfall-profits Tax Plan Fails In House Thursday, Jun 7, 2007 Entire Republican caucus opposes bill; Blumenthal 'disappointed' by voting By Ted Mann Published on 6/6/2007 Hartford — The House of Representatives resoundingly rejected a last-ditch effort to create a new “windfall profits” tax on nuclear and coal-burning power plants Tuesday, rejecting the arguments of supporters that it is the most direct way to provide relief to customers struggling under high electricity bills. The House voted down an amendment offered by Rep. Vickie Nardello, D-Prospect, the vice-chairwoman of the Energy & Technology Committee and a vocal critic of the current deregulated electric market, which she said has enriched private and corporate interests while providing no relief to ratepayers. Nardello, who had joined with committee co-chairman Rep. Steve Fontana, D-North Haven, to denounce the energy policy reform bill passed last week by the legislature, was on her own this time — Fontana, like House leaders, opposes the windfall-profits tax, calling it an untried and potentially disastrous effort to ease the financial burden on consumers. In a session marked by calls for relief from soaring energy prices, Nardello said, “this amendment is the only method to provide immediate rate relief to ratepayers.” “For the legislature to continue to try rolling the dice with an untried, untested idea is, to me, very bad public policy,” said Rep. Sean Williams, R-Watertown, a committee member who opposed the amendment. The effort to attach the amendment failed, 95-49. Nardello's amendment mirrors a proposal by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, and would have permitted companies to make up to 20 percent profit off nuclear or coal plants but would tax any profits in excess of that amount at 50 percent, with the state's share going back to ratepayers in the form of a discount on their bills. The legislature's nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis estimates the proposal would generate $350 million per year for electric customers, while Blumenthal pegs it higher, at $415 million. Nardello, citing a formula from the Department of Public Utility Control, said that sum could be used to provide an average 10 percent discount in ratepayers' bills. The bill specifically addresses nuclear and coal plants, Nardello said, because those facilities are not paying the high fuel costs shouldered by oil- and gas-powered facilities, and have thus raked in massive profits since passage of a 2003 federal regulation that sets energy prices according to oil prices, rather than coal or uranium. Those profits, Nardello said during floor debate, have been sizable, citing DPUC filings showing that Dominion, the owner of the Millstone Power Station in Waterford, has reaped returns of 44 percent and 53 percent respectively. The proposal would have exempted from the tax any generator that sells at least 50 percent of its power to customers within Connecticut. The bill was opposed by the entire Republican caucus, but also by many Democrats, including Rep. Betsy Ritter, D-Waterford, whose district includes the Millstone Power Station. “It makes no sense, simply as a matter of practicality, to punish the generators we have here in our state,” Ritter said. “This siren song of an amendment is the type of thing that is going to make us crash once again, with disastrous results for our taxpayers,” said Rep. Kevin DelGobbo, R-Naugatuck. But others argued passionately that taxing those making record profits was a just and overdue way to return money to overburdened electricity customers. “Are you willing to take a chance,” demanded Rep. James O'Rourke, D-Cromwell, an opponent of the state's 1998 electricity deregulation law, which he and others failed to roll back earlier this session. “... Or do you want to just throw up your hands and say we can't put the genie back in the bottle, we're powerless, we can't do anything about it?” In a written statement, Blumenthal said he was “deeply disappointed” at the failure of his proposal, and urged lawmakers to take it up again in a special session on the state budget expected to convene later this month. Hartford | © 1998-2007 The Day Publishing Co. 102 ***************************************************************** 49 NRC: NRC Chairman Dale E. Klein Remarks Prepared for Delivery Goizueta Leadership Center Atlanta, GA June 5, 2007 Speech - 07-019 - OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov Web Site: Public Affairs Web Site June 5, 2007 Let me open by thanking The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations—INPO, as we call it — the National Academy for Nuclear Training, and the Goizueta Business School at Emory University for sponsoring this conference. I always begin my speeches by saying, “I am pleased to be here.” But in this case, I really do mean it. I say that because I think that this conference— which is specifically designed for board members and officers of companies with nuclear electric generating assets—serves a very valuable purpose. In fact, the importance of education and training for executives in the commercial nuclear power business is one of the key subjects I want to discuss today. All of you know, in general terms, what the NRC is and what it does… and if you don’t know that yet, we are in trouble! So rather than spend a lot of time getting into specific details, we have provided copies of the NRC’s Information Digest. This is a very interesting and informative publication, which I commend to your attention when you have some free time later today. Let me begin by telling you briefly about my perspective, and what I’ve learned since I joined the NRC about 11 months ago. Then I want to look ahead, and touch upon five themes, or observations, that I think merit your attention as you become active in the commercial nuclear power business. When I came to the Commission and had a chance to look around, I realized there were two areas I had to focus on. One was directed to the outside world—to the industry, of course, but also to Congress, other stakeholders, and the American people. That was the need to reaffirm the NRC’s commitment to being a strong, stable, predictable regulator. I have made this point repeatedly in my public remarks. We want our licensees to have a reasonable expectation of timely regulatory decisions based on good science and high quality engineering practices. We need to be clear that we will hold our licensees accountable; but we will also articulate our requirements clearly. And frankly, given the limits on what can be accomplished in one year, I think we have done a good job of reaffirming that commitment. The second priority I had was directed inward. At the NRC we hold our licensees up to a high standard of modern business and engineering practices, as well as technological excellence. So I thought it was important for the staff to understand that we need to do a better job of living up to a higher, more modern standard ourselves. One thing that struck me immediately was how antiquated our computing and communications technology was. I considered this a symptom of the larger need for the agency to modernize. One of my in-house priorities, therefore, was to focus on updating the agency’s infrastructure. The events of September 11, 2001, led the agency to divert resources from infrastructure improvements to higher priority security enhancements for a few years. We have now achieved a stable regulatory environment in the post 9/11 world and it is time to focus once again on infrastructure improvements. Just to illustrate how far out of step the agency had fallen on information technology, only this past year did we issue Blackberries to the senior staff. We are also in the midst of transitioning to the Microsoft Office Suite, which is today's business standard. But these upgrades are really just a symptom of a larger need to modernize our business practices, and develop an adequately sized workforce with the proper space, training, and equipment. Given the expanded workload we are facing, in addition to ordinary employee turnover, we will have 1,200 new people at the NRC headquarters by 2009—which is nearly one-third of our entire workforce. And once we have trained and equipped all these people, we are going to work hard to keep them. These upgrades are expansion are critical, because of the significantly expanded workload we are facing. For instance: * We’ve been told by industry to expect license applications for 27 new reactors in the next two years... and every day our Executive Director of Operations warns me to prepare for an even higher number. * To do that, we had to create an entirely new inspection office in Atlanta. * We are scrambling to increase our workforce by a net of 600 employees. * We urgently need 120,000 more square feet of office space at our headquarters. * With uranium at $100 a pound, we are hearing from a dozen companies expressing an interest in new mining operations in the U.S. * We are dealing with a huge increase in public inquiries from people wanting more information about the expansion of nuclear power. * Congress has also heightened its interest in our activities and our plans. * Our office in charge of international programs is in overdrive to deal with the fact that nuclear energy has become, in almost every respect, a multinational business. * And all of that is on top of our regular workload of overseeing the safety of the 104 plants already operating in the U.S. and a large number of licensees using radioactive materials. Despite that, however, I feel confident in saying that whatever bottlenecks may slow down the building of new plants, the NRC licensing process will not be one of them. That the is the first theme I want to mention. Notwithstanding the challenges I just outlined, our staff is highly professional, motivated, and dedicated. And in case you missed the announcement, we are the “Best Place to Work” in the federal government. So we will do our job, and we will do it well. Of course, making the process work smoothly is a two-way street. That is my second topic. I have said many times in my public statements that a quality application for a Combined Operating License, license renewal, design certification or anything else takes less time to review than a bad one. Quality and clarity of submissions will equal timeliness in NRC regulatory reviews. And I should add that “high-quality” in this sense also means a complete application. Many of you will be part of the decision making process on the submission of license applications to NRC. I encourage you ask hard, probing questions about the quality of the application, because I can assure you… we will! And we would much rather have you take the extra time up front to get it right, instead of taking extra time later to respond to a formal RAI— that’s a Request for Additional Information—from the NRC staff. My third subject is something that each of the five Commissioners believe in, and have said before—which is this: owning a commercial nuclear reactor is not a business for amateurs. If the nuclear power business is treated with less than the seriousness it deserves—and people begin to think that anyone can just jump on the nuclear bandwagon—it opens up the very real danger of making the “wave” of the nuclear resurgence look more like a “bubble.” And bubbles have a tendency to pop. It is not my function as a regulator to tell industry how to manage its capital investments or construct its business models. As a regulator, however, I do have a legitimate interest in seeing that the “captains” of the nuclear energy industry have a proper appreciation for the technical, engineering, and security challenges involved in operating commercial nuclear reactors. So when I observe utilities spinning off their nuclear energy components, or see plans for changes in the ownership of nuclear power companies, I think it is worth reiterating the basic point that the nuclear energy business is in many ways unique, and should be treated as such. Highly qualified technical leadership will continue to be essential—and so it needs to be developed and maintained. You probably have heard of Admiral Hyman Rickover, who was the father of the U.S. Nuclear Navy. One of the things Rickover was famous for was his insistence on safety, and his demand that the officers who ran nuclear-powered vessels be absolutely and thoroughly qualified. He took this so seriously, that he personally interviewed every prospective officer being considered for command of a nuclear ship. And he didn’t care how much someone may have accomplished, or who he was… if you were going to command a nuclear vessel, you had take “Reactors 101.” Rickover died in 1986, but there are lot of people in this industry—like Admiral Skip Bowman who runs the Nuclear Energy Institute, or Jim Ellis of INPO—who will tell you that Rickover’s influence is still felt, and his ghost still inspires a very strong safety culture, not just in the Navy, but in the civilian nuclear power industry as well. I hope that you will be inspired to share the same focused commitment to safety, training, and qualifications. My fourth topic is actually a point that my fellow Commissioner Jeff Merrifield has made very incisively over the years, which I would like to share with all of you—and that is the self-interest you all have in working cooperatively with your counterparts in other countries. I want to urge all of you this morning to appreciate how important this is—especially in regard to developing nations that possess nuclear technology. As you become more active in the commercial nuclear power business, I urge you to learn about important international organizations, such as the World Association of Nuclear Operators—particularly in light of the fact that nuclear energy will only become more, not less, international in the future. Three-quarters of the world’s reactors are of U.S. origin in construction or design. Therefore, a significant nuclear incident anywhere in the world would have inescapable consequences for the commercial nuclear energy sector here at home. So it seems to me that you have a bottom-line interest in helping ensure that the global expansion of nuclear energy proceeds in a way that promotes safe construction and operation. This needs to be a priority for industry and regulators, and it is something that was discussed at length at the meeting of the International Nuclear Regulators Association I attended recently in Spain. There are some good international efforts already under way, such as the Multinational Design Evaluation Program. MDEP, as we call it, is an effort to leverage knowledge and experience on power plant design, and promote global convergence in associated codes, standards, and regulations. In the security arena, I would like to see us move toward increased standardization in the establishment of common threat parameters, and even beyond that. But, as I said, these efforts must be a focus of both industry and regulators. For my final topic, I would remind you of what might seem like an obvious point: Utilities need to have a communication plan… with state and local governments, and of course with the NRC. Again, it is not my place to tell you how to do this, but I think it is worth reiterating how important it is to have a clear and effective communications plan. So I hope you will encourage your plant operators to do more than just transmit outgoing public relations messages. They need to have open, two-way channels of communications with the public, interest groups, and—most importantly—elected officials. If you don’t, then mayors, governors, congressman, and other elected officials will understand nuclear plant operations and safety issues according to what they hear from the media… rather than from you. That was topic five—which means I am done, except for this final word. I am always careful to note that as a regulator I cannot be an advocate for or against commercial nuclear energy. And while that is unquestionably true, it is also true that you and I share the same ultimate goal: the safety and security of nuclear power plants and materials. These critical goals of safety and security require each of us to fulfill our separate but complementary responsibilities. For our part, the NRC will be a strong and independent Commission; and we will continue developing the needed framework of regulatory stability. In turn, we expect that the manufacturers, builders, and operators of current and future plants will meet their obligations to the public as well. In this way, with all of us doing our jobs, nuclear energy will continue to play a valuable role in our nation’s energy future. NRC speeches are available through a free list serve subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC homepage at www.nrc.gov also offers a SUBSCRIBE link. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when speeches are posted to NRC's Web site. Wednesday, June 06, 2007 ***************************************************************** 50 AU ABC: Premier opposed to nuclear power. 07/06/2007. ABC News Online Premier opposed to nuclear power The Premier Paul Lennon has repeated his opposition to nuclear energy in Tasmania. State Parliament yesterday debated a Greens bill which would have prohibited uranium mining and nuclear power generation in Tasmania. It was defeated by the Government and the Opposition. Mr Lennon says there were a number of issues with the legislation, even though he does not want nuclear energy in the state. "I do not support nuclear energy for Tasmania. We have no need to go down that path in this state. We have ample alternate sources of power in this state, and we should be exploring those," Mr Lennon said. ***************************************************************** 51 NRC: NRC to Discuss 2006 Performance at Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant News Release - Region IV - 2007-017 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Victor Dricks Phone: 817-860-8128 E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet on June 12, with representatives of TXU Power to discuss the agency’s assessment of safety performance last year at the Comanche Peak nuclear plant near Glen Rose, Texas. The meeting, which will be open to the public, is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. at the Somervell County Expo Center, 202 Bo Gibbs Blvd., Glen Rose. The NRC staff will be available to answer questions from the public on the safety performance of Comanche Peak, as well as the NRC’s role in ensuring safe plant operation. “The NRC continually reviews the performance of Comanche Peak and the nation’s other commercial nuclear power facilities,” NRC Region IV Administrator Bruce S. Mallett said. “This meeting will provide an opportunity for a discussion of our annual assessment of safety performance with the company and with local officials and residents who live near the plant.” A letter sent from the NRC Region IV office to plant officials addresses the performance of the plant during 2006 and will serve as the basis for the meeting discussion. It is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/cp_2006q4.pdf. The NRC utilizes color-coded inspection findings and performance indicators to assess nuclear power plant performance. The colors start with "green" and then increase to "white," "yellow" or "red," commensurate with the safety significance of the issues involved. The NRC said Comanche Peak operated safely during 2006 and will receive baseline, or routine inspections, during 2007. Routine inspections are performed by two NRC Resident Inspectors assigned to the plant and by inspection specialists from the Region IV Office in Arlington, Texas. Among the areas of plant performance to be inspected this year by NRC specialists are activities associated with engineering, fire protection, emergency preparedness, maintenance and radiological controls. Current performance information for Comanche Peak Unit 1 is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/CP1/cp1_chart.html and at http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/CP2/cp2_chart.html for Unit 2. NRC news releases are available through a free list server subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. Wednesday, June 06, 2007 ***************************************************************** 52 Irish Post: Irish nurse's appeal for Chernobyl victim Wednesday, June 06, 2007 AN IRISH nurse in Kent has become a shining beacon of hope for a young Ukrainian victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Two years ago psychiatric nurse Mary Kilgallen heard of the plight of Tanya Alyeksyeyerva and vowed to do something about it. She got in touch with the family in the Ukraine and started her quest to get Tanya medical help in Britain. Mary, who originally hails from Castlebar in Co. Mayo, said: "When I heard about Tanya I just had to act, and quickly. I rallied around and canvassed surgeons and doctors to see what they could do. I wrote countless letters and got some positive replies." And now thanks to Mary's fundraising and campaigning efforts the young girl has been given a better quality of life. At a glance Tanya Alyeksyeyerva looks just like any other seven-year-old girl. But look more closely and you'll notice that she was born with defects so serious that doctors gave little hope of her surviving. Tanya was originally taken away from her parents at birth because it was believed that she would die. But against all the odds she survived - despite being born with only one leg and without a rectum, pelvis or bladder. Her devastating disfigurement is thought to be the legacy of the radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster near her family's home in Ukraine. But following surgery here in Britain, Tanya is now more independent. She no longer needs to wear a nappy and she uses a pair of crutches to get from place-to-place. Since returning home in January she has also been able to attend a regular school with her friends. But medics will never be able to fit Tanya with a prosthetic leg and the youngster desperately needs a motorised-wheelchair. Mary is now trying to raise the much-needed funds for that wheelchair while also trying to help two more children born with similar defects. Taking time-out from her busy schedule of writing letters and canvassing for assistance with these new projects, she said: "Any financial help would be greatly received. I've always said if you've got a pound in your pocket then you can always do something." Tanya's life-changing surgery was made possible by the generosity of a number of doctors and healthcare organisations. After seeing photos of Tanya paediatric urologist Peter Cuckow from Great Ormond Street Hospital agreed that he would try to help. And London's Portland Hospital donated its operating theatre for free. Tanya made a number of trips to Britain to undergo the life-changing operations and each time nurse Mary sponsored Tanya and her family to fly to London. While in Britain Mary paid for everything the family needed including food, clothes, rent, medical supplies and daytoday living expenses. Still to this day Grandmother Mary - as she is fondly referred to as - is the sole provider for the Ukrainian family and will continue to do so in the future. She said: "I don't want any praise for this. I am just lending a hand to a little girl who deserves a better quality of life. "It is tragic that hundreds of children still have to live in these conditions because of Chernobyl. I want to raise awareness of the serious situation that haunts the lives of thousands of people affected by it." * If you would like to donate to or help Mary's Chernobyl campaign contact Elaine at The Irish Post on 020 8735 9403. © Irish Post, 2007. ***************************************************************** 53 Bulgaria: Bulgarian Prosecutors To Probe Belene N-plant 5 June 2007, Tuesday This is how Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant in Belene should look once it has been built. Photo by Parsons E&C Bulgaria Bulgarian prosecutors will investigate alleged irregularities in the environmental feasibility study for the Belene nuclear power plant, following a complaint lodged by local authorities. The municipal council in the town of Svishtov asked in April Bulgaria's chief prosecutor Boris Velchev and ombudsman Ginyo Ganev to look into the way USD 8 M, allocated for the study, were spent. The report is not based on any on-the-ground fact checking by Bulgarian firm GCR, picked by Belene's engineering project manager Worley Parsons to carry out the feasibility study, Svishtov councilors claim. Each page of the report cost Bulgarian taxpayers USD 4.700, without any actual work going into it, said Andrey Zahariev, the chair of the Svishtov municipal council. The councilors will offer prosecutors all the information regarding the alleged wrongdoings, compiled by local environmental organizations, Zahariev added. Russia's Atomstroyexport landed last year the deal to build two 1000 MW nuclear reactors at Belene, with the total cost of the project is estimated at close to EUR 2 B. novinite.com Forum Google Tourism Business MobileBulgaria All Rights Reserved © Novinite Ltd., 2001-2007 - Copyright & Bulgaria news Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency - www.sofianewsagency.com) is unique with being a real time news provider in English that informs its readers about the latest Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also publishes a daily online ***************************************************************** 54 IAEA: World Environment Day Spotlights Global Warming Issues Norway Hosts Events Marking International Cooperation 5 June 2007 The effects of climate change on icecaps and polar ecosystems are being spotlighted this week on the occasion of World Environment Day. * World Environment Day Website * Norway Hosts World Environment Day * IAEA Children's Painting Competition * Isotope Hydrology & Climate Change Studies * Nuclear Technologies for Environment * Nuclear Energy & Sustainable Development * Climate Change & Energy Options * IAEA Environment Exhibit, 2006 The effects of climate change on icecaps and polar ecosystems are being spotlighted this week on the occasion of World Environment Day. The IAEA supports international research and understanding of climate change issues through a variety of activities, ranging from water studies to energy assessments. The main international celebrations will be held in Norway, in cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and linked to the International Polar Year in 2007. Events are being organized in the the city of Tromsø. As part of events, UNEP is launching a new climate report -- the Global Outlook for Ice and Snow -- this week in Norway. Winners of UNEP's Children's Painting Competion also will be honoured at events. The new global report involves UNEP and a network of some 70 international experts. It builds on and in some areas extends the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) whose latest assessments were issued earlier this year. The IAEA, through its laboratories, Department of Nuclear Science and Applications and Department of Nuclear Energy, supports and contributes to climate change studies. The work includes research spearheaded by scientists at the Laboratories in Seibersdorf, Vienna, and Monaco. See Story Resources for more information. Copyright ©, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: ***************************************************************** 55 NRC: NRC to Discuss 2006 Performance at South Texas Nuclear Plant News Release - Region IV - 2007-018 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Victor Dricks Phone: 817-860-8128 E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet in Bay City, Texas, on June 14, with representatives of South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Co., to discuss the agency’s assessment of safety performance last year at the South Texas Project nuclear plant near Bay City, Texas. The meeting, which will be open to the public, is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. at the Bay City Civic Center, 201 Seventh St., Bay City. In addition to the performance assessment, the NRC staff will be available to answer questions from the public on the safety performance of South Texas Project, as well as the NRC’s role in ensuring safe plant operation. “The NRC continually reviews the performance of South Texas Project and the nation’s other commercial nuclear power facilities,” NRC Region IV Administrator Bruce S. Mallett said. “This meeting will provide an opportunity for a discussion of our annual assessment of safety performance with the company and with local officials and residents who live near the plant.” A letter sent from the NRC Region IV office to plant officials addresses the performance of the plant during 2006 and will serve as the basis for the meeting discussion. It is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/stp_2006q4.pdf. The NRC utilizes color-coded inspection findings and performance indicators to assess nuclear power plant performance. The colors start with "green" and then increase to "white," "yellow" or "red," commensurate with the safety significance of the issues involved. The NRC said South Texas Project operated safely during 2006, but during the last quarter of 2006 was in the NRC’s regulatory response column based on a “white” performance indicator because of a problem with an emergency power system at Unit 2. A subsequent inspection indicated the licensee had successfully addressed the issue. Routine inspections are performed by two NRC Resident Inspectors assigned to the plant and by inspection specialists from the Region IV Office in Arlington, Texas. Among the areas of plant performance to be inspected this year by NRC specialists are activities associated with engineering, fire protection, emergency preparedness, maintenance and radiological controls. Current performance information for South Texas Project Unit 1 is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/STP1/stp1_chart.html and at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/STP2/stp2_chart.html for Unit 2 NRC news releases are available through a free list server subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. Wednesday, June 06, 2007 ***************************************************************** 56 Depleted Uranium - A Way Out? Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 08:33:21 -0500 (CDT) June 3, 2007 Global Research Depleted Uranium - A Way Out? Compensation to those affected by this poisoned legacy by Felicity Arbuthnot UN Observer The term Gulf War Syndrome is now known world-wide but - after the 1991 Iraq war, as formerly A1 fit soldiers fell ill with debilitating symptoms, in their thousands, the cause was, for two years, a "mystery". It was in 1993, when a group of twenty-four affected soldiers approached Professor Asav Durakovic, one of the world's leading experts in the effects of radiation, that a cause came to light. They had many times the safe level of chemically toxic and radioactive depleted uranium (DU) in their bodies. Duracovic, although a senior officer in the US army during the first Gulf war, had been unaware that the weapons used had contained depleted uranium. I was horrified, he said: I was a soldier, but above all I am a doctor. By 1997, it was estimated that ninety thousand US veterans were suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. Durakovic, who is also medical consultant for the Children of Chernobyl project at Hadassah University, Jerusalem, lost his job as Chief of Nuclear Medicine at the Veteran's Administration Medical Facility at Wilmington, Delaware, as a direct result of his work with Gulf war veterans contaminated with radiation, he states. Two other physicians, Dr Burroughs and Dr Slingerland of Boston VA also lost their jobs when they asked for more sensitive equipment to better diagnose the soldiers referred to them by Professor Durakovic. Oddly, all the records pertaining to the sick soldiers at the Delaware VA went missing, a syndrome of another kind which has become familiar, both sides of the Atlantic. Two years before Durakovic's discovery, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) self initiated a Report warning the government that if fifty tones of the residual dust, from the explosions of the weapons on impact, was left in the region, they estimated it would generate half a million extra cancer deaths by the end of the century (2000.) Iraq's cancers and birth deformities have become an anomaly, compared to those in the Pacific Islands and amongst British troops after the nuclear testing in the 1950's. Further, depleted is a misnomer. These weapons are made from waste from the nuclear fuel cycle and thus contain the whole lethal nuclear cocktail. DU weapons (sold to seventeen countries that are known and possibly others - why let poisoning the planet and its population get in the way of numerous millions of quick bucks) are equivalent to spreading the contents of a nuclear reactor around the globe. And far from fifty tones and that chilling warning, in Iraq several thousand tones now cover this ancient, Biblical land and with the bombs raining daily, the audit rises nearly hour by hour. The US is currently by far the largest user of DU weapons. Over the past decade, they have brought more than sixteen million DU shells and bullets from Alliant Tech Systems alone. (Source: Janes.) Strangely, this time, there have been few reports of soldiers with the terrible effects of 1991, where they were only in the region for a few weeks. Although troops now remain for months or a year, Gulf War Syndrome mark 2 seems not an issue. Perhaps it is because, reportedly, doctors treating returning troops have been threatened with jail and or hefty fines if they say anything regarding DU-related symptoms. The implication regarding compensation to countries affected by this poisoned legacy (DU's lethality lasts for four and a half billion years) and troops is financially stratospheric. Since the 2003 invasion, US troops are denied entry to the International Atomic Energy Authority or any radiation experts to test ground and air levels. In Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia where DU weapons were used (with missiles also dropped accidentally in neighboring countries, by the US, to whom all the world's lives are seemingly cheap) the Iraq Syndrome became quickly apparent. Even European peacekeepers on relatively short tours of duty became ill, developed leukemia's and other cancers and a number died. A five man film crew from BBC Scotland all tested DU positive after filming for less than a week there. Afghanistan too was liberated in 2001, by uranium weapons, which continue to be routinely used, condemning generations yet to be born to deformities and the living - the new born and under fives the most susceptible - to cancers and other horrific DU-related conditions. Durakovic also found high levels of uranium in hospital patients there, as there will undoubtedly be in the occupying forces. He also found identical conditions to Iraq amongst the young: Children born with no limbs, no eyes, or with tumors protruding from their mouths and eyes. The latest country to fall victim to uranium weapons is Lebanon - but with a Difference; it transpires. Dr Chris Busby*, founder of the Low Level Radiation Campaign and Green Audit, is Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and also sits on the (UK) Ministry of Defense Uranium Oversight Board. Israel is one of the countries with uranium weapons and: The first evidence that the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) were using them (in the July-August 2006 Israeli bombardment) was a Getty Picture Library image of an Israeli soldier carrying a DU anti-tank shell, says Busby. He then noted a report in Lebanon's Daily Star, that Dr Khobeisi, a scientist, had measured gamma radiation in a bomb crater at Khiam in the south of the country, at ten to twenty times higher (samples taken from different locations in crater) than naturally occurring background radiation. The following month, Dai Williams,** an independent researcher went to Lebanon on behalf of Green Audit, to investigate and bring back samples to the UK for testing. He also brought back an air filter from an ambulance. Tested at the Harwell UKAEA laboratory: The results were astonishing. Both soil and filter contained enriched uranium with the soil sample containing uranium about nine times higher than the natural background. (Remember how threatening the West has become towards Iran's efforts to enrich uranium?) The soil sample was also sent to the School of Ocean Sciences, in North Wales for a second test by a different method for certainty. The results were the same. Busby asks: Why use enriched uranium? It is a bit like shooting your enemy with diamonds. He contends it is possible that it is a smokestream for the wider use of depleted uranium, as the final contamination when all gets mixed up after the war has a natural isotopic signature. (ie: can be read as uranium which occurs naturally in nature.) There are two other chilling possibilities says Busby: a fusion bomb or a thermobaric bomb, both of which would need enriched uranium. Certainly, doctors were reporting bodies in conditions they could find in no medical manuals, as in the attack on Falluja, Iraq. Lebanese authorities denied the presence of enriched uranium; Israel denied using it. The bombardment had ended on the agreement that UN peacekeepers went in. Given their debilitation and mortality rate in the Balkans, this lethal presence might well have deterred them. To be certain the incident was not in isolation. Williams returned to Lebanon and brought back soil and water samples from Khiam and other sites. Enriched uranium was found in water samples from two separate craters in Khiam and in one of the soil samples. Then the money ran out. The samples tested had already cost #2,000. Donations from an Arab friend and Swiss supporters totaled #850 - and Dai Williams had paid the rest out of his own money. More work is needed, but it is now known that the IDF used enriched uranium in Lebanon. And: Since it is in the ambulance air filter, it is also in the lungs of the inhabitants .. the Lebanese people have been sacrificed to cancers, leukemia's, birth defects, like the people of the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, says Busby, adding and it may be worse: since we still do not know what the weapon was. And have these weapons been used on the people of Gaza and the West Bank? Further, Israel is not alone decimating those she perceives as her enemies, but her own people, neighboring countries and even those further a field. In context, Green Audit studied airborne uranium at sites in the UK, between 1998 and 2004. There was only one period in which uranium in the air significantly exceeded the naturally occurring background presence: during the bombing of Iraq, in March and April, 2003. As with the radio nuclides from Chernobyl which affected Europe and the globe, and still contaminates agricultural land, the potentially deadly wave of invisible particles traveled on the wind from Iraq. We are all Gulf war victims now, commented Busby's colleague, Richard Bramhill. Can anything be done to halt the use of these genocidal weapons? Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois and author of The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, thinks so. He has launched a campaign for a global pact against uranium weapons. Boyle points out that the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibits: the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices. Clearly he says, DU is analogous to poison gas. The Government of France is the official depository for the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Boyle contends that rather than aiming for an international treaty prohibiting the use of DU, which would probably take years, pressure should be put on every state to submit a letter to the French government to enforce a ban. All that needs to be done is for anti-DU citizens, activists and NGO's in every country to pressure their Foreign Minister to write to their French counterpart, drawing attention to the Protocol for the Prohibition of the use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, of 17th June 1925, prohibiting uses as above. The letter should add that this Protocol is believed to: already prohibit the use in war of depleted uranium ammunition, uranium Armour plate and all other uranium weapons. A request should be made that the letter is circulated to all other High Contracting Parties to the 1925 Protocol and addressed to: His Excellency, The Foreign Minister, Republic of France, 37, Quai d'Orsay, 75351 Paris, France. Or Fax: 33-1-43-17-4275 Professor Boyle points out that: As the Land Mines Treaty demonstrates, it is possible for a coalition of determined activists and NGO's, acting in concert with at least one sympathetic state, to bring into being an international treaty to address humanitarian concerns. Such a sympathetic state exists: Belgium, last month, outlawed uranium weapons. If the rest of the world does not follow, what will happen is what Richard Bramhill calls a DU-locaust - of the children of the countries where these weapons have been used, of soldiers, of the uranium miners and of the munitions workers, as the living, dead and deformed prove. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Notes * Author of Wings of Death and of Wolves of Water (2007) essential reading on radiation's horrors, published by Green Audit, available direct from admin@greenaudit.org Busby is also involved in Radioactive Times, the journal of the Low Level Radiation Campaign, a detailed quarterly update on nuclear industry shenanigans ( http://www.llrc.org ) ** http://www.eoslifework.co.uk for a wealth of DU related material. Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited the Arab and Muslim world on numerous occasions. She has written and broadcast on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also senior researcher for John Pilger's award-winning documentary: "Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq". and author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of Baghdad in the Great Cities series, for World Almanac Books (2006.) Please also see: Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare http://www.opcw.org/html/db/cwc/more/geneva_protocol.html AMERICA'S GREATEST CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY / MILITARY USE OF DU http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/10/31.html The Queen's Death Star, by Leuren Moret http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2006/DU-Europe-Moret26feb06.htm "Perpetual Death From America" By Mohammed Daud Miraki, MA, MA, PhD Afghan-American Freelance Academic http://www.rense.com/general35/perp.htm Depleted Uranium - Poisoning U.S. Troops And The Planet http://uruknet.info/?p=m32443&hd=&size=1&l=e New study detects traces of uranium in South http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=7 8163 Dust Up, John Upton/Tracy Press http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=3422&blz=1 Depleted Uranium Situation Requires Action By President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, states Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D. http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=2158&blz=1 WHAT THE PENTAGON REALLY KNOWS ABOUT THE CRIMINAL USE OF POISONOUS URANIUM WEAPONS, by Christopher Bollyn http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=1902&blz=1 Iraqi Doctor Learns from Hiroshima's Past, note Shinya Ajima and Shinsuke Takahashi http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=1851&blz=1 DEPLETED URANIUM: THE WAR CRIME THAT HAS NO END, by Paul Rockwell http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=1462&blz=1 TV Not Concerned by Cluster Bombs, DU: 'That's just the way life is in Iraq', from FAIR http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=882&blz=1 Hazards of Uranium Weapons in the Proposed War on Iraq, by Dai Williams http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=575&blz=1 Pandora DU Research Project http://stopuraniumwars.blogspot.com Felicity Arbuthnot is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Felicity Arbuthnot ======== http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ARB20070603& articleId=5864 ======== ***************************************************************** 57 [DU-WATCH] Our PoisonPlanet Conference on DU and Nuclear Pollution videos now online Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 02:43:23 -0500 (CDT) Hello all, I have finished uploading the videos from the April 14th conference. I encourage everyone to take a look. If you are not familiar with the issues of Depleted Uranium, one of the waste products of Nuclear enrichment then I encourage you to watch the Part I introductory video compilation. From there you may want to check out Dr. Fasy and Dennis Kyne's presentation. You can easily find all the videos by going to http://video.google.com and enter the key word: poisonplanet For people interested in the issues of Hanford and the Global Nuclear Energy Program (GNEP) check out the presentations by deBruler and Crowley-Koch. Well done and very interesting. The insanity never ends. I split out each presenter into their own video so you can pick and choose. Steve [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] ***************************************************************** 58 Guardian Unlimited: Who else was poisoned by polonium? When the news broke that a radioactive substance had been used to murder ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, a team of scientists rushed to find out how far the contamination had spread. It led them on a trail involving hundreds of people and dozens of locations. Steve Boggan reports Tuesday June 5, 2007 The Guardian Sleep had been eluding Professor Pat Troop in her hotel room in Helsinki. Back in London, the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko had just died. In Finland, it was 11.21pm on Thursday, November 23 2006 and Troop was beginning to think she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As chief executive of the Health Protection Agency (HPA), she somehow knew that the implications of Litvinenko's death and the threat to public safety would be huge, even before word came through of what had killed him. It appeared to be some kind of poisoning, but the prime suspects, a variety of radioactive substances and the heavy metal thallium, had been ruled out. What could it be? Midnight passed. Troop was attending a conference of her counterparts from around the world: heads of vast public safety organisations. How many would like to be in her shoes now, and how many were relieved that they were not? Radiation experts from the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, Berkshire, were advising police back home and would soon be able to tell her exactly what had killed the Russian. The phone had been ringing all night with updates. Some time around 12.30am it rang again. This time, it was Dr Roger Cox, director of the HPA's Centre for Radiation, Chemical & Environmental Hazards in Chilton, Oxfordshire, with the news that Litvinenko had been poisoned by polonium-210, a radioactive material that had never before been dreamed of as a murder weapon. "Roger had to give me a crash course in what polonium-210 was and what problems it could cause," recalls Troop. "Around 2am I decided that this was not a night for sleeping. I got on my computer and booked a flight home at 6am. It was quite clear that what was unfolding was unprecedented." Last week, Sir Ken Macdonald, the director of public prosecutions, called for the extradition of a businessman and former Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB) operative, Andrei Lugovoi, for Litvinenko's murder. The story of the radioactive trail that allegedly led to Lugovoi's door has been told before and cannot be told again while the remote possibility of a trial remains. However, the inside story of how the polonium crisis was managed has not. Thousands of people worked to safeguard the public, test those affected and prevent further contamination. While Troop was travelling home, these people, her people, were being scrambled. The HPA was established in April 2003 and charged with safeguarding the health and wellbeing of the public from infectious diseases, chemicals, new technologies, radioactive threats and even the deliberate release of bioweapons by terrorists. Its raison d'etre was the realisation, after 9/11, that if something big was going to happen, we had better be ready for it. One of the people whose organisation had been absorbed by the HPA was Cox, a former director of the National Radiological Protection Board, the man who broke the polonium news to Troop. While Litvinenko lay dying on November 23 , suspicions had been growing that polonium-210 might have been involved. Secretly, Cox began pulling together a small team of his best experts at Chilton. Among them was Dr Mike Bailey, head of the radiation dose assessments team. These people spend much of their lives conducting emergency exercises, planning for the unexpected. But no one had thought to plan for anything like this. "We are all familiar with polonium-210 here," says Bailey. "It occurs naturally and has industrial applications. But the idea that it should be used to poison someone had never occurred to anyone. When I was told it was polonium-210 it came as quite a shock." Most tests for radioactivity look for gamma radiation, the most prevalent form occurring naturally. But polonium-210 gives off alpha radiation, which is undetectable by the usual scans at, for example, airports. It cannot pass through glass or paper and if ingested would be contained in the body simply by dead skin on the surface. It is only when excretions such as urine are tested that polonium contamination can be found. Although radiation from polonium does not spread far, it is very intense - one expert described it as ferocious - and causes irreparable damage to organs and bone marrow in particular. But, realistically, it has to be swallowed in order to do harm. "Death by polonium-210 was unheard of - later we managed to find details of one fatality, in Russia, of a man who had accidentally inhaled polonium-210 in an industrial process," says Bailey. "Fortunately for us, we have a good library to hand, with important books and journals going back many years." On the desk in his first floor office at Chilton - a 1960s futuristic concrete complex - is a buff-coloured book without a dustjacket or a title on the cover. Instead, the title is printed inside: "Radiation Research. Supplement 5 1964. Metabolism and Biological Effects of an Alpha Particle Emitter, polonium-210." The research was conducted by J Newell Stannard and George W Casarett, two respected scientists from the University of Rochester's Atomic Energy Project in the US, a hangover from the Manhattan Project, which gave the world the atomic bomb. "As part of the Manhattan Project, they needed to know what effects there could be on workers, so they conducted a lot of research into polonium-210 in the 40s to 60s," says Bailey. "Their work was done on animals, but it was still extremely useful. On the assumption that humans were on the same level of sensitivity [to polonium-210] as animals, we could get a fairly good estimate of how much it would take to kill within a few weeks." Bailey almost makes light of his work. In fact, Troop says he conducted a series of complex back calculations that were vital in determining rapidly how big Litvinenko's dose could have been. She suspected vast numbers of people might have come into contact with the Russian and they would all need to be tested; Bailey's calculations would enable them to work out how dangerous such contact might have been. "At that stage - on the way back to the UK - my mind was racing with all the things we would have to do," says Troop. "By the time I got back, Roger Cox was ready with a tutorial on polonium and alpha radiation for me. I was going to have to brief ministers and the media. I realised I'd better get it right." Later that day, Troop publicly broke the news of what had killed Litvinenko while, in the background, HPA and Aldermaston staff began looking for contamination at Litvinenko's home in Muswell Hill, north London, Barnet general hospital, where he had first been treated, and University College hospital, where he died. At the same time, they had to develop an entirely new testing regime to examine everyone who had come into contact with him. It was to be a mammoth task. Operations control centres were set up in Chilton and at the HPA's headquarters on the seventh floor of a modern building in Holborn, central London. In the following days, traces of radioactive contamination were found, famously, at the Sheraton Park Lane hotel and the Pine Bar of the Millennium hotel in Grosvenor Square, locations where Litvinenko had met Lugovoi, at the Itsu sushi bar, the offices of Litvinenko's friend Boris Berezovsky, at Arsenal's Emirates stadium and on three aircraft. Troop holds her hand to her head as she recalls this. A diminutive, confident 59-year-old, she trained as a clinical doctor and has worked in public health since 1975, rising to the post of Britain's deputy chief medical officer before becoming the HPA's first chief executive. Among the crises she has handled are the foot and mouth outbreak and the aftermath of 9/11 - that is, preparing for a similar attack on the UK. "Every emergency has a shape - usually it starts with a big bang, levels out and then tails off," she says. "But this one went up and up and up and up. Every day there was something new to deal with, something we had to adapt to, something we hadn't had to deal with before. People were working very long hours but there was also a buzz, fuelled by adrenaline. Everyone just got on with it." The main priorities were to close down locations where radiation was found and testing those who had come into contact with Litvinenko and those locations. While staff at the nerve centre in London worked with the police and the Aldermaston crews in testing the places Litvinenko had visited, the people in Chilton had to devise a testing regime for the hundreds of concerned people who had followed Troop's advice to contact the NHS Direct helpline. What they came up with was this: each person who thought they might have been contaminated was interviewed on the phone by a triage assessment team. Those considered at risk - including family and friends of Litvinenko, hospital and restaurant staff, workers at the hotels, visitors to the Pine Bar and Itsu, and so on - were contacted by HPA officials. Each suspected patient was required to provide at least one litre of urine over a 24-hour period. In the labs at Chilton, testing is still going on in a handful of cases. The urine is slowly evaporated at 85C for around 12 hours until only the salts remain. To this is added a hydrochloric acid solution and an improvised plastic hood containing a 10p piece-sized disc made of silver - polonium is attracted to silver - and it is stirred for three hours. When the disc is removed with a pair of tweezers, it is just possible to see a thin film across its surface: this contains the polonium. The number of samples has now tapered off almost to none but I watch Dilys Wilding, an assistant scientific officer, carry one in a petri dish from a ground floor lab to Chilton's first floor spectrometer lab. It is put into an alpha spectrometer that will display any radioactive elements on a graph, but the results won't be ready for a day. "The problem at first was a lack of equipment," says Wilding. "It was a Sunday when the first large numbers of samples came in - but where do you get sample flasks and evaporation hotplates on a Sunday? For a while, we were having to buy mineral water bottles from Tescos, empty them and send those out. There was an awful lot of work but we knew it was important, so we just did the best we could with what we had available." To date, 733 people other than Litvinenko have been tested. Of those, 716 were considered to be at no risk of developing illnesses related to polonium-210. Seventeen were contaminated to above average levels but the HPA say that, for them, "any increased [health] risk in the long term is likely to be very small". So what of the radioactive locations? How were they handled? The HPA cannot give details of scenes where the use or handling of polonium might be an issue at any future trial. It can, however, tell us how radioactivity was found and dealt with in other areas. Jan McClure is a team leader of Chilton's Radiation Metrology Lab. While protective-suited teams from Aldermaston collected forensic evidence at criminally sensitive locations, her teams traced radiation and performed simple decontamination in public areas such as in hospitals, hotel rooms and corridors, lifts, aircraft and the football stadium. She holds an Electra dual phosphor probe over a sealed alpha radiation source to demonstrate the clicking sound it gives off. "The difficult thing about alpha radiation is that you have to get very close to it - 2 to 3cm - to find it, but once you do the signal is loud and very clear," she says. "That meant there was a lot of searching, literally on hands and knees. Where there was a lot of contamination we called in specialist decontamination teams, but mostly the areas could simply be cleaned with wet wipes, which were securely bagged and disposed of. Simple cleaning usually did the trick. "Where, for example, we found stubborn contamination on wood, it was simply varnished over. Some walls were given a fresh coat of paint. Things like taps were replaced and safely disposed of. Remember, Polonium-210 has a half-life of 138 days - that means it would become significantly less radioactive after that time." At the height of the incident, McClure had 72 people at her disposal, including contractors from four private companies and a specialist 12-strong team from the military's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Alverstoke. "We thought the biggest job might be the Emirates stadium," she says. "I mean, we thought we'd have to test the whole ground. But then we were given specific details of seats relating to certain tickets and we worked outwards and cleaned from there. It was a relatively simple job. "The aircraft, on the other hand, were checked throughout and certain seats were removed and replaced. We have to remember that it began with a tragedy for the Litvinenko family, but from our point of view it was both fascinating and challenging to put into practice everything we had trained for." The worst was over by February, when the HPA's two control centres were wound down, but Troop reminds me that during this period her teams also dealt with two major flu exercises, an outbreak of a new strain of the hospital bug MRSA and the discovery of bird flu at the Bernard Matthews food processing plant in Suffolk. "We also tracked down people from 52 countries who could have been contaminated with polonium, and we and the Foreign Office worked to pass on information and advice to each of those governments," she says. In all, more than 3,000 HPA staff and affiliates from other government departments worked on the crisis. Troop says she is proud of them all. "It wasn't perfect," she says. "An exercise like this never can be. But we're pleased with the way it went and we learned a lot. So if anything like this happens again, we'll be ready for it." It only remains to be seen whether Troop's colleagues at Scotland Yard will ever feel quite the same sense of job satisfaction. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 59 Pahrump Valley Times: Cleaning up after atom tests the topic Jun. 06, 2007 By MARY BALDASANO MARY BALDASANO / SPECIAL TO THE PVT Interactive display teaches kids about keeping the desert clean. In an effort at the Nevada Test Site, the organization has created a traveling display called Operation Clean Desert. This interactive teaching tool was most recently on display at Hafen Elementary School, and was deemed very valuable by science teachers. Mary Brichell, the science department director and teacher said, "The children positively loved it. You couldn't hold them back. The workbook and CD, as well as the display gave them hands on opportunity to learn." In addition to the display, teachers were given raised relief and 3-D teaching aids. "It gave us ideas for creating a different approach to getting the children involved so you keep their attention," said Brichell. The display allowed children to push in on different characters and items to learn about its effect on the desert as well as whether it is a good or bad influence on the environment. Using a workbook and CD, the children were taught about what happened when the above ground testing was done and then later below-ground tests. It showed the craters created in both instances and how the cleanup will progress. It informed them how the test site began and the mission it was given in a way that young people can understand. Using Adam the Atom, Dr. Proton, and a reference to Adam's unstable brother Axel, they learned how the testing may have affected ground water and how radioactive contamination affects the environment. It also teaches about atoms and how they interact. An explanation was given about the equipment needed to accomplish the cleanup and what happens with the contaminated items and the special suits the cleanup personnel use in the hot weather so they can work longer periods. webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com Copyright © Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 60 KOLO: 3 Exposed to Dose of Plutonium During Work at Nevada Test Site Jun 06, 2007 Authorities are investigating how three workers were exposed to radioactive plutonium during environmental restoration work at the Nevada Test Site, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration said. Two female workers for the test site's main contractor, National Securities Technologies, received the highest of what NNSA spokesman Kevin Rohrer characterized as "minor radiation exposure" on April 30. A man received less exposure to the radioactive element, Rohrer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal for a Wednesday report. The three were among eight workers in the area, including a health physicist and technicians. All were wearing protective gear including respirators. "The exposures are relatively low, but they're high enough that it concerns us," Rohrer said. The workers remained on the job, but the women were not allowed into radiation areas, Rohrer said. For privacy reasons, the names of the eight workers were not released. A spokeswoman for the contractor, Gillian Silver, said the company was conducting an internal investigation "to monitor the lessons learned from this experience to make sure any occupational health issues are addressed." "We don't have any reason to believe there were any security or safety considerations here," Silver said. Tests showed the women received 400 millirem "effective dose" exposures, while the man had an estimated dose equivalent to 100 millirem, Rohrer said. He said there was no way to predict what effect, if any, the exposure would have on the workers over a 50-year dose monitoring period. The regulatory standard for radiation workers is 5,000 millirem per year. The test site maintains an administrative guideline of no more than 500 millirem per year. A millirem is one-thousandth of a rem, the unit of dose for ionizing radiation. (Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) Gray Television Group, Inc. - Copyright © 2002-2007 - ***************************************************************** 61 DaytonDailyNews.com: Senators upset over compensation law Voinovich, Brown want an oversight hearing into why atomic workers are not being compensated. By Jessica Wehrman Staff Writer Tuesday, June 05, 2007 WASHINGTON — Ohio's two senators are calling for a congressional oversight hearing into the implementation of a law that provides compensation to atomic workers who became sick after being exposed to radiation, and other toxic chemicals. In a letter Monday to Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., Voinovich, Brown and 13 other senators including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called for the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to hold hearing on the issue. "Former nuclear workers should not have to scale a mountain of red tape or prove the un-provable before receiving assistance," Brown said. Brown also signed onto a letter signed by Voinovich and at least 14 other U.S. senators to the secretaries of Labor and Health and Human Services expressing concern about budget shortfalls in a compensation program for atomic workers who got sick from on-the-job exposures to radiation. That letter said the senators are worried the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program for workers with radiation-related cancer, beryllium disease or silicosis has been underfunded for fiscal 2007. The shortfalls have resulted in fewer claims processed, the letter says. According to the Labor Department, the federal government has given out more than $2.6 billion in compensation to atomic workers since 2001. Of more than 104,000 cases filed nationwide by 62,093 individuals, about 21 percent have received money or medical benefits. About $250 million has been paid to workers in Ohio, home of the Mound Plant, the Feed Materials Production Center at Fernald and the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon. Copyright ©2007 Cox Ohio Publishing, Dayton, Ohio, USA. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 62 barrow in furness: Radiation discharge reducing Published on 05/06/2007 RADIOACTIVE discharges into the Irish Sea from Sellafield and Drigg are reducing year-on-year, a public meeting heard. However, the West Cumbria Sites Stakeholder Group was told that historic discharges are still affecting radioactivity levels in the water. Professor John Haywood chaired the meeting at Cleator Moor Civic Hall on Thursday, where the British Nuclear Group presented its environmental report for 2006. It looked at the handling of effluent from both the main Sellafield site and low-level waste depositary at Drigg. Prof Haywood said that over many years there have been successive improvements to the system managing discharges. But historic discharges remain present in Irish Sea sediments — constituting the largest part of Sellafield radioactivity. Annually the most exposed group of local seafood consumers receive a radiation dose of 0.19 millisieverts. A sievert is a measure of the biological impact of radiation. But only one fifth of this radiation comes from discharges this decade, with historic radiation being the biggest factor. These discharges are declining slowly due to the gradual movement of sea sediments away from west Cumbria. BNG is working to reduce the discharges in line with national and international targets. The aim is to ensure that any discharges occurring after the year 2020 should contribute less than a 0.02 millisievert annual dose of radiation to the most frequent seafood consumers. BNG says it will meet the target by 2012. View this story and the latest newspaper in full digital reproduction, just like the printed copy at www.nwemail.co.uk/digitalcopy ***************************************************************** 63 IPS-English INDIA/US: Impasse Over Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Rights Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:14:58 -0700 Analysis by Praful Bidwai NEW DELHI, Jun 6 (IPS) - High official-level talks between the United States and India to clinch the nuclear cooperation deal initialled in July 2005 have failed to narrow mutual differences and produce an agreement. The negotiations, held last week between the U.S. team led by undersecretary of state R. Nicholas Burns, and the Indian side led by Foreign Secretary (chief diplomat) Shivshankar Menon, were scheduled to last two days. They were extended by one more day to Saturday, but did not lead to a ”123 agreement” -- so called because it is meant to amend Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act to permit nuclear commerce with India by making a one-time exception for it within the global nuclear non-proliferation reg ime. The nuclear deal may come up at the June 6-8 G8 summit at Heiligendamm in Germany where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet President George W. Bush. But it is not clear if Bush will discuss it in any depth, especially if he leaves Heiligendamm early. India put a positive spin on the talks by saying they were ”intensive, productive and constructive” and expressed ”optimism” that a final ”123 agreement” would soon be struck. But Indian officials know that the window of opportunity to clinch a deal will probably slam shut by September, when the U.S. Congress reconvenes to focus on domestic issues, Bush becomes a lame duck, and the presidential election campaign gains momentum. The main differences between the two governments pertain to what would happen to U.S. supplies of nuclear fuel and equipment if India conducts another nuclear explosion, and to India's ”right” to reprocess imported fuel after it has been burned in Indian reactors. ”These differences appear to be sharpened or become more focused in recent weeks,'' says Achin Vanaik, a political science professor at Delhi University, and an activist of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, a network of Indian peace groups founded in 2000. ”They certainly overshadow other differences on issues such as sequencing of steps India must take before the deal goes into effect.” Vanaik said that unless both side showed a remarkable degree of flexibility, the deal won't go through in the near future. ‘'At the moment, there are few signs of real flexibility.” India insists on guarantees that the supplies be maintained under all circumstances. But under U.S. law, no nuclear material can be sold/transferred to a country which has conducted a nuclear test and not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This position was reiterated last December by Congress which passed the Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006 (Hyde Act). The Americans also say they have a ”right” to demand that India return all equipment and material supplied to it in case it conducts a nuclear blast. Equally thorny is the issue of reprocessing of imported fuel to extract plutonium from it. Plutonium can be used both to make nuclear bombs and to fuel a special kind of reactor known as the fast-breeder, which produces more nuclear fuel than it consumes. India says it must have the ”right” to reprocess spent fuel to run its ambitious fast-breeder programme, which will eventually lead to a ”third-generation” or third-stage reactor based on another material called thorium. India is believed to have less than one percent of the world reserves of natural uranium, but more than 30 percent of the global reserves of thorium. In recent weeks and months, several serving and former officials of the Department of Atomic Energy have written or spoken on India's planned ”three-stage” programme as unchangeable, immutable and indispensable to India's energy needs. The day the nuclear talks began in New Delhi last week, a national newspaper carried two long opinion pieces arguing this position by former DAE chiefs, one of them a member of the policy-making Atomic Energy Commission. ”It is doubtful if India needs nuclear power at all”, argues M.V. Ramana, a physicist and independent energy expert attached to the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore. ”Nuclear electricity is exorbitantly expensive, unacceptably hazardous, and fraught with long-lived radioactive wastes. But leaving that aside, nobody has proved the viability of the thorium reactor on an industrial scale. Even the ‘second-stage' fast-breeder has proved a failure, not just in India, but also in France, which invested heavily in that technology.” Yet, India's hardline nuclear scientist-engineers' lobby has prevailed upon the political leadership on reprocessing, as also on sticking to the letter of the July 2005 agreement which pledges ”full nuclear cooperation” between India and the U.S. It is not clear if the lobby is generally resistant to any restrictions on the ”right” to reprocess, or especially allergic to their denial in the present case because it fears that that will attract safeguards (inspections) not only on reprocessing plants, but on downstream facilities that use material produced in the plants. The fact is, the Indian government has indicated that it won't budge on the issue: if the U.S. could agree to allow Japan and a Western European consortium called Euratom to reprocess spent fuel, it should do the same for India. This, some analysts say, may not be easy to sell to the U.S. Congress because India is not an NPT signatory. Congress must approve the ”123 agreement”. In practical terms, this may require a special certification from the U.S. President that the reprocessed material won't be diverted to military uses. This is a tricky issue. During the talks, the U.S. proposed that India leave the reprocessing issue out of the ”123 agreement”. But India rejected this, citing its past experience with two light-water reactors donated and built by the U.S. at Tarapur in the 1960s. After India conducted a nuclear test in 1974, the U.S. neither let India reprocess the spent fuel, nor took it back. India also reiterated the U.S. assurance that ”nothing in the Hyde Act” prevents it from implementing its ”obligations under July 18, 2005 and March 2, 2006 Joint Statements”, and asked the administration to stick to this assurance. ”A resolution of the differences will need a high-level political decision”, says Vanaik. ”Such a decision can only be based on or derived from the broader purpose of the India-U.S. nuclear deal, which is to consolidate a strategic partnership between the U.S. and India, largely on Washington's terms, as part of its global system of alliances.” Whether and how soon Bush and Singh will reaffirm that rationale and push the deal through in the face of their domestic oppositions remains to be seen. But it won't be easy to silence the critics. Meanwhile, lobbyists of the Indian diaspora living in several countries which are members of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group have stepped up their advocacy in favour of the deal through email campaigns, seminars and meetings with legislators. ***** +POLITICS: Doomsday Clock Ticking Faster - in Asia (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36245) +Like Mushrooms - IPS special coverage (http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/nuclear/index.asp) +Doomsday Clock (http://www.thebulletin.org/doomsday_clock/timeline.htm) (END/IPS/AP/NA/WD/NU/SC/DV/EN/G8/PB/RDR/07) = 06060549 ORP005 NNNN ***************************************************************** 64 Nevada Appeal: Yucca Mountain not dead after all? Opinion June 6, 2007 Sen. Harry Reid has said with confidence that the plan to make Yucca Mountain the nation's nuclear waste repository is dead, a proclamation that put the anxieties of many Nevadans at ease. Yet New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Idaho Sen. Larry Craig have introduced legislation that would fast track the licensing of Yucca Mountain. Domenici has tied the completion of the project as necessary to combat climate change, saying nuclear energy is a clean source of energy. Clean for New Mexico, maybe, but Domenici might be singing a different tune if the waste were being shipped to his state rather than Nevada. Yucca Mountain is a flawed project, a money pit that has swallowed up billions of dollars. Nevadans have said clearly they don't want the waste. But the new legislation is a clear signal that scientific flaws and the will of the people aren't enough to drive the final nail in its coffin. Politics is a powerful force that keeps the project's heart beating. We hope Sen. Reid has more success in driving that final nail than he's had in his equally confident proclamations about ending our war in Iraq. All contents © Copyright 2007 nevadaappeal.com Nevada Appeal - 580 Mallory Way - Carson City, NV 89701 ***************************************************************** 65 The Hindu: New front rejects 123 agreement Thursday, Jun 07, 2007 `It shows Manmohan as someone willing to do right by the U.S., not by India' JOINT STAND: AIADMK general secretary J. Jayalalithaa, Samajwadi Party leaders Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh arrive at Telugu Desam president N. Chandrababu Naidu's residence in Hyderabad on Wednesday to attend a conclave of regional parties. HYDERABAD: Opposing the India-United States nuclear deal, the newly formed eight regional parties front, alleged that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government was on the verge of surrendering "India's nuclear crown jewels and strategic independence to the United States." "We reject the 123 agreement, the Hyde Act and the nuclear deal," said a statement issued at the end of a conclave of leaders belonging to regional parties, at the residence of Telugu Desam president N. Chandrababu Naidu here on Wednesday. Those who attended the meeting were the former Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand and Karnataka, J. Jayalalithaa, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Om Prakash Chautala, Babulal Marandi and S. Bangarappa, MDMK president Vaiko, AGP president Brindawan Goswami and Amar Singh, MP. `Against national interest' Addressing a press conference along with the other leaders, Ms. Jayalalithaa said the meeting firmly resolved to oppose the proposed India-U.S. deal. "We feel it is totally detrimental to India's national interests." The leaders said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's approach ignored the fact that the Hyde Act violated the basic and fundamental understanding in the July 18, 2005 Joint Statement, of India being treated on a par with the United States in the nuclear sphere, implicitly enjoying, for all intents and purposes, nuclear weapon state status. The Hyde Act, in contravention of the Joint Statement, was meant to translate India's voluntary test moratorium into a legally-binding commitment to not test again and impose International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and additional protocol relevant to non-nuclear weapon states on our civilian nuclear facilities in perpetuity. "It indicates a serious dereliction of duty by the Prime Minister who is sworn to protect the country's sovereign rights and prerogatives in this and other areas. It shows Dr. Manmohan Singh as someone willing to do right by the United States, not by India," the statement alleged. `Skewed policy' Asked why the Front insisted on a new alternative economic policy, Ms. Jayalalithaa said the Prime Minister himself recently admitted that the real benefits of the present economic policy had not reached the common man. Such wrong and skewed policy was to be blamed for the price rise and burden for the common man. Farmers too were getting a raw deal. There was decline in agricultural growth and not many wards of farmers were willing to take to agriculture as it was not profitable. "We cannot allow this to happen and we need to pump in more subsidies like in the U.S." SEZ policy She said all leaders were critical of the present Special Economic Zone policy of allowing State governments to enter into agreements and giving away farm land at rock bottom prices after threatening or intimidating the farmers. Instead they wanted industrialists to enter into agreements with farmers and give no role for the State Governments. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. ***************************************************************** 66 Daily News Journal: Commissioners oppose dumping at landfill www.dnj.com - By TURNER HUTCHENS trhutchens@dnj.com — Turner Hutchens, (615) 278-5161 Some Rutherford County commissioners are calling for an end to radioactive dumping at the Middle Point Landfill and asking why they weren't told about the dumping sooner. The landfill, located on Jefferson Pike, has been receiving low-level radioactive waste since at least the early 1990s under a special state program, but that fact only came to light last month with the publishing of a report from a nuclear watchdog organization. "I'm livid," Commissioner Robert Peay said. Peay said he believed the fact that radioactive material was being dumped there was intentionally concealed from the public and the commission. The Rutherford County Public Works and Planning Committee voted Tuesday to ask Gov. Phil Bredesen, local state representatives and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation to take action to stop all dumping of radioactive materials at the landfill. The committee also asked County Mayor Ernest Burgess to bring representatives of the Tennessee Division of Radiological Health, Division of Solid Waste and Middle Point Landfill before the committee to explain why the commission was never told about the dumping. TDEC officials have said they will hold "public discussions" involving the landfill and the dumping, but Commissioner Joe Frank Jernigan said he wants more than promises. "Just saying they're going to do it don't mean they're going to," he said. Burgess said he has talked with many state and landfill representatives and has been told the radioactive waste was at such a low level of radioactivity that it had a one in a million chance of killing someone. He said he had been told about a spike in radioactive material received at the landfill two years ago — when the amount of such material jumped from 165,000 pounds in 2004 to 10.1 million pounds in 2005 — was in large part from a Michigan nuclear reactor that was decommissioned and dismantled. Peay said it doesn't make any economic sense that a company would haul waste from Michigan if it was harmless. "If it's such low level of radiation, they could have spread it in Michigan," he said. TDEC officials have asked Middle Point Landfill officials to test water from the site for radioactivity. The city of Murfreesboro is also conducting tests of its water supply for radioactivity. Those results are expected back this week. The Environmental Protection Agency officials have said they satisfied with the state's handling of the situation for the time being, though the agency will continue to monitor the situation. Waste is being dumped by four licensed companies: IMPACT, RACE, Toxco and Duratek/Energy Solutions. The companies, which are overseen by TDEC, are responsible for making sure the level of radiation is what is claimed, officials said. The radioactive materials being dumped in the landfill include gravel, soil, asphalt and metal building materials from places such as decommissioned nuclear reactors. Burgess said he would try to find a date before the tests come back for state and landfill officials to come before the committee and answer the question of why the dumping had been kept secret. "You lose complete credibility and trust if you don't have full disclosure," he said. Just when did the Rutherford County landfil become the dumping goround for not only other counties but the United States??????? Mr. Burgess states that it is only "one in a million" chance of someone dying from this. My question to Mr. Burgess is would he like to be that one. Does anyone in Rutherford County have any control on what is dumped in the landfil? It appears the Mayor and the Commissioners were really on top of this. Goes to show what caring people we have elected to run our County. Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 3:11 pm ====================================================================== Great work, Bonita. You have expressed my feelings exactly . Why don't you contact Citizens to ENDIT via the website and give us your contact information, so we can keep you in the loop. We need more people like you. If you will give us your email address, I can send you the letter I wrote outlining the dangers of low-level radioactive exposure. Kathy Ferris Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 3:05 pm My questions: 1. Why are the other states bringing in the radioactive material if it is so "harmless". If there is hardly a risk to the public, why don't they dump it in their own state in their own landfill? Every state surely has a landfill with a rating equivalent to Middle Point. 2. Why didn't BFI and landfill/state officials disclose at the public hearings regarding the expansion that this type of waste was being dumped in our landfill? Sludge and medical waste were discussed, but certainly not radioactive waste!! I believe they knew that if they disclosed that tidbit, there would certainly be an upheaval. 3. Who are the people/commissioners that approved for BFI to have such unlimited control over our local landfill in the first place? I'm speaking of way back when, years ago, when our county still had some say on how our landfill was operated. Now it seems it's all out of our control ... it's now between BFI and the vague state regulations that are seemingly never checked. I'd like to hear from those initial deal makers and their comments on their thought processes. (That is, if they had any) I have many more questions regarding this issue and am very concerned and upset that the public was not notified. People have a RIGHT TO KNOW these things - especially the people living near the landfill. It is my opinion that some people have absolutely no conscience whatsoever! How do people sleep at night knowing they've approved things and done underhanded deals that may harm the unknowing public? I'm not naive, I know people can and will do really dastardly deeds - my question is HOW do they live with themselves? I personally spoke with Mr. Mike Apple regarding the landfill expansion. He told me that "no one wants the landfill to be near them, but it's got to go somewhere". True. Very true. But, WHY next to a river on terrain known to have multiple underground water systems? That location was never suitable to begin with! Not for empty milk cartons and certainly not radioactive waste! Let's ban together and fight this! I am signing the petition and will print one and have as many people as I can find to sign it as well to STOP this! We must put forth our very best effort and not be apathetic to something so important. We must do this for future generations! Call your county commissioner and our county mayor and voice your opposition! bonita Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 1:31 pm "We get our drinking water from the Stones River, just a few feet away. Who knows what else has been dumped there for years. It has been hauled in from everywhere. I think it should be shut down now." I have wondered for years who was the smart person that decided a landfill near a river was a good thing..... Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 12:34 pm Trucks unload trash at the Middle Point Landfill on Jefferson Pike in March 2006. How radioactive waste is processed According to a document released by Allied Waste, operators of Middle Point Landfill, all trucks with "special waste" — waste generated from potentially radioactive sites — are scanned by a radiation detector before entering the landfill. Any load that registers as more than 40 kilo counts per minute (kCPM) is flagged. "As an example of the sensitivity of the equipment, a tissue used by an individual who has recently undergone radiation therapy could have concentrations far above this level," the document states. If a load is flagged, it is isolated and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation is notified. "TDEC will usually allow an isolated truck to sit for 48 hours and then it can be rescanned," the document states. "The radionuclide normally decays to acceptable levels in that period of time." If the load is still registering as more than 40 kCPM, TDEC decides whether to reject the load as a whole or take out the radioactive section and handle it separately. TDEC can reject material, which is normally returned to the facility from which it came. Waste that does not register more than 40 kCPM is deposited in a special section of the landfill and covered. Copyright ©2007 The Daily News Journal. All rights reserved. Users of this site agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy/Your California Privacy Rights. (Terms updated March 2007) ***************************************************************** 67 Ventura County Star: More radioactive waste found at Halaco By Star staff Originally published 01:27 p.m., June 6, 2007 The Halaco Files Visit our Halaco Web site for more information including videos that cover the history, cleanup and the reactions of those who live near and worked at Halaco; an interactive graphic that details site hot spots; an interactive timeline; an interactive graphic showing the dangerous elements found at the site and their possible effects on the body; documents from inspections, complaints, legal actions and more; a slide show of past and present images; an archive of Halaco-related stories; and links to numerous resources. VenturaCountyStar.com/halaco » The EPA found radioactive material underneath a concrete pad beside the abandoned Halaco manufacturing plant after they were tipped off by a former Halaco employee, officials said today. Investigation revealed Thorium and Radium radiation levels at 10 to 100 times above normal background levels. While still considered low level radiation,the inhalation of dust from the area could pose a public health hazard. According to EPA documentation, studies show that inhaling thorium dust can increase the risk of developing lung, pancreas and bone cancers. The find could require digging up at least 10,000 cubic yards of dirt and shipping it to a waste facility that handles radioactive waste. The EPA has alerted local authorities, and the disposal could have violated Halaco's waste disposal permit. The levels found are worse than those found in March on a mound of dirt near the Ormond Beach wetlands. Halaco, now in bankruptcy, built up about 750,000 cubic feet of waste during four decades of recycling mostly magnesium and aluminum at the site. Late last year, Chickadee Remediation Co. purchased the waste management area and assumed the lease to the former smelter property. Comments Posted by bugmenot on June 6, 2007 at 2:23 p.m. (Suggest removal) This should skip the civil courts (because they filed bankruptcy anyway) and go straight to the criminal courts. I guess the hard part would be proving that somebody knowingly disposed of toxic waste illegally. Posted by Ventura22 on June 6, 2007 at 2:28 p.m. (Suggest removal) They knew good and well what they were doing was illegal. Time for someone to go to prison; like the son of the owner who operated that place too. They filed bankrupcy because they saw the storm coming and tried to deflect it like they have done regulators for many years. Posted by bianchimedic on June 6, 2007 at 3:12 p.m. (Suggest removal) a company of this size and that was operating for as long as they were does not accidentally dispose of anything, they knew exactly what they were doing and that it would be somebody elses problem someday...looks like we're gonna pick up the tab...Thanks Halaco! Posted by YRMOM on June 6, 2007 at 3:28 p.m. (Suggest removal) What a Dump! Posted by suzq211 on June 6, 2007 at 4:22 p.m. (Suggest removal) I lived in that area (Southwinds) for 20 years, and had a son that had leukemia (he has now past). Who can find out how many people in the area had some kind of cancer? My neighbor had cancer and has now past also. Just wondering. Also, a cousin's son had leukemia, and he is doing fine. Post your comment (Requires free registration.) © 2007 Ventura County Star ***************************************************************** 68 THE ENTERPRISE: Cleanup to resume at Norton's Shpack dump The Enterprise at SouthofBoston.com The Enterprise 60 Main St. P.O. Box 1450 Brockton, MA 02303-1450 (508) 586-6200 By Kevin Tocci, Enterprise correspondent NORTON — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has restarted its cleanup work at the contaminated Shpack dump on Union Road that they had to vacate nearly 11 months ago. Norton residents gathered Tuesday night at the public library to receive updates on the cleanup. Excavation and off-site disposal of radiological material from the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) site ceased last July when federal money dried up. Tim Nichols, project manager for Conti Engineering and Infrastructure Inc., said work has begun on the site, but the process will take time. Excavation and screening will start in July. Nichols said the plan is to work toward the center of the site and dig 20 to 22 feet down, which is double the depth of the first phase. He said transporting the materials off the site will start soon after. Tim Beauchemin, project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, said there is a timeline to complete this phase, depending on funding. “The 20-month duration is the duration the project could be done in, as it is currently conceived, if the funding is all in place at the right time,” Beauchemin said. Beauchemin said the Shpack site is always competing with other USACE sites for money, but that $6 million has been secured for this year. Many residents had expressed concern over future work stoppages at the site. “One thing we got assurances from our headquarters is that they're going to keep funding coming so we don't have to shut down,” said Beauchemin. He said based on the funding and how and when it's received, it could actually take 30 months to complete the excavation of radioactive material. It is projected that another $18.5 million will be requested from the federal government for fiscal years 2008 and 2009. Melissa Taylor, the remedial project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told residents that negotiations are ongoing with 21 Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs) and that a good-faith offer has been received from 14 of the parties. Taylor also mentioned two residents nearest the landfill with contaminated wells and the possibility of connecting the two homes to town water. Selectmen Chairman Robert Kimball Jr. intervened and asked if the EPA could coordinate with the PRPs to take an alternative approach to the two properties. “We really don't want to make the connection to municipal water,” Kimball said. “We don't want to run water lines in that area, because it will encourage future development.” Kimball asked if it was possible to raze the two buildings. Beauchemin told Kimball a plan is in the works to level the buildings, so the property could be used during the cleanup. The EPA is planning to clean up the chemical contamination once USACE completes its phase. Heather Graf, coordinator of the Citizen's Shpack Team, questioned the migration of contamination once digging began at the site. Taylor told the audience there is a program for monitoring wells around the site. The Shpack dump, which covers more than eight acres and is mostly located in Norton adjacent to the Attleboro landfill, was a privately owned dump from 1946 to 1965. It is estimated that several contaminants, such as domestic and industrial waste, inorganic and organic chemicals and radiological waste, had been dumped on the property. The Enterprise, 60 Main St., P.O. Box 1450, Brockton, MA 02303-1450 Telephone: (508) 586-6200 ***************************************************************** 69 UPI: Russian nuclear waste said dangerous United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Briefing Published: June 5, 2007 at 5:05 PM OSLO, Norway, June 5 (UPI) -- Northern Europe faces a potential disaster of Chernobyl-like dimensions because of deteriorating Russian nuclear waste. A new report by Rosatom, the Russian government's nuclear authority, said the stockpile of radioactive waste on the Kola Peninsula from discarded and dismantled Soviet submarines is in danger of exploding, according to Norway's Aftenposten. The stockpile of nuclear reactor fuel rods are in the Andreeva Bay area of the peninsula and are stored in metal pipes placed in large concrete tanks near the sea. The newspaper said reports indicate each tank holds some 21,000 used fuel rods, and salt water has led to corrosion and a release within the metal pipes of small particles of uranium. "The conclusion of Rosatom is that when the amount of particles on the bottom reaches 5 to 10 percent in relation to the amount of water, potentially explosive critical mass will occur," the newspaper reported, quoting a translation of the Russian report. The hazardous storage of the nuclear waste from submarines has occurred despite U.S. and international efforts to help Russia safeguard such materials left over from the Cold War. The United States provides Russia with funding and expertise to dismantle nuclear weapons and weapons platforms and safely destroy nuclear materials under the 1991 Nuclear Threat Reduction Act. The Chernobyl catastrophe occurred in 1986 when a fire at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine caused an explosion and a radioactive cloud that drifted across Europe, even reaching parts of the United States. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 70 Rocky Mountain News: Senators seek Flats inquiry Salazar among 15 who want probe of compensation gap Ken Salazar By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News June 5, 2007 Fifteen U.S. senators, including Colorado's Ken Salazar, called Monday for a congressional hearing into why sick nuclear weapons workers are facing delays and other problems in getting federal compensation. Also Monday, another group of senators sent a letter to two federal departments that run the aid program, complaining that the departments have underfunded it. This has caused "unacceptable" delays in compensating "Cold War heroes" who helped build the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, the letter said. The letter calling for a hearing says "scrutiny in recent months" has shown that the program is not working as Congress intended. The bipartisan group of senators includes Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The program was created in 2000 to give financial and medical compensation to workers whose illnesses are linked to their jobs at atomic weapons sites, including the now-demolished Rocky Flats northwest of Denver. But the senators cited delays in processing cases, a high denial rate and allegations that federal officials have tried to limit payouts to cut costs. "The delay in compensation and medical benefits has gone on way too long for these veterans of the Cold War," Salazar spokesman Cody Wertz said. The move is something that sick workers have been hoping for. "I hope the committee will agree to hold not just one but multiple hearings, because there are multiple problems with this program," said Terrie Barrie, of Craig, who helped start the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups to assist ill workers such as her husband, George. In their letter, the senators say Congress knew when it created the program that finding a scientific link between some workers' radiation exposure and their illnesses would be difficult. That's because some records were missing, inadequate, lost or destroyed, they wrote. In such cases, the law allows workers with certain radiation-related cancers to receive "special exposure cohort" status and streamlined help. A presidential advisory board will decide June 12 whether to recommend that status for Rocky Flats workers. The Rocky Mountain News reported March 10 that federal documents showed officials had made plans to limit payouts for sick and dying nuclear weapons workers. The officials in charge of the program went behind the backs of their bosses, called on White House officials for help and tried to hide their efforts, according to e-mails and memos obtained by a congressional committee. Labor officials say the plans were never carried out, and they deny trying to hide them. The senators have asked the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, led by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., to hold the hearings. What's next ? What: A presidential advisory board will meet to decide whether to recommend that Rocky Flats workers receive streamlined financial and medical help. ? When: The public can speak to the board at 5:30 p.m., June 11. The board's vote is expected June 12. ? Where: Sheraton Denver West Hotel, 360 Union Blvd., Lakewood frankl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5091 ***************************************************************** 71 KnoxNews: USEC inks 5-year deal with TVA ET utility will lose best industrial customer when new facility completed By ANDREW EDER, edera@knews.com June 6, 2007 TVA's largest industrial customer has signed on to buy power from the federal utility for five more years, but a project in which Oak Ridge is playing a key role will eventually spell the end of the company's purchases from TVA. USEC Inc., a Bethesda, Md.-based supplier of fuel for commercial nuclear power plants, buys TVA power for its Paducah, Ky., uranium enrichment facility. The company signed a contract, approved last week by TVA's board of directors, to buy power from TVA through 2012. Also last week, the company began construction on its American Centrifuge Uranium Enrichment Plant in Piketon, Ohio. USEC expects to phase out the energy-hungry Paducah plant as it ramps up operations at the more efficient centrifuge plant. That will mean the loss of a customer that last year provided TVA with 3.9 percent, or about $358 million, of its total operating revenues. USEC, a former government enterprise that was spun off in 1998, bought 10.5 million megawatt hours of electricity from TVA last year, more than some entire states use. The company is TVA's largest directly served industrial customer and third-largest customer overall, behind utilities in Memphis and Nashville. Spokesman John Moulton said TVA has factored the loss of USEC into its planning for its growing system. "We're well aware of that, and we've planned ahead for that," Moulton said. "We're going to continue to have other growth that will replace this load." According to USEC, the $2.3 billion American Centrifuge plant will use about 5 percent of the electricity used by a comparably sized gaseous diffusion plant, the technology used to enrich uranium at the Paducah facility. Enrichment is the process of increasing the concentration of the fissionable isotope in uranium in order to manufacture fuel capable of a nuclear chain reaction. The centrifuge technology was developed by the Department of Energy in Oak Ridge in the 1960s through the 1980s. USEC located much of the manufacturing work for the new plant in the Atomic City to take advantage of the expertise at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The company has been operating under a cooperative research and development agreement with UT-Battelle, the contractor for ORNL. Lab personnel have assisted with centrifuge design, testing and analysis work. That agreement - the lab's largest such arrangement - expires this month, with USEC having paid about $35 million to the lab, an ORNL spokeswoman said. Both sides said the agreement would be renewed. USEC has more than 160 employees working on the project in Oak Ridge, plus 135 contractors at Boeing-Oak Ridge. USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said the company expects to grow its workforce in Oak Ridge by a third in 2007, with possibly more growth to follow. "Oak Ridge has a major role to play in this American Centrifuge deployment," Stuckle said. USEC expects to begin operating a demonstration facility later this year, with the commercial plant first operating in late 2009, Stuckle said. The components manufactured in Oak Ridge will be shipped to Piketon, where they will be assembled into the 40-foot tall centrifuge machines. Stuckle said USEC expects to have a presence in Oak Ridge for "a significant number of years" as the company deploys more centrifuge machines to the Piketon plant. Its current projections are to have 11,500 machines at the plant by 2012. TVA, which buys fuel from USEC for its six operating nuclear reactors, is one of USEC's 10 largest customers. Business writer Andrew Eder may be reached at 865-342-6318. Copyright 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 72 KnoxNews: Munger: Upcoming contract talks affect hundreds of guards By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com June 6, 2007 All of the Oak Ridge security personnel who subbed during a guard strike at the Pantex warhead assembly plant in Texas have returned home, according to Courtney Henry, a spokes-woman for Wackenhut Services. Wacken-hut, the govern-ment's Oak Ridge security contractor, sent two different 15-member teams to Pantex during the six-week strike. All of the guards on loan from Oak Ridge were supervisory personnel. The Pantex guards returned to work May 30 after approving a new five-year contract. Meanwhile, negotiations with Oak Ridge guards are expected to begin next month. Wackenhut's current pact with the International Guards Union of America, which represents hundreds of guards at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is due to expire in mid-August. The existing contract with the union was extended by nine months last year to postpone contract negotiations until the Department of Energy decided whether to keep Wackenhut or choose another company bidding for the Oak Ridge security role. The incumbent recently was awarded new five-year contracts - valued at nearly $550 million - for protective services at Y-12, ORNL and other federal facilities. Randy Lawson, president of IGUA Local No. 3, said negotiations with Wackenhut are set to begin July 16. The union offered to begin contract talks in May, but the company did not accept, he said. "Four weeks isn't much time in negotiations if you run into any stumbling blocks," Lawson said earlier this week. Nonetheless, he said he's optimistic about the upcoming talks. The guards union is more comfortable negotiating with a prime security contractor, such as Wackenhut, than an overall management contractor - such as BWXT or UT-Battelle, Lawson said. Back in the 20th century, security was a part of the plant management, and the union would negotiate with Lockheed Martin, Martin Marietta or Union Carbide. Lawson said the guards union often felt it took a back seat to the contract negotiations that took place between the management contractor and the Atomic Trades and Labor Council, which represented most of the hourly workers at Y-12 and ORNL. Under the current setup, the guards union is dealing with a contractor that's focused solely on security, he said. Jean "John" Burleson, the general manager of Wackenhut Services, recently touted the relationship. "Wackenhut and the unions in Oak Ridge work hand-in-hand and have a professional, trusting relationship that makes for a very good work environment," Burleson said in an e-mail. The union leader said earlier discussions with Wackenhut resolved some issues regarding how guard positions would be changed to meet a new DOE order that ups the qualifying standards. But he emphasized there are still important issues to be decided. The major concerns are taking hits on short- and long-term disability pay and increased medical premiums, Lawson said. "We have no other work we can do when we are out with injury, and the site physician has the final determination on when we return," he said. "With over 330 medical disqualifying factors as a security police officer, it does not take much to keep you out on short-term or even long-term disability." The current plan pays guards 100 percent of their regularly hourly wages for the first six months and 60 percent for the additional 14 months, excluding shift premium and physical-fitness pay. "This is a good plan but a necessity when you are in the line of work we do," Lawson said. The union is open to a five-year contract if both sides can make the necessary concessions, he said. "If not, we may need to look at three years," he said. Senior writer Frank Munger covers the Department of Energy for the News Sentinel. He may be reached at 865-342-6329 or at munger@knews.com. This column is also available in the opinion section of knoxnews.com. Copyright 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 73 DOE: DOE to Compete Management & Operating Contract for its National Renewable Energy Laboratory June 6, 2007 WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced that it will compete the management and operating (M&O) contract for its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, the nation’s primary laboratory for clean energy research. The competition reflects DOE’s commitment to regularly compete its M&O contracts for DOE national laboratories to ensure the greatest possible benefit to DOE, its mission and this Nation. The current contract, which expires on November 8, 2008, was last competed in 1998. “NREL’s work, including research and development supporting President Bush’s Advanced Energy Initiative, is vitally important to increasing our nation’s energy security,” DOE Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander A. Karsner said “Holding competitions for the management and operation of our world class national labs ensures that we have the best team managing the work and provides the best value for taxpayer dollars.” NREL conducts research, development, and deployment (RD&D) in alternative energy areas such as converting sunlight to electricity, generating electricity from wind, producing fuels and high-value industrial products from biomass, and producing and storing hydrogen fuel generated from renewable feedstocks. In addition to its RD&D activities, NREL, a Federally Funded Research and Development Center, provides DOE expert counsel on the scope and direction of DOE’s alternative energy and energy efficiency programs. Established in 1977 as the Solar Energy Research Institute, NREL was renamed in 1991 to reflect its expanded mission and importance. NREL has a staff of more than 1,000 and an annual budget of approximately $220 million. NREL is currently managed by the Midwest Research Institute (MRI), a not-for-profit research institution headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. More information about this competition will be posted, when appropriate, on Federal Business Opportunities website and on the DOE Industry Interactive Procurement System website. Media contact(s): Julie Ruggiero, (202) 586-4940 U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 ***************************************************************** 74 Hanford News: Fortune Magazine ranks PNNL in employer list This story was published Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 Fortune Magazine recently listed Pacific Northwest National Laboratory among the top 20 employers for college graduates. Companies were selected companies for providing an exciting and challenging work environment, opportunities for growth, and unique culture and benefits including compensation and flexible work schedules. The latest honor follows PNNL's 2005 Training Top 100 Award from Training Magazine for outstanding employee training and a second-place ranking on Washington CEO Magazine's 2006 top 50 high-tech firms. CBC broadcast to show products to help disabled The MIT Enterprise Forum Global Broadcast Series will showcase technologies that help improve life for the disabled in a panel discussion today. The satellite broadcast program features noted inventor Dean Kamen, journalist John Hockenberry and MIT professor Hugh Herr. The program runs from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Columbia Basin College in the library, L-102, at To register, contact Janet Budzeck at 375-3060 or Budzeck@portofbenton.com Deadline is Tuesday. For more information, visit www.pnnl.gov/edo/events/able2007.stm- Herald staff and news services © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 75 Denver Post: Salazar: Flats' ill workers deserve hearing Fourteen senators weigh in on the unpaid claims of "nuclear weapons workers with work-related diseases." Denver Post Staff Writer Article Last Updated: 06/06/2007 02:54:59 AM MDT Washington - U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar wants a Senate hearing examining how the government is handling the medical claims of former workers at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons depot. Salazar, D-Colo., signed a letter along with 13 other Democrats and Republican senators, asking the chair and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to hold a hearing. "Nuclear-weapons workers with work-related diseases in 20 states are not being compensated," the letter states, while federal law passed in 2000 "was designed to fairly compensate sick energy workers." Thousands of Coloradans worked at the plant 16 miles west of downtown Denver, making plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons. Other workers cleaned up contaminated buildings at the plant. Former workers at the Colorado plant and their surviving spouses have filed 6,212 claims, seeking compensation for illnesses. So far, 802 payments have been made. U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican, did not sign the letter. He said he was not asked, but he believes that "it needs to be resolved in the courts and the courts have spoken." Kay Barker, Grand Lake resident and a member of the worker advocacy group Alliance Against Nuclear Weapons, said Congress should intervene. Former workers are dying each week, she said. "Congress is the one that set up the law, and now Congress is the one that needs to fix it," she said. Staff writer Anne Mulkern can be reached at 202-662-8907 or amulkern@denverpost.com. All contents Copyright 2007 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************