***************************************************************** 06/15/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.140 ***************************************************************** 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 RIA Novosti: Russian Far East bank denies receiving N.Korean fund tr 2 U.S. Opposed Taiwanese Bomb During 1970s 3 Guardian Unlimited: Gates: US Missile Defense Plans Still On 4 AFP: US says nothing to fear from new nuclear warheads - 5 US: UPI: Analysis: Do we need new nukes? 6 Hindustan Times: India, US prepare for last push on 123- 7 AFP: US pushed hard against Taiwan nuclear effort in 1970s - documen 8 Guardian Unlimited: Russians Silent on U.S. Missile Plans 9 RIA Novosti: Lasers versus missiles 10 BBC NEWS: Russia warns Nato on arms treaty 11 Financial Times: Utilities keener on nuclear and wind 12 JOGJCC: UKAEA pledge on speedier clean-up 13 News & Star: Residents picket proposed new nuclear site 14 Guardian Unlimited: Documents Show U.S. Pressure on Taiwan NUCLEAR REACTORS 15 US: Beacon Journal: FirstEnergy stands by NRC finding 16 US: CNBC: Nuclear Energy is Clean and Should Play a Larger Role In N 17 Daily Yomiuri: DPRK nuclear program still a threat to Japan 18 US: NRC: NRC, Entergy to Discuss License Renewal Inspection Conducte 19 US: RIA Novosti: Georgia mulls nuclear reactor construction with Fre 20 US: toledoblade.com: FirstEnergy accepts blame for Davis-Besse overs 21 US: NRC: NRC Considering Request by Pennsylvania to Become an “Agree 22 US: Green Bay Press-Gazette: Nuclear plant closure urged 23 US: Brattleboro Reformer - Feds: VY capable of operating past 2012 24 US: CQ Green Sheets: Proliferation Threat Seen in Nuclear Power Expa 25 US: Reuters: Power companies want more US nuclear loan backing 26 Armenian News: U.S.: ANNP should be replaced by new one 27 US: Columbia Missourian: Reactor drills will test reaction times 28 WNN: Swedish nuclear power plant gets new turbines NUCLEAR SECURITY 29 Times of India: India to sign UN pact on protecting nuclear material NUCLEAR SAFETY 30 The USUK's Uranium Wars: worse than Hitler's Genocide 31 US: Tri-City Herald: PNNL workers contaminated by radioactive leak 32 Reuters: U.N. rules to contain health emergencies take hold 33 Reuters: Russia FSB probes claims Litvinenko was British spy | NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 34 TheStar.com: Ottawa approves plan to bury nuclear waste 35 TorontoSun.com: Buried nukes 36 US: Tennessean: Murfreesboro water meets standards - 37 AFP: Canada okays plan for nuclear waste depot - 38 US: Las Cruces Sun-News: State reaches settlement with lab over chro 39 The Australian: PM backs nuclear enrichment plan 40 US: Money Week: Nuclear waste: a guide to new technologies - 41 globeandmail.com: Nuclear waste storage plan will be safe, minister 42 NEWS.com.au: Uranium enrichment 'a decade away' 43 USEC News Release: Loan Program 44 Reid: Reid Denounces Doe For Using State Water To Drill At Yucca Mou 45 AU ABC: No sites mooted in uranium enrichment report, says author. 46 US: AU ABC: Uranium enrichment not top priority, says Switkowski. 47 AU ABC: SA Premier in dark on uranium enrichment submission. 48 US: AU ABC: Alliance reports high-grade uranium in SA mine 49 US: WSTM.com: WNY nuclear clean-up site puts items up for bidding 50 US: Memphis Commercial Appeal: Radioactive barge cleanup OK'd 51 CanWest: Tories back long-term burial of nuclear industry waste 52 WNN: Thorp products may be sent in advance of recycling PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 53 AIP: President Would Veto House Version of FY 2008 DOE Funding Bill 54 DOE: DOE and Disney Join Forces to Promote Energy Savings 55 DOE: DOE Cites CH2M-Washington Group Idaho for Price-Anderson Violat 56 Santa Fe New Mexican: LANL security problem catches boosters unaware 57 Tri-City Herald: A piece of nuclear history 58 POGO: Congress Accuses DOE of Los Alamos Security Breach Cover-Up 59 Idaho Mountain Express: INL all clear after facility incident - 60 lamonitor.com: New security breach revealed 61 KNDO/KNDU: 4 lab workers receive minor radioactive contamination 62 Guardian Unlimited: Lab Managers Accused of Security Breach ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 RIA Novosti: Russian Far East bank denies receiving N.Korean fund transfer 09:32 | 15/ 06/ 2007 VLADIVOSTOK, June 15 (RIA Novosti) - A bank in Russia's Far East, where the North Korean government has an account, denied that it had received over $23 million of Pyongyang's funds reportedly transferred from a Macao bank account. A senior U.S. official told Japanese media earlier that the sum had been transferred in full from the previously-frozen account. South Korean media said the funds would to go initially to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and then on to Russia's Central Bank before being transferred to Dalkombank (Far East Commercial Bank), based in Khabarovsk. However, the bank's director general, Andrei Shlyakhovoy, said in an interview with Japan's NHK TV, published on the bank's official Web site: "Dalkombank has received no official requests from the Russian government on this question. We do not consider un-official requests to be issues on which the bank should carry out work or take any measures." The 52 accounts held by the reclusive Communist state in Macao's Banco Delta Asia were frozen in September 2005 after the U.S. accused Pyongyang of counterfeiting and money laundering. Although the accounts were unfrozen in March after North Korea agreed to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, Banco Delta Asia remained blacklisted, making foreign banks reluctant to handle further transactions. When asked whether Dalkombank was preparing for the transfer, and whether an agreement was being made between Russia's Finance Ministry and Central Bank, Shlyakhovoy said: "At the moment, no preparations are being made for transferring the funds... Since we, as a bank, do not take part in the preparation of any intergovernmental agreements, we are not able to comment on this issue." Following the reports on Thursday, the Russian Finance Ministry said it did not have confirmation of the North Korean funds transfer. "Media should not spread unconfirmed rumors on this issue," a source with the ministry told RIA Novosti. Pyongyang boycotted talks on freezing its nuclear program for more than a year over the funds, and conducted its first nuclear bomb test in October 2006. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 2 U.S. Opposed Taiwanese Bomb During 1970s Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:21:46 -0500 (CDT) National Security Archive Update, June 15, 2007 U.S. OPPOSED TAIWANESE BOMB DURING 1970'S Declassified Documents Show Persistent U.S. Intervention to Discourage Suspicious Nuclear Research First New Declassified Collection from 'The Nuclear Vault' Launched Today with Support from the New-Land Foundation For more information contact: William Burr - 202/994-7000 http://www.nsarchive.org/nukevault Washington DC, June 15, 2007 - The unfolding controversies over the Iranian and Korean nuclear programs show the extreme difficulty of persuading a government to reverse its nuclear weapons program. Newly declassified documents on U.S.-Taiwan relations during the late 1970s, published today for the first time by the National Security Archive, shed new light on the challenges of counter-proliferation diplomacy. Even a dependent ally, such as Taiwan, tried hard to resist U.S. pressures to abandon suspect nuclear activities and kept Washington guessing whether it had really given them up. To ensure that the Taiwanese actually shut down what appeared to be R&D for a nuclear capability, the Ford and Carter administrations continuously exerted pressure on Taiwanese leaders to stop scientists and the military from engaging in research with weapons implications. For three years in a row, 1976, 1977, and 1978, the U.S. government secretly confronted Taipei over secret activities--such as uranium enrichment work and attempts to purchase reprocessing technology--that suggested ambition to develop a weapons capability. Washington policymakers became so worried about the direction of Taiwanese nuclear programs that they took their concerns directly to Premier Chiang Ching-kuo. Amidst U.S. demarches, inspection visits by U.S. officials, and more detailed commitments by Chiang, U.S. intrusion reached the point where the Premier complained that Washington was dealing with Taiwan "in a fashion which few other countries would tolerate." The declassified documents highlight three episodes: * The summer of 1976, when U.S. concerns about Taiwanese interest in nuclear reprocessing triggered a U.S. demarche (protest) and a declaration by Taipei authorities that the regime would "henceforth not engage in any activities relating to reprocessing." * January through April 1977, when a nuclear inspection team and IAEA inspector detected suspicious activities at the Institute for Nuclear Energy Research (INER) that raised questions about the direction of Taiwanese nuclear research. This led the State Department to demand far-reaching changes, especially the "reorientation" of the research so that it was more relevant to producing power than weapons. In April Premier Chiang acquiesced in a U.S. note demanding such changes. * August-September 1978, as a U.S. nuclear team continued to monitor the INER and picked up worrisome signs that Taiwan had a secret uranium enrichment program. This led to a new demarche and a more authoritative statement by Chiang that his government "has no intention whatsoever to develop nuclear weapons or a nuclear device." In 1988, ten years after Chiang made this commitment another flap over reprocessing emerged; it was quickly settled, but no doubt U.S. intelligence continues to monitor Taiwan very closely. With the publication of these documents, the National Security Archive today launches The Nuclear Vault, a special section of the Archive's Web site devoted to documentation on U.S. nuclear weapons policy issues, largely during the Cold War. With bibliographies, photo galleries, links, new documents, and other features to be unveiled during the coming months, the Archive hopes to create a source that researchers, students, and interested citizens can turn to for information on one of the most critical issues of our day. The Archive thanks the New-Land Foundation for making the Nuclear Vault possible. With the introduction of the Nuclear Vault, the National Security Archive announces its affiliation with Nuclear Pathways < http://nuclearpathways.org >, a group of organizations whose purpose is to make "information on historic and current nuclear issues more accessible and comprehensible to the public, educators, and students from middle school through graduate programs." Click on the link below to visit 'The Nuclear Vault': http://www.nsarchive.org/nukevault ________________________________________________________ THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals. _________________________________________________________ PRIVACY NOTICE The National Security Archive does not and will never share the names or e-mail addresses of its subscribers with any other organization. Once a year, we will write you and ask for your financial support. We may also ask you for your ideas for Freedom of Information requests, documentation projects, or other issues that the Archive should take on. We would welcome your input, and any information you care to share with us about your special interests. But we do not sell or rent any information about subscribers to any other party. _________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THE LIST You may leave the list at any time by sending a "SIGNOFF NSARCHIVE" command to . You can also unsubscribe from the list anytime by using the following link: ***************************************************************** 3 Guardian Unlimited: Gates: US Missile Defense Plans Still On From the Associated Press Friday June 15, 2007 8:31 AM By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press Writer BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the Bush administration is not willing to replace its plan for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe with Russia's counterproposal for a radar site in Azerbaijan. That's the blunt message Gates was to deliver to Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov during a private meeting Friday at the NATO gathering in Brussels. Speaking to reporters Thursday, Gates said that despite strident Russian opposition, the U.S. will proceed with its plans for a radar system in the Czech Republic to watch for missile threats and 10 interceptor rockets in Poland to shoot down any missiles. Gates dismissed any notion that Russia's push for joint use of a radar station in Azerbaijan could replace the broader U.S. plan. And he expressed doubts that there could be any agreement with the Russians by next month, when President Bush is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Kennebunkport, Maine. ``I was very explicit in the (NATO) meeting that we saw the Azeri radar as an additional capability, that we intended to proceed with the X-Band radar in the Czech Republic,'' Gates said during a press briefing. Gates' comments came as Russian officials called for a freeze on the U.S. plan, arguing that it would undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent. Russian officials reportedly issued threats against the planned sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Gates said Serdyukov, who was at the NATO meeting, did not comment on his remarks. Meanwhile, NATO ordered its military experts to draw up plans for a possible short-range missile defense system to protect nations on the alliance's southern flank that would be left exposed by proposed U.S. anti-missile units in central Europe. According to U.S. and NATO officials, the addition of the European bases to anti-missile installations in North America would protect most of Europe from the threat of long-range attack from Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East. But it would leave Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and parts of Romania exposed. To fill that gap, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said NATO experts would produce a report by February on short-range anti-missile defenses ``that can be bolted on to the overall missile defense system as it would be installed by the United States.'' Russia has threatened to retaliate against the U.S. plans by pulling out of a key arms control treaty and pointing warheads at Europe for the first time since the Cold War. However, at last week's G-8 summit, Putin seemed to take a more open approach, suggesting Russia could cooperate with the West on an anti-missile radar base in Azerbaijan. The NATO ministers also were due to meet their Afghan counterpart Friday. The defense ministers were seeking to increase training for the Afghan military and reduce the rising toll of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Gates urged European allies to stick to commitments to contribute equipment and troops to the 36,000-strong NATO force in Afghanistan. He also complained about ``shortfalls in key capabilities'' that are affecting the Afghan fight, including delays in getting more transport aircraft and the low level of military spending by some allies. There are about 26,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. --- Associated Press Writer Paul Ames contributed to this report. On the Net: Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 4 AFP: US says nothing to fear from new nuclear warheads - Friday June 15, 12:25 PM The United States Thursday defended plans to overhaul its sea-based nuclear arsenal with a new generation of warheads, arguing the program did not pose any extra threat to nations like Russia. The administration wants to replace much of its Cold War stockpile with a new "Reliable Replacement Warhead" (RRW) that it argues would be safer and cheaper to maintain over the coming decades. Roughly 2,000 of the new warheads would be deployed, one-fifth of Cold War levels. But the US government insists that it has enough technical know-how to avoid having to scrap its moratorium on nuclear weapons tests. "Today's stockpile is safe and reliable, and does not require testing," argued John Harvey, director of policy planning at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Nevertheless, he told a seminar at the New America Foundation, the Cold War-era warheads now deployed could pose a risk in decades to come as they age. "The RRW program is simply accomplishing the same goals as life extension," Harvey said, referring to the decade-old policy of refurbishing older warheads without making or testing new ones. "It's not seeking to come out with whole new generations of nuclear weapons," he said. "The idea here is to provide the same military capabilities as the one it replaces." Critics in Congress, especially in the Democratic party, argue that the US government risks alarming other nuclear powers like Russia and China with what they say is an unnecessary revamp. Steven Monblatt, co-executive director of the British American Security Information Council, said the RRW plan looks to other countries "like a build-up" of nuclear weapons by the United States. "The US has been at best diffident in the non-proliferation arena," he told the seminar, while other critics noted that the United States has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty despite its own moratorium. But Harvey said that in an age of "rogue states," the United States needs to have reliable warhead capacity to cover its global security responsibilities to allies in Europe and Asia. The United States had notified allies and countries like Russia and China of its warhead intentions, "and we have received a very mild reaction from governments," he added. Russia is already seething over US plans to expand its missile shield into Europe, and last month said it had successfully tested a new ballistic missile bristling with multiple warheads. In March, the US government selected the design of the next-generation warheads based on work submitted by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Harvey said the winning design came closest to earlier warhead developments, and so had the most chance of working without requiring new underground or atmospheric tests. The RRW has now entered a new development phase and cost estimates are being calculated. After congressional approval, the new warheads would be produced under the direction of the US Navy. Copyright © 2007 Yahoo!7 Pty Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 5 UPI: Analysis: Do we need new nukes? United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Analysis Published: June 15, 2007 at 2:41 PM By MARK MAATHUIS UPI Correspondent WASHINGTON, June 15 (UPI) -- The United States must build new nuclear weapons to maintain its deterrent capabilities, a National Nuclear Security Administration official said Friday. The development of new warheads to replace the U.S. Cold War stockpile is necessary to assure a nuclear deterrent for the future, John Harvey, the NNSA's policy planning staff director, told a press conference at the New America Foundation, a Democrat-leaning Washington think tank. The NNSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Energy. The controversial Reliable Replacement Warhead, or RRW, is cheap and secure, Harvey said, and despite congressional opposition remains "the only way to sustain our nuclear capacity." "The idea is to provide the same military capabilities as the one it replaces," he said, "not to come out with whole new generations of nuclear weapons." The RRW is part of the post-Cold War program Complex 2030 program that aims to reduce U.S. nuclear warheads to the lowest possible number consistent with national security. Some 2,000 -- one-fifth of Cold War levels -- would be deployed, Harvey said. That number is based more on judgment than analysis, he said, because during the Cold War U.S. experts knew how many warheads were needed to strike back after an attack. "Now we can no longer predict where nuclear threats will come from," he said. Most U.S. nuclear warheads were built in the 1970s and 1980s and are being retained longer than planned, according to a 2007 Congressional Research Service report. A life extension program replaces components, and "the RRW program will simply accomplish that same goals," Harvey said. Rebuilding components as closely as possible to the original specifications means "the warhead can do what it is designed for without testing," he said. The United States carried out its last nuclear test in 1992 and adopted the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996. Without the ability to test, scientists rely more on bigger and faster computers and improved computer models to assess changes to weapons in the stockpile. Harvey's comments came only days after the Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives cut all of the $88.8 billion President George W. Bush requested for the RRW and Complex 2030 program. The appropriators called the plans "poorly thought out" and "premature." If the U.S. Senate agrees with that assessment, scientists at the two nuclear design laboratories at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos would cease working this fall. Harvey, who said he spoke in a private capacity, advises the NNSA administrator on policy and program decisions involving U.S. nuclear weapons. From March 1995 to January 2001, he served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for nuclear forces and missile defense policy. Steven Monblatt, co-executive director of the British-American Security Information Council, an independent research organization, told the press conference that the RRW program looked to some like a build-up of nuclear weapons by the United States. Protests fearing a new nuclear arms race, Harvey said, were "noises from NGO's, not international governments." "Nuclear weapons are still an important part of our national security," Harvey said. "They prevent large-scale wars of aggression, persuade rogue states not to sell their warheads to terrorists and contribute to the safety of our allies." He cited fellow NATO member and Iran's neighbor Turkey as an example. However, Harvey acknowledged that the U.S. government's public diplomacy about the RRW and Complex 2030 needed to improve, because he was, he said, "aware of the incorrect perception in the international community." Harvey said the RRW would secure U.S. deterrent needs as long as required. "The long-term exploration is an impetus for RRW," he said. Unlike Britain, the United States should not rely on a single design warhead, Harvey said. "The United States has a different perspective about its role in the world and a different responsibility to a broader group of allies," he said. Four different nuclear weapons systems are being designed at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Developing the RRW was more than "just wargaming," Harvey said. "We are learning more today then when we were testing," he said. Harvey said the U.S. government needed to explore a long-term, post-Cold War and post-9/11 strategy. He said a new government document should be drafted to discuss the role of nuclear weapons. "Our new president must have something clever to say about them when we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2009," he said. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 Hindustan Times: India, US prepare for last push on 123- Saturday, June 16, 2007 Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, Hindustan Times The Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation deal is a race against the US congressional calendar, say diplomatic sources. "We have time for one final push to get the 123 agreement finished," says a senior Indian official. There is consensus that the 123 agreement negotiations must be completed by the end of July. The extremely technical 123 agreement is the operational part of the deal. The issue that had deadlocked negotiations for months — India’s insistence that it must have the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel — was smoothed over by India’s offer at the G-8 summit to build a new reprocessing facility placed under international safeguards. However, several rounds of technical talks need to be held. For example, India and the US need to work out safeguard parameters for the new reprocessing facility. Actual safeguard implementation will be left to the International Atomic Energy Agency. "Our main problem is time," says an Indian official, referring to the completion of the 123 agreement. Swadesh Chatterjee of the US-India Friendship Council and community lobbyist says, "The deal has to be signed and sealed by end July." The US Congress is largely in recess all of August. Sanjay Puri of the US India Political Action Committee warns, "After Labour Day (the first week of September) the US will be in full presidential election mode. The first caucuses and primaries begin January 27 and the candidates will be clear by February 1." Chatterjee half-jokes Congressmen will begin to forget the deal by then. Chatterjee says he is hoping for a legislative schedule that would see the 123 agreement completed by July-end, the IAEA-India safeguards agreement being completed in August and the Congress voting for the 123 in September or October. Teresita Schaffer of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies says there is no actual deadline: "It is really a judgment about the increasing difficulty of getting complicated business through Congress as budget season and an election year approach." In theory, even if the deadline passed "we could keep trying". Congress has indicated it will watch out for any violation of the 123 guidelines laid out by the Hyde Act it passed last December. Though the act does not forbid a reprocessing agreement with India, New Delhi’s demands was treated with suspicion since all of India’s existing reprocessing units are in the military sphere. By offering to build a new unit, says nonproliferation expert Anupam Srivastava of the University of Georgia, "India offered a practical solution to square the circle of congressional concerns about diversion of nuclear material from the civilian to the military spheres." US congressional leaders had agreed with the White House to allow a simple “yes and no” vote — without amendments or debate — on the 123 agreement. However, reprocessing rights was seen as violative of that understanding. "Nicholas Burns (the US State Department number three) saw the reprocessing right without safeguards as a deal-killer on Capitol Hill," says a major US corporate lobbyist for the deal. This was partly a lack of trust. India’s Department of Atomic Energy saw reprocessing as something they would need 15 or so years from now to provide feeder stock for their hoped-to-be completed breeder reactor. However, sceptics in Washington argued the possibility India was planning to use the reprocessed fuel for weapons was too high. There isn’t enough trust, says Srivastava, "India and US have gone from sanctions to reprocessing talks in just two or three years. This was a bridge too far." ***************************************************************** 7 AFP: US pushed hard against Taiwan nuclear effort in 1970s - documents - Fri Jun 15, 10:58 AM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States pushed aggressively to discourage suspicious nuclear research in Taiwan in the 1970s, though Taipei is an ally, newly declassified documents show. The documents, published Friday by the independent National Security Archive, "shed new light on the challenges of persuading a government, in this instance a dependent ally, to abandon suspect nuclear activities even in their early stages," the archive said in a statement. To guarantee that Taiwan stopped "what appeared to be RD (research and development) for a nuclear capability, the (Gerald) Ford and the (Jimmy) Carter administrations continuously exerted pressures on Taiwanese leaders to stop scientists and the military from engaging in research with weapons implications," the archive added. "For three years in a row, 1976, 1977, and 1978, the US government secretly confronted Taipei over secret activities -- such as uranium enrichment work and attempts to purchase reprocessing technology -- which suggested ambition to develop a weapons capability," it said. The United States was concerned enough to take its worries directly to then premier Chiang Ching-kuo. What followed were inspection visits by US officials, and detailed commitments by Chiang. But dogged US action on the issue reached the point "where the premier complained that Washington was dealing with Taiwan 'in a fashion which few other countries would tolerate,'" the archive said. At one point the State Department demanded in-depth changes, and reorientation of research so that it was "more relevant to producing power than weapons," the archive said, noting that "In April Premier Chiang acquiesced in a US note demanding such changes." Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 Guardian Unlimited: Russians Silent on U.S. Missile Plans From the Associated Press Friday June 15, 2007 12:01 PM By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press Writer BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates' assertion that the Bush administration will not replace its plan for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe with Russia's counterproposal for a radar site in Azerbaijan was met Friday with silence. Gates met briefly with Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, and told reporters afterward that the hotly debated missile defense plan simply did not come up. ``I guess I would have to say, honestly, I was somewhat surprised,'' said Gates, who is attending a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers here. ``I don't know how to read it, to be honest.'' The silence came a day after other Russian officials blasted the U.S. plan, and warned that the new sites could be targeted. Gates said he did not bring the matter up in his session with Serdyukov because, ``I felt I'd been pretty explicit yesterday in the session so I didn't feel the need to.'' Instead, Gates said, they talked about plans for an upcoming meeting between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. During a session on Thursday, Gates told the allies that the U.S. will proceed with its plans for a radar system in the Czech Republic to watch for missile threats and 10 interceptor rockets in Poland to shoot down any missiles. And he flatly dismissed any notion that Russia's push for joint use of a radar station in Azerbaijan could replace the broader U.S. plan. He also said he doubts that there could be any agreement with the Russians by next month, when Bush meets with Putin at Kennebunkport, Maine. ``I was very explicit in the (NATO) meeting that we saw the Azeri radar as an additional capability, that we intended to proceed with the X-Band radar in the Czech Republic,'' Gates told reporters Thursday. Russian officials earlier this week called for a freeze on the U.S. plan, arguing that it would undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent. And they reportedly issued threats against the planned sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, NATO ordered its military experts to draw up plans for a possible short-range missile defense system to protect nations on the alliance's southern flank that would be left exposed by proposed U.S. anti-missile units in central Europe. According to U.S. and NATO officials, the addition of the European bases to anti-missile installations in North America would protect most of Europe from the threat of long-range attack from Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East. But it would leave Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and parts of Romania exposed. To fill that gap, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said NATO experts would produce a report by February on short-range anti-missile defenses ``that can be bolted on to the overall missile defense system as it would be installed by the United States.'' Russia has threatened to retaliate against the U.S. plans by pulling out of a key arms control treaty and pointing warheads at Europe for the first time since the Cold War. However, at last week's G-8 summit, Putin seemed to take a more open approach, suggesting Russia could cooperate with the West on an anti-missile radar base in Azerbaijan. In other comments Friday, Gates said he told the allies that the U.S. would keep 20 of its helicopters in Kandahar, Afghanistan, for an extra six months, which would be until January, since the NATO nations have no aircraft to replace them. But he said he warned the ministers that he ``expected the allies to come up with a solution by that time, in terms of helicopters that have the capability to operate in Afghanistan.'' He said a number of allies during a late Thursday session offered to provide additional training teams, reconstruction teams, and some other types of helicopters, for the Afghan war. And he said one country offered to provide a combat battalion. NATO has said it needs four battalions, so this would only partly meet that need. Gates added that several allies announced they will remove restrictions on their forces that have made some operations difficult. That move, he said, ``was a very important contribution in my view.'' Some countries restrict their troops from participating in particular missions or from being deployed to the more dangerous southern and eastern regions. NATO spokesman James Appathurai said seven allied nations had agreed to set up more embedded training units alongside about 20 already operating. France offered to create three, with a total of 150 instructors. Italy, Canada, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia also committed training units. The offers, however, fell short of the alliance's plans to build up the national army so it can replace the close to 50,000 international troops in Afghanistan. There are about 26,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Associated Press Writer Paul Ames contributed to this report. On the Net: Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 9 RIA Novosti: Lasers versus missiles Opinion & analysis - 15:51 | 15/ 06/ 2007 MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kislyakov) - A closer look at controversy surrounding the United States' initial efforts to deploy a National Missile Defense (NMD) system in 2006-2007 highlights Russia's obvious reluctance to discuss its own anti-ballistic missile system as an adequate response to American plans. Moscow prefers nuclear-missile build-up as a simpler and cheaper option to a hi-tech ABM system worth billions of dollars. The Soviet Union and Russia have already invested heavily in a national ABM system featuring numerous unique technical solutions, whose importance has not been fully appreciated. It appears that Russia does not want to take advantage of its leading position in the ABM sphere because, in spite of numerous test launches, each costing the equivalent of an average annual municipal budget, the world's first missile-interceptor system, set up around Moscow, proved ineffective. Soviet military leaders admitted that the U.S. program for deploying intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple independent re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) dashed hopes for building a more effective A-35 ABM system, which could not cope with numerous decoys and active electronic counter-measures. In short, this system became obsolete even before entering service in 1971. Although the U.S.S.R. and Russia made considerable headway in the ABM sphere, Moscow obviously believes this program cannot be implemented effectively and is therefore placing its bets on strategic offensive arms. In the 1970s, the creators of the A-35 system also opted for an offensive strategy. For instance, Defense Minister Marshal Dmitry Ustinov, who coordinated all of the Soviet Communist Party's defensive initiatives, instructed the Kometa Central Research and Production Association in Moscow to work on the Fon (Background) program. At that time, California Governor and former actor Ronald Reagan was still on his way to the White House and knew nothing about Star Wars or the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). However, designers in Ulyanovsk, a city on the Volga River, were already working on advanced space-based ABM system that had the potential to destroy all U.S. ground, submarine-launched and air-launched missiles before they were fired. In the late 1970s, Moscow launched the Fon-1 program, envisioning different types of ray guns, electromagnetic cannons, missile interceptors and multiple-launch rocket systems. However, Soviet designers eventually decided that it would take the missiles some 20 to 25 minutes to reach their targets, and that this was not enough to simultaneously destroy all missiles and their carriers. In 1983, the Fon-2 program, meant as a counterweight to SDI, got underway and produced different laser systems and weaponry based on powerful fluctuating electromagnetic fields for destroying enemy radio-electronics. Likewise, under the project Terra, Moscow was to have developed and assembled a powerful ground laser capable of destroying enemy planes and spacecraft. An experimental laser system with a high-precision UHF radar was deployed in Kazakhstan and tested in the mid-1980s. However, it turned out that was not powerful enough to destroy ICBM warheads. Nonetheless, the situation was bound to change sooner or later. In the late 1970s, it became obvious that the U.S. Space Shuttle program would soon succeed. Soviet generals believed that the Space Shuttle could change its flight path during re-entry and launch a nuclear warhead against Moscow. In late 1983, Ustinov suggested using the Terra system for tracking Space Shuttles. On October 10, 1983, a laser beam was "beamed" at the Challenger spacecraft while it was flying over the Kazakh testing site at an altitude of 363 km. The Challenger crew later said telecommunications and electronic equipment had malfunctioned, and the astronauts themselves did not feel very well. Therefore one can say that a "reconnaissance in force" for a future global war in orbit was conducted about 25 years ago. The continuation of the article will be posted soon. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 10 BBC NEWS: Russia warns Nato on arms treaty Last Updated: Friday, 15 June 2007, 16:19 GMT 17:19 UK Russia says the CFE treaty has become "meaningless" Russia has warned Nato it could freeze its participation in a key arms control treaty in Europe, after talks on the issue ended in deadlock. The talks in Vienna were aimed at reviewing the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which limits the number of non-nuclear weapons. The Kremlin says the 1990 treaty is outdated and restricts its ability to move troops around its own territory. Nato states are first demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgia and Moldova, but Moscow says the issues are not linked. 'Real option' "The current CFE treaty has for all intents and purposes become meaningless. It's no longer viable," Russian delegation chief Anatoly Antonov said after the four-day extraordinary talks called by Russia. "But no-one listened to us. They continued to admonish us," Mr Antonov said. He added that Russia's moratorium on honouring the treaty "will become a very real option" if dialogue on the issue continued to be stalled. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the CFE treaty - signed eight years after the Warsaw Pact was dissolved - no longer reflects the post-Cold War world. On Friday, Nato issued a statement expressing regret that no deal had been reached. But it urged Russia "to engage in continuing dialogue which would lead to a positive outcome in the future". The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says the CFE treaty harks back to another age and in many ways it is difficult to see quite why it is relevant today. Russia was alarmed when the US withdrew from another Cold War agreement - the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - in 2001. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 11 Financial Times: Utilities keener on nuclear and wind FT.com / Companies / Energy Utilities Mining - By Ed Crooks in London Published: June 15 2007 03:22 | Last updated: June 15 2007 03:22 Utilities have become much more positive about prospects for wind and nuclear power over the past year, according to a global survey of executives. The survey of 114 companies by PwC, the professional services firm, found that 48 per cent of executives expected wind power to provide an increasing share of electricity in their market over the next five years, up from just 17 per cent in the same survey a year ago. The rest of this article is for FT.com subscribers only * © Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2007. "FT" and "Financial ***************************************************************** 12 JOGJCC: UKAEA pledge on speedier clean-up John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier: By Iain Grant Published: 15 June, 2007 DOUNREAY bosses are insisting efforts to accelerate the site's decommissioning can be good for the area. Their latest move to load more work over the next five years of the clean-up will mean less pain for the local economy in the short term. As well as potentially reducing the 500 jobs due to go over this period, it will also help give extra time for the drive to create jobs in other areas. But the downside of the increased pace of the work is that the job is completed earlier and the workforce tails off more quickly. When Dounreay's last reactor was closed in 1994, the site operators indicated it would take a century to dismantle the fast-reactor complex. That estimate has successively been taken in to 2032. The UK Atomic Energy Authority is currently working to a blueprint of the site being cleaned up by the late 2020s, though it has plans to move the end-point closer to 2020. The UKAEA's Alasdair MacDonald claims people should not be alarmed by the trend. Speaking at the latest Dounreay Stakeholder Group meeting on Wednesday, he said: "The work at Dounreay is finite – it's just a question of how it's programmed. "It's all very well talking about an end-point in 2032 or 2030 or earlier than that. But what people need to recognise is that the real issues affecting them are going to happen much sooner than that. "We should be concentrating on the short term. We don't have a Ravenscraig-type situation but we certainly don't have 25 years or 30 years to work with." In the latest draft programme going to the paymasters, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the major peak of work is around 2011, with a smaller peak around 2016. These coincide with the construction of large waste plants. Mr MacDonald said that by 2012 many of the major hazards on the site will have been dealt with. He said the proposed programme over the coming five years is based on the NDA continuing its current funding of about Ł150 million a year, as well as supplements for major new builds. He was reluctant to quantify the impact on jobs. "It will potentially delay the rundown in jobs but we believe as much as anything it will create stability and reduce uncertainty both on site and in the supply chain." Mr MacDonald said speeding up the clean-up is good news for the taxpayer as well as the area. "We have a small team looking at the socio-economic issues," he explained. "We are looking into the future on how we plan career transitions for our staff. "For the long-term sustainability of the county, we need all the community to work with the development agencies and the NDA to assist with business start-up, inward investment and other job-creation activities." Mr MacDonald said the area has to develop new enterprises that do not depend on public funding. Dounreay trades union representative John Deighan said job security at the site would be enhanced were the NDA to set site budgets on a three-year cycle rather than the present annual cycle. Mr Deighan said local representatives should press Scotland Office minister David Cairns to make sure there is no repeat of the major uncertainty caused about this year's NDA funding of Dounreay. Mr Deighan said: "We should make strong representations to ensure there is adequate funding in the future to decommission Dounreay." He added: "We know the 2000 jobs at Dounreay are going, and people have to wake up and do something. We have to attract major employers and use every opportunity we have to sell the area to potential investors." iain-grant@ukf.net All content copyright 2007 Scottish Provincial Press Ltd. ***************************************************************** 13 News & Star: Residents picket proposed new nuclear site Published on 15/06/2007 By Safira Ali PEOPLE working and living near Lillyhall picketed the site of a proposed nuclear decommissioning facility this morning. County councillors visited a factory in Lillyhall, on Joseph Noble Road to assess the site of a possible new factory. Organisers of the protest say up to 5,000 people, who live within 2km , are likely to be affected by the new factory proposed by Swedish company, Studsvik. They will include students and teachers at Lakes College West Cumbria, employers and staff in Lillyhall, residents of Harrington and people in residential homes nearby. Alan Dawson, of Alan Dawson Associates, in Lillyhall, was at the protest. He said: “I am 100 percent opposed to it. Handling radioactive material should not be taken away from Sellafield. It is an appropriately licensed site where it happens. “It is entirely incorrect to bring radioactive material to a clean site where there is a hospital, old folks’ homes, students, residents and about 1,000 employees on a business park. And to put contaminated material in the middle of it is ridiculous.” Keith Thomas, of Branthwaite, who is a parish councillor for Dean and organiser of the protest, said: “They will take materials from Sellafield through to Whitehaven and Distington on to Lillyhall and then send the residue back again. It is low level radioactivity but it has got to be buried at Drigg. “They should not take it from the site. It will travel 20 odd miles. I don’t see why.” Members of Cumbria County Council’s development control and regulation committee are visiting the site this morning. They will decide whether the project will go ahead. Mark Lyons, president of Studsvik UK Ltd, said: “Studsvik is a responsible, respected company with a proven track record in the safe and efficient treatment of metal contaminated with very low-level radiation. “Workers handling it at our proposed Lillyhall facility would only need to wear standard overalls and gloves. We do not accept that the valuation of properties in the vicinity, or the day-to-day operations of existing companies, will be affected in a detrimental way.“ ***************************************************************** 14 Guardian Unlimited: Documents Show U.S. Pressure on Taiwan From the Associated Press Friday June 15, 2007 8:16 PM By PETER ENAV Associated Press Writer TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - As Washington struggles to end nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, startling details have emerged from declassified U.S. government documents regarding its success in halting Taiwan's budding nuclear project in the 1970s. The recently declassified documents show the administrations of former Presidents Ford and Carter pressured Taiwan to end its quest for sophisticated equipment, fearing it would be used to make a nuclear bomb. The pressure paid off - although not without setbacks - and the Taiwanese government abandoned its plans, according to the documents, which were obtained under Freedom of Information Act guidelines by a private group of researchers affiliated with George Washington University. The documents were shown to The Associated Press. It has long been known that Taiwan tried to build a nuclear device and scuttled the program under U.S. pressure - a subject documented in numerous news articles and books. But William Burr, who coordinated the Taiwan project for GWU's privately funded National Security Archive, said the newly released documents give more insight into how Washington approached what it believed to be the danger of a nuclear-armed Taiwan. ``Nothing of this level of detail on the U.S. interest in changing the course of the Taiwan nuclear program has ever appeared before,'' he told the AP. Taiwanese leaders repeatedly denied the island was trying to build a nuclear weapon, according to the documents, although they also show that from as early as November 1972, the CIA thought otherwise. ``We believe Taipei's present intention is to develop the capacity to fabricate and test a nuclear device,'' the CIA concluded in a Special National Intelligence Estimate. ``This capacity could be attained by 1976.'' The CIA speculated that why Taiwan began its alleged nuclear quest in response to anxiety over the budding U.S. relationship with China. China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, and in the early 1970s, the Communist leadership was unyielding about bringing the island under its sway - an attitude it maintains to this day. In February 1972, President Nixon visited the mainland, ending more than two decades of hostility between Washington and Beijing, and raising concerns in Taipei about the island's long-running defense pact with the United States. ``Some on Taiwan may be questioning how long they can count on all-out U.S. support,'' the CIA said. ``In this perspective, a nuclear weapons option may be seen by (Taiwan) as one of the few feasible deterrents to Communist attack.'' The documents show U.S. concerns deepened in 1973 when the State Department learned that Taiwan had contacted French and Belgian companies to obtain a nuclear reprocessing plant - a step it saw as a clear intention to build a bomb. Washington sent a team to Taiwan to meet with government officials and nuclear experts, and warn them that acquiring such a plant would undermine Taiwan-U.S. cooperation. Taiwan continued to disavow any interest in producing a nuclear device, but some on the team were skeptical, the documents show. In 1976, the documents show that U.S. Ambassador Leonard Unger met with Premier Chiang Ching-kuo to express concerns that Washington had ``conclusive evidence'' that a key Taiwanese nuclear facility was trying to acquire reprocessing technology. The meeting resulted in the Taiwanese Cabinet declaring publicly that the island ``had no intention whatsoever to use its human and natural resources for the development of nuclear weapons,'' or to obtain technology to reprocess spent fuel. The documents show that the Carter administration continued the policy of leaning on Taiwan, making it clear that nonproliferation was a top priority for the new president. In April 1977, according to the documents, the Taiwanese began to show clear signs they were taking the pressure seriously. In a top secret memo to Carter, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that a heavy water reactor project and hot laboratory at the Taiwanese Institute of Nuclear Research had been closed, removing a major U.S. worry about Taiwan's nuclear program. ``The American effort to crack down on this project clearly yielded its desired results,'' Brzezinski wrote. Still, the documents show, the U.S. remained concerned that elements in the Taiwanese leadership - including the military - were dedicated to leaving the nuclear weapons option open. Unger kept pressing Chiang - now the Taiwanese president - to be more forthright on the nuclear issue. In September 1978, the documents show, Chiang complained to Unger in a meeting that the U.S. was dealing with it ``in a fashion which few other countries would tolerate.'' The U.S. switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, but Washington continued to monitor Taiwan's nuclear program, the documents show. In the absence of any new evidence, Burr believes that the U.S. pressure paid off, and that Taiwan has definitively renounced any nuclear weapons ambitions. However, he said, that doesn't mean that Washington will have similar success with North Korea, which conducted a nuclear test last year, or Iran, which the U.S. says is working hard at building a nuclear bomb. Iran denies this, saying its program is aimed only at generating electricity. ``Taiwan was a U.S. ally heavily dependent on American good will,'' Burr said. ``But with North Korea and Iran, there is no security relationship and very little leverage.'' --- On the Net: The National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/ Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 15 Beacon Journal: FirstEnergy stands by NRC finding 06/15/2007 | Consultants' report on Davis-Besse damage spurs regulatory review By Jim Mackinnon Beacon Journal business writer FirstEnergy Corp., in a dispute with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over an insurance claim analysis of the corrosion damage found in 2002 at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, said Thursday it continues to accept full responsibility for its ``mistakes and omissions'' at the Toledo-area reactor. The NRC last month demanded that FirstEnergy explain, under oath, how consultants' new reports prepared on behalf of the Akron utility appeared to raise industry-wide safety issues while contradicting official conclusions over how long it took leaking boric acid to damage the reactor. The NRC said it also needed to know why FirstEnergy delayed bringing the December 2006 reports to its attention until March. The commission said it could impose sanctions up to suspending or revoking the utility's nuclear operating license. The NRC said FirstEnergy inadequately responded to its initial questions. FirstEnergy said it stands by the official cause of the damage and is not fully endorsing the new consultants' reports. FirstEnergy is in arbitration trying to collect $200 million from Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited, the industry insurance carrier, to reimburse it for expenses caused by acid damage on the Davis-Besse reactor. FirstEnergy's 59-page written response to the NRC was released Thursday. A public hearing to discuss the response is scheduled for 9 a.m. June 27 at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md. During their back-and-forth over the consultants' reports, the NRC and FirstEnergy have concluded there are no new safety issues involving Davis-Besse and other nuclear plants of similar design. ``The damage to Davis-Besse's head was our fault, no question, but we felt our claim was covered by our insurance policy's terms,'' FirstEnergy nuclear operating company President Joe Hagan wrote in a two-page letter to employees in May. ``These (consultants) reports were not intended to imply that we do not accept responsibility for our past mistakes and omissions at Davis-Besse, but rather to show our compliance with insurance policy terms that we did not purposely cause the insured loss. These reports were prepared as part of our insurance litigation, and not as part of regulated activities.'' The unprecedented corrosion damage led to a two-year shutdown of the plant and cost FirstEnergy more than $600 million in repairs and energy costs. The company also paid a $28 million fine -- the industry's largest -- and admitted that employees had misled government inspectors about the damage. Revocation unlikely Because Davis-Besse has been operated safely since its 2004 restart, it's unlikely the company's nuclear license will be revoked, an NRC spokeswoman said. FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider said: ``We never stepped away from responsibility for the (Davis-Besse) event. We continue to stand by our root cause.'' The consultants' reports were intended as part of the insurance dispute, not for the NRC, FirstEnergy said. But after the insurer raised new industry safety concerns, FirstEnergy released the reports to the NRC earlier this year. FirstEnergy in 2003 filed a claim to collect insurance for the damage; the claim was denied in 2004 and is in arbitration. The incident at Davis-Besse, which is about 20 miles east of Toledo along Lake Erie, is considered one of the five worst at a nuclear power plant in the United States. Even so, no radiation was released into the environment. Damage quick or slow? FirstEnergy hired consultants during the claims process to do new reviews over how boric acid, an essential part of reactor coolant, created a football-size cavity almost all the way through 6 inches of carbon steel that makes up the top of the reactor vessel. A 661-page report by California consultant Exponent Failure Analysis Associates to the insurance company said the boric-acid damage happened in a matter of weeks prior to its discovery. In contrast, after a lengthy investigation involving the NRC, the utility and the regulator officially concluded that the damage was caused by years of small coolant leaks. Such a discrepancy raised industry-wide safety issues. This latest dispute has led to calls for the NRC to suspend FirstEnergy's license that enables it to run its nuclear plants. FirstEnergy disagrees with parts of the Exponent report, Schneider said. The Exponent report was not sent to the NRC right away because ``we did not see any impact on Davis-Besse or similar kinds of plants,'' Schneider said. NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said the regulatory commission issued a formal ``demand for information'' to make sure the root cause put together by FirstEnergy and the NRC remains valid. ``Obviously it was a serious enough issue for us to demand more information,'' she said. Critic's view David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists advocacy group, has asked the NRC to shut down Davis-Besse pending an independent review of the FirstEnergy report. ``If the NRC's independent review determines that (FirstEnergy) has submitted yet another inaccurate report to the NRC, revoke the operating license for Davis-Besse,'' Lochbaum wrote to the NRC. FirstEnergy has had falsification problems in the past, he said Thursday. FirstEnergy has said it is fully cooperating and complying with the NRC. Lochbaum said he did not see huge surprises in FirstEnergy's response to the NRC other than the utility saying it is not endorsing the consultant's reports. FirstEnergy apparently did not think the NRC would see the Exponent report, Lochbaum said. ``It was intended for a different purpose.'' The lack of FirstEnergy endorsement may hurt the utility in its insurance arbitration case, he said. ``I think it's, `Do not pass Go, do not collect $200 million.' '' Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com. ***************************************************************** 16 CNBC: Nuclear Energy is Clean and Should Play a Larger Role In Nation's Future: Industry Spokesman - Morning Call - MSNBC.com Scott Reeves News Writer CNBC.com Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, told CNBC’s “Morning Call” that nuclear power should play a bigger part in the nation’s future. “It certainly is clean,” Kerekes said Wednesday. “We do not describe ourselves as renewable source. Of the (electric) energy sources that we have in the United States…of those that don’t emit greenhouse gases or other pollutants into the atmosphere, fully 70% of that electricity comes from nuclear energy. So, if we’re going to do anything, with regard to clean energy in this country, nuclear energy already is the lion’s share of that supply and needs to continue to have a role.” There are now 435 now operating nuclear power plants in the United States. Twenty-eight new plants are under construction, 66 are planned or on order and another 158 have been proposed. Kevin Kamps, a nuclear waste specialist at Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said nuclear energy isn’t clean. “Nuclear power is certainly not clean and green,” Kamps said. “Uranium mining, to milling to processing to the reactors themselves – and especially to the waste – you have greenhouse gas emissions at various stages of the nuclear fuel chain. Radioactive waste is the actual product of nuclear power. The electricity may be around for a few decades, but the radioactive waste is around for hundreds of thousands of years into the future. It’s certainly not a clean source of electricity like wind or solar.” Kerekes countered:  “I guess you’re going to tell me that windmills grow out of the ground. They have to be fabricated. You have materials like metals and concrete that are involved. In solar cells, you’ve got photovoltaics that (produce) hazardous materials like arsenic (in the manufacturing process). I think you have your blinders on.” © 2007 CNBC.com ***************************************************************** 17 Daily Yomiuri: DPRK nuclear program still a threat to Japan Editorial Will the latest development in the dispute over North Korea-linked funds frozen at a Macao-based bank serve as a belated but fresh move toward ensuring the reclusive state implements the initial-phase steps agreed upon during February's six-party talks? On Thursday, the funds in question were transferred from Banco Delta Asia SARL (BDA) to a Russian bank where North Korea holds accounts, through the New York Federal Reserve Bank and Russia's central bank. If Pyongyang ascertains the funds have been received into the North Korean accounts, it will signify an end to the procedures for the latest money transfer. In September 2005, the United States designated the BDA as an institution subject to U.S. sanctions under the Patriot Act, which provides tools for intercepting terrorism, saying the bank had played a role in North korea's money-laundering and other financial irregularities. This action barred U.S. financial institutions from conducting transactions with the Macao-based bank. Given this, the return of the funds in question can be regarded as a supralegal action. The latest move also means the money was allowed to be transferred to a third country. We feel the action was hardly a satisfactory settlement of the controversy. North Korea insisted the return of the funds be a prerequisite for implementing the accord reached in the six-way negotiations. The decision made by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to make concessions to Pyongyang can be seen as an attempt to prevent a collapse of the six-nation talks. === N. Korea must keep its word The question is what should be done to get North Korea to carry out specific steps toward scrapping its nuclear weapons program. Four months have passed since participants in the six-party talks reached an agreement aimed at halting Pyongyang's nuclear weapons development. The deadline set for the start of the implementation of the initial-stage steps passed two months ago. North Korea should no longer be allowed to shirk fulfilling its obligation in this respect. It will not be a difficult task for North Korea to carry out the initial-phase steps. All it has to do is halt operations at its aging nuclear facilities and accept inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Doing so will earn it 50,000 tons of fuel oil in return. North Korea will also receive 400,000 tons of rice from South Korea. It should be noted, however, that North Korea would be able to resume plutonium production anytime if it does nothing more than to freeze its nuclear facilities. It could also threaten to end its nuclear freeze. With this in mind, it is essential to get North Korea to implement steps that follow the initial-phase ones as early as possible. Pyongyang has promised to "completely declare all nuclear programs" and "disable all existing nuclear facilities." === N-arms Kim's trump card However, it remains unclear whether the programs in question include a uranium enrichment program. Another question is how to define "disablement" of existing nuclear facilities. Crucial questions concerning North Korea's denuclearization--including the scrapping of its nuclear weapons and plutonium programs--have yet to be resolved in future six-party negotiations. It is almost impossible to become optimistic about whether North Korea and other participants in the six-way talks will be able to reach an agreement on how to scrap that country's nuclear weapons program. We cannot expect North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to readily give up his country's nuclear weapons, which he regards as the trump card for keeping his regime in place. Given this, North Korea's nuclear weapons remain a serious threat to Japan's peace and security. A U.N. sanction aimed at banning transactions that could aid North Korea in building weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles is still in place. The international community must not let down its guard on North Korea. (From The Yomiuri Shimbun, June 16, 2007) ***************************************************************** 18 NRC: NRC, Entergy to Discuss License Renewal Inspection Conducted at James A. Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plant News Release - Region I - 2007-035 - 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 The results of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection of the aging management program for the James A. FitzPatrick nuclear power plant will be discussed on Thursday, June 21, at a meeting between NRC officials and the facility’s management. The inspection is part of an ongoing NRC review of a license renewal application for the plant, which is located in Scriba, N.Y., and operated by Entergy Nuclear Northeast. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. at the plant’s Joint News Center, located at the Oswego County Airport, on Route 176 in Fulton, N.Y. Members of the public are invited to observe and will have an opportunity to pose questions to NRC officials before the meeting is adjourned. In August 2006, Entergy applied to the NRC for a 20-year extension of the operating license for the FitzPatrick plant. NRC reviews of license renewal applications usually take 22 months if there is no hearing involved. An important aspect of the review process is to ensure that a plant can manage the effects of aging on key safety systems, structures and components through an effective monitoring and maintenance program. The current operating license for the FitzPatrick plant is due to expire on Oct. 17, 2014. A copy of the plant’s license renewal application is available via the NRC’s web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications/f itzpatrick.html. Additional information about the license renewal process is available at: www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal.html. NRC news releases are available through a free list server subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. Friday, June 15, 2007 ***************************************************************** 19 RIA Novosti: Georgia mulls nuclear reactor construction with French help 13:47 | 15/ 06/ 2007 TBILISI, June 15 (RIA Novosti) - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and the head of a French nuclear power company discussed in Paris Friday the possibility of building a nuclear power plant in the Caucasus nation, Georgia's ambassador to France said. Georgia is looking to build a nuclear reactor to reduce its dependence on imported fuel, especially in light of its increasingly strained relations with Russia. Saakashvili met with Anne Lauvergeon, the head of French nuclear power company AREVA, on a working visit to France June 13-14 at the invitation of the country's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy. "The sides discussed bilateral cooperation and possibility of building a nuclear power plant [in Georgia]," Mamuka Kudava said. "The groundwork for the project will begin in the near future." Meanwhile, parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze, who is accompanying Saakashvili on his visit, said Georgia's future nuclear reactor would serve only civilian purposes. "Naturally, the nuclear power plant will have only civilian use," she told reporters. "Nobody plans to build a nuclear bomb in Georgia." Power supplies have been a major problem for Georgia since the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, with the South Caucasus nation's derelict energy sector covering only 40% of its domestic needs. Russia remains Georgia's main energy supplier, and sporadic disruptions in Russian supplies seem to deepen the rift between the two post-Soviet countries. The potential threat of Russia using energy as a political weapon has forced Georgia to look for alternative sources of power generation and to seek help in the West. Some of European countries, including France, have already expressed an interest in helping Georgia build its first NPP. France's AREVA NP is one of the world's leading designers and builders of nuclear power plants. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 20 toledoblade.com: FirstEnergy accepts blame for Davis-Besse oversight Article published Friday, June 15, 2007 Utility admits rust was preventable By TOM HENRY BLADE STAFF WRITER FirstEnergy Corp. wants the government to know, conflicting reports and all, that the utility could very well have headed off the threat of radioactive steam forming in Davis-Besse's containment building in 2002 by at least two years. That's if it had just followed its own program for detecting leaks and corrosion before the plant's 2000 refueling outage was completed, the utility said. That theme was reiterated throughout a 63-page document FirstEnergy submitted Wednesday to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The utility said it took full responsibility for the failures that nearly caused the plant's reactor head to blow open in 2002. The new document was in response to the NRC's demand for information issued May 14 over concerns about the utility's $200 million insurance claim. Two FirstEnergy consultants in December suggested the Davis-Besse incident - one of the largest in U.S. nuclear history - was a fluke. Those reports counter earlier findings by the NRC and by FirstEnergy's own team that compiled the company's 2002 report into the cause of the incident. The NRC determined the two FirstEnergy consultant reports did not have safety implications for the nation's other nuclear plants. But last month, the NRC questioned why it took FirstEnergy three months before it turned over the documents. It also wanted to know if FirstEnergy endorsed the reports. The agency said it would decide whether to impose sanctions after it received FirstEnergy's response. The sanctions could be as steep as revoking the utility's nuclear operating licenses for Davis-Besse and its Perry plant east of Cleveland and Beaver Valley in western Pennsylvania. The agency yesterday announced a June 27 public meeting at suburban Washington headquarters to review the utility's response, signed under oath Wednesday night by Joseph Hagan, president and chief nuclear officer of FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. The NRC released FirstEnergy's response to the public yesterday. Scott Burnell, NRC spokesman, said it should be available on the agency's Web site today. Mr. Hagan said the utility's position does not contradict the two consultant reports because it does not agree with all aspects. He said the utility was not required to provide the NRC with reports it is using for an insurance claim, though Mr. Hagan acknowledged that utility officials "have not been fully effective in communicating with the NRC upon receipt of the two reports." Mr. Hagan said earlier correspondence from FirstEnergy "may have inappropriately given the impression that we endorsed all aspects of the Exponent Report, including that part of the assessment that conflicts with our Technical Root Cause Report." "Specifically, we did not intend to create the impression that we could not have identified leakage prior to [the 2000 refueling outage] had we cleaned the [reactor] head," he wrote. The Exponent report was a 661-page analysis by Exponent Failure Analysis Association of Menlo, Calif., and Altran Solutions Corp. of Boston. Both are FirstEnergy consultants, as is Roger Mattson, a mechanical engineer and former NRC official with more than 40 years experience in nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Mr. Mattson issued a 96-page report. The Exponent report, citing new techniques developed to analyze the event, claims much of Davis-Besse's corrosion occurred weeks before the Feb. 16, 2002, shutdown. The Mattson report claims the utility, the NRC, and the nuclear industry could not have predicted what happened at Davis-Besse, even if the reactor head had been cleaned during its 2000 outage. "Although we agree with some statements and conclusions, FENOC does not endorse the [Mattson] document in its entirety," Mr. Hagan said in his response. FirstEnergy had forwarded the two reports to its insurance company, Nuclear Electrical Insurance Limited, in hopes of settling arbitration over the $200 million insurance claim. FirstEnergy paid a $5.45 million civil fine in 2005 and a $28 million criminal fine in 2006 for withholding information about the event. Both were records. David M. Uhlmann, chief of the Justice Department's environmental crimes section, said at the time the $28 million fine was imposed that the utility showed "brazen arrogance" for deceiving the government about the plant's condition in the fall of 2001. Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com or 419-724-6079. © 2007 The Blade. By using this service, you accept the terms of The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 ***************************************************************** 21 NRC: NRC Considering Request by Pennsylvania to Become an “Agreement State” News Release - 2007-076 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov www.nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering a request from Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania to assume part of the NRC’s regulatory authority over certain nuclear materials in the state. If the request is accepted, Pennsylvania will become the 35th state to sign such an agreement with the NRC. Under the proposed agreement, the NRC would transfer to Pennsylvania the responsibility for licensing, rulemaking, inspection and enforcement activities for: (1) radioactive materials produced as a byproduct of processes related to the production or utilization of special nuclear material (SNM - defined as enriched uranium or plutonium); (2) naturally occurring or accelerator produced byproduct material (NARM); (3) source material (uranium and thorium); and (4) SNM in quantities not sufficient to support a nuclear chain reaction. If the agreement is approved, approximately 690 NRC licenses, many of them for medical and industrial uses, would be transferred to Pennsylvania’s jurisdiction. In addition, Pennsylvania would retain regulatory authority for approximately 460 NARM licenses. The NRC would retain jurisdiction over regulation of commercial nuclear power plants and federal agencies using certain nuclear material in the state, as well as a number of other activities identified in 10 CFR Part 150. In addition, NRC would retain authority for the review, evaluation and approval of sealed sources and devices containing certain nuclear materials within the state. An announcement of the proposed agreement, along with a summary of the NRC staff’s draft assessment of the Pennsylvania program, will be published for comment once a week for four consecutive weeks in the Federal Register. Comments should be sent to Michael T. Lesar, Chief, Rulemaking, Directives and Editing Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Copies of the proposed agreement, the governor’s request and supporting documents, as well as the NRC staff’s assessment are available through the NRC’s Agency-wide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). Help in using ADAMS is available by contacting the NRC Public Document Room staff at 301-415-4737 or 1-800-397-4209, or by sending an e-mail message to pdr@nrc.gov. These documents are also available for public inspection at the NRC Public Document Room at 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. Thirty-four other states have previously signed such agreements with NRC. They are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. More information about the Agreement State program is available on the NRC’s Web site at this address: http://nrc-stp.ornl.gov/. 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. Friday, June 15, 2007 ***************************************************************** 22 Green Bay Press-Gazette: Nuclear plant closure urged Posted June 15, 2007 First of two Point Beach meetings held By Kristopher Wenn Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers MANITOWOC — Kathryn Sachs urged state regulators Thursday to consider using profits from the sale of Point Beach Nuclear Plant or funds that had been set aside by We Energies to eventually close the plant for energy efficiency programs in the state, including "green credits" for energy-efficient businesses. We Energies plans to sell its 1,033-megawatt plant to Florida-based FPL Energy LLC for nearly $1 billion. The sale is expected to be finalized in August. Sachs was the lone speaker at the first of two public hearings on the sale held Thursday in Manitowoc by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin. "In the case of the sale of Point Beach nuclear facility to FPL Point Beach, the state of Wisconsin would be forfeiting to an out-of-state provider, the state's only significant source of carbon-neutral energy," said Sachs, of E4 Inc., a Wisconsin nonprofit corporation involved in promoting energy efficiency for Wisconsin business. "This sale will drastically change the energy profile of the state, creating an imbalance weighed heavily towards coal-powered electricity and other non-carbon neutral energy sources," she said. Point Beach, a two-reactor facility in the town of Two Creeks, has 660 full-time employees. FPL representatives have said Point Beach employees would remain at the plant under FPL ownership. Scott Kohlmann, a nine-year Point Beach employee in the plant's information technology department, said he is supportive of the sale and that it didn't portend to any major changes for him or his wife, Amy. "I'm looking forward to getting (the sale) over and focusing back on our job," Kohlmann said, adding that IT employees must switch over the plant's computer operating system so it is compatible with FPL's other plants. The sale is expected to benefit customers because it would result in smaller rate increases, said Brian Manthey, We Energies spokesman. Proceeds from the sale of the plant would help offset scheduled rate increases to pay for statewide wind farm and power plant construction and upgrades, he said. A typical We Energies residential customer who uses 750 kilowatt-hours per month pays $81.52 per month for electricity. If the sale is approved, the customer could expect to pay $87.63 per month in 2008 and $94.17 per month in 2009. If the sale is not approved, the customer could expect to pay $104.34 per month next year, according to Manthey. However, We Energies customers could expect to pay about $125. 7 million in double gross receipt taxes over the next 28 years if the sale is approved. Under the sale agreement, We Energies customers would not only pay a gross receipts tax for the energy they buy from We Energies, but they also will pay a gross receipts tax WE Energies would owe FPL for purchasing Point Beach electricity. Utilities must pay a gross receipts tax in lieu of property taxes. After the hearing, representatives from Clean Wisconsin and Citizens' Utility Board, two groups opposed to the sale, cited concerns about what conditions would be set for another operator should FPL sell the facility, how enforceable commitments FPL has made to the PSC would be, and how timely FPL would dismantle portions of the plant that have radioactive contamination once the plant is decommissioned. But Becky Vat, counsel for We Energies, said a successor owner would have to be approved by the PSC, FPL has agreed to restore the site to "unrestricted" status when the plant is decommissioned, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission determines the timeframe under which a nuclear plant is decommissioned. FPL has made specific commitments to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, according to Dick Winn, manager of communications and government affairs for FPL Energy. Those commitments include that the company will: Not store high- or low-level radioactive waste at Point Beach that was not generated at the plant. Decommission Point Beach when the plant is no longer used for producing electricity to a "greenfield" site. Require that any subsequent purchasers be subject to commitment FPL has made for decommissioning the plant. Contact us at 920-435-4411. greenbaypressgazette.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. ***************************************************************** 23 Brattleboro Reformer - Feds: VY capable of operating past 2012 BRATTLEBORO, VT The Associated Press Friday, June 15 BRATTLEBORO (AP) -- Clearing one hurdle in its bid to remain open past 2012, the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant has passed a safety inspection by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission despite the recent discovery of cracks in a steam dryer. In a 44-page report, federal regulators said the Vernon power plant has adequate programs and processes in place to manage the effects of aging and that it can operate safely for another 20 years past 2012. "The inspection results supported a conclusion that the proposed activities will reasonably manage the effects of aging in the systems, structures and components identified in your application," NRC engineering chief Richard Conte said in a letter to plant officials last week. Still to come are an overall safety evaluation and a final environmental impact statement before the NRC decides whether to re-license the 35-year-old nuclear power plant in Vernon. "This is one part," NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said Thursday. "The safety review is made up of several portions, including this inspection, audits, our technical staff reviewing the application and all of the information that's been provided to support the application for license renewal." The NRC report was written after a team inspected the plant over a two-week period in January and February, but before state officials expressed concern about new cracks in the steam dryer, which removes moisture from steam before it enters high-speed turbines. Screnci said the NRC is monitoring that component separately, since it is not related to the plant's programs to manage aging. "The steam dryer is not a safety-related component of the plant," said Brian Cosgrove, manager of government affairs for Vermont Yankee. "In the most recent outage, we conducted a very thorough exam of the steam dryer. While there were some additional stress indicators, or cracks, we believe they're of no structural significance." One plant critic found fault with the NRC's finding. "The programs Vermont Yankee says it has are entirely inadequate to detect aging of various components for an additional 20 years," said Diana Sidebotham, of Putney, a founding member of the New England Coalition. "In fact, we have serious concerns about them right now." During a hearing at the Latchis Theatre last month, the NRC said it found that Entergy satisfactorily corrected weaknesses identified during the process and could continue to operate safely in the future. The results were presented to Entergy representatives at a public meeting that stretched late into the evening. A boisterous group of nuclear activists berated NRC representatives throughout the event, while several plant employees spoke out in favor of the renewal. Though the formal presentation of results wrapped up quickly, audience members grilled the NRC representatives for several hours -- alternating between making speeches, asking questions and interrupting the answers. Opponents of the license extension argued in favor of an independent safety assessment of the plant before the NRC makes its final decision, but commission representatives argued that their own inspection incorporated all necessary precautions. Vermont Yankee began operating in 1972 and its original license expires in five years. Its owner, Entergy, is asking for permission to keep the plant operating for another 20 years. Reformer reporter Paul Heintz contributed to this story. Copyright © 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 24 CQ Green Sheets: Proliferation Threat Seen in Nuclear Power Expansion June 15, 2007 – 6:50 a.m. By William Scally Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and mounting stockpiles of plutonium pose a significant risk of nuclear proliferation and diversion of materials to terrorists, a nuclear power fact-finding group said Thursday. In a report released by the Colorado-based Keystone Center public policy organization, the group said expansion of nuclear power in ways that substantially increased the likelihood of the spread of nuclear weapons “is not acceptable.” The report emerged from analysis and deliberations by the Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding (NJFF) panel of 27 experts in the environmental, utility, nuclear power, academic and other fields over the past year. Four of the participants discussed the findings at a Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the non-profit Foundation for Nuclear Studies and Sens. Larry E. Craig, R-Idaho, and Ken Salazar, D-Colo. Besides proliferation and other concerns, the report looked at the number of new nuclear power plants that would be needed worldwide to achieve significant reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and long-term nuclear storage. Concerns about climate change are bringing a new focus to nuclear power as an alternative to the use of fossil fuels. But the report said nuclear proliferation challenges increased with growth of the industry. If growth in commercial nuclear power plants also resulted in construction of fuel cycle facilities in countries that do not now possess nuclear weapons, the risk of proliferation would increase, a report summary said. It said proliferation could occur by the actions of national governments and non-state, possibly terrorist, organizations. NJFF participants agreed that the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards had “critical shortcomings” and were currently insufficient to provide timely detection when weapon quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium were diverted. The summary said the Bush administration’s nuclear energy initiative, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), is not a strategy for resolving either the radioactive waste problem or the weapons proliferation problem. The program was unlikely to succeed because it required deployment of commercial-scale reprocessing plants, and a large fraction the U.S. and global commercial reactors would have to be fast reactors, the report said. It said that to date deployment of commercial reprocessing plants had proven uneconomical and fast reactors had proven to be uneconomical and less reliable than light-water reactors. The GNEP program could encourage developments in non-weapons states and training of plutonium experts that could pose a grave proliferation risk, the report said. The report said the NJFF members reached no consensus on the likely rate of expansion of nuclear power in the world or in the United States over the next 50 years. To achieve meaningful emission reductions equal to 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year by 2050, they said, would require the industry to return to the most rapid period of growth — 1981 to 1990 — and sustain this rate of growth for 50 years. About 21 new 1,000-megawatt reactors would have to be built each year for 50 years, including about five in the United States, the report said. The NJFF participants agreed that spent nuclear fuel would ultimately have to be placed in long-term disposal facilities, with the best option being a deep underground geologic repository. They said delivery of the first nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, a decade behind schedule because of political, technical and legal challenges, would likely not take place until beyond 2020. Because of the Yucca experience, the report said, the search for a second or alternative site would benefit from a different approach. Older spent nuclear fuel that must be stored on an interim basis could be stored safely in either spent fuel pools or in dry casks, the NJFF group said. Source: CQ Green Sheets The latest news, analysis and legislative action on energy and environmental policy. © 2007 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 25 Reuters: Power companies want more US nuclear loan backing Fri Jun 15, 2007 3:40PM EDT By Lisa Lee NEW YORK, June 15 (Reuters) - A U.S. Energy Department proposal to help finance construction of new nuclear power reactors is not enough to offset the risks of building the expensive plants, power companies said on Friday. Those companies have pushed for a "nuclear renaissance" as a way to meet growing U.S. electricity demand and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and U.S. reliance on foreign energy sources. But the wave of proposed nuclear plants may end up as a trickle because financing such costly projects remains tough for many power companies, even with a federal loan guarantee program authorized in 2005 to promote new construction. "Fundamentally, it changes the equation on whether to build at all," David Brown, vice-president for congressional affairs at Exelon Corp. (EXC.N: Quote, Profile, Research), told Reuters. Experts estimate the cost of building a new nuclear plant at $4 billion to $6 billion, which could present problems for even the largest companies. Exelon, the biggest in the industry by market value, has a market capitalization of $50 billion. About 16 companies and consortia are preparing license applications to build and operate as many as 33 nuclear reactors. There are now more than 100 nuclear plants producing 20 percent of the power generated in the United States. According to some companies, loan guarantees are the only way they can shoulder the cost of building nuclear plants. "We view it as indispensable," John Turnage, head of business development at Constellation Generation Group Inc. (CEG.N: Quote, Profile, Research), told a Department of Energy (DOE) public hearing in Washington on Friday. A federal loan guarantee would make it easier and cheaper for companies to tap capital markets to obtain loans because the government guarantees minimize risks for lenders. Final regulations for the loan guarantee program are due in late 2007, but initial proposals, first floated last year and modified last month, have been widely criticized for not being marketable to the financial community. "The regulations they proposed are not workable," Richard Myers, head of policy development at Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry association, told Reuters. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized the DOE to provide loan guarantees for up to 80 percent of the cost of projects, such as nuclear plants, that cut greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. electricity-sector carbon emissions would be almost a third higher without nuclear power, according to the NEI. Proposed guidelines stipulate the DOE may guarantee up to 90 percent of the amount of any loan, but the NEI says it must guarantee 100 percent of the loans to attract private capital. Guaranteeing just 90 percent would create a two-tiered debt structure, with 10 percent of the debt carrying far more risk. The DOE, however, would not allow the two debt types to trade separately, and while there are liquid markets for both government-guaranteed and high-risk debt, there is no market for such a hybrid debt structure. "(Bankers) said they simply would not finance the project without a workable loan guarantee program," Exelon's Brown said. But a few regulated utilities with strong credit ratings and state regulator support said they could move forward with plans for new reactors, even without federal loan guarantees. "Southern can finance and build the plants ... without the loan guarantees," Buzz Miller, head of nuclear development at Southern Co. (SO.N: Quote, Profile, Research), told Reuters. "But we support the loan guarantee program with the DOE, and to the extent it's beneficial to customers, we will utilize them." Bankers see the loan guarantee as a protection against the chance that political concerns could halt a nuclear plant during construction, according to Brown. Reuters Corporate: Copyright ***************************************************************** 26 Armenian News: U.S.: ANNP should be replaced by new one PanARMENIAN.Net Armenian News 15.06 20:32 /PanARMENIAN.Net/ The U.S. thinks replacement of the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant by a new one a necessity, U.S. Charge d’Affairs in Armenia, Anthony Godfrey said. Mr Godfrey said the United States contributed to minimization of danger of the NPP, however, it’s not enough and necessity of replacement is still urgent. The U.S. holds talks with the Armenian leadership in search of an optimal solution to the problem, according to him. Mr Godfrey informed that since Armenia acquired independence, the U.S. has allocated $1.6 billion as financial assistance and this index keeps growing. “These are programs of contribution to economy, democracy as well as projects targeted at perfection of the defense ministry system,” he said adding that during last year the U.S. assigned $20 million to Armenia for implementation of various measures in the defense ministry, these being English language studies, exchange of experience and transformation of the Armenian peacekeeping battalion into a brigade. Those who wish to learn more about the above-mentioned programs can visit a special web site launched June 15, IA Regnum reports. Reproduction in full or in part is prohibited without reference to «PanARMENIAN.Net». Copyright © 2000?2007. PanARMENIAN Network ***************************************************************** 27 Columbia Missourian: Reactor drills will test reaction times By Dustin Arand June 15, 2007 | 5:31 p.m. CST If you see fire trucks speeding toward MU’s Research Reactor Center on Monday with lights blazing and horns blaring, don’t worry. This is only a test. Mary Jo Banken, executive director of the MU News Bureau, said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires the Research Reactor Center to hold an emergency simulation every other year. To enhance the realism of the drill, the reactor staff will be kept in the dark about the nature of the emergency until the last minute, Banken said. In addition to the reactor staff, other participating agencies will include the Columbia Fire and Police Departments, MU Police and the University Hospital and Clinics. After the simulation, representatives from these agencies will meet to talk about improvements that can be made to the emergency protocol, Banken said. “We’ve never had any real emergencies,” Banken said, “and all past simulations have gone well.” ***************************************************************** 28 WNN: Swedish nuclear power plant gets new turbines 15 June 2007 Unit 2 at Sweden's Oskarshamn nuclear power plant is to undergo upgrading that will increase the plant's installed capacity by more than 30 MWe. Oskarshamn Siemens Power Generation has won the contract to upgrade the low-pressure turbines at the 610 MWe boiling water reactor (BWR). The new turbines will use advanced three-dimensional blading technology, enabling them to make better use of the energy contained in the steam produced by the reactor. As well as the low-pressure turbines, Siemens will supply other related components and a new instrumentation and control system. According to Siemens, the upgrades will ensure high plant operating reliability and low power generation costs over the long term. Oskarshamn 2 is one of three BWRs at the site, operated by OKG, itself a Swedish subsidiary of EOn. It entered commercial operation in 1975. Unlike a pressurised water reactor, steam from a BWR is fed directly to the turbines without passing through a heat exchanger. The upgrades to unit 2 are planned for completion in 2009. OKG signed a contract with Alstom for a 250 MWe upgrade of the larger and more modern Oskarshamn 3 in 2006, including a turbine upgrade as well as reactor upgrade. Sweden has ten operating nuclear power units, generating up to half its electricity. Further information Siemens Power Generation OKG ***************************************************************** 29 Times of India: India to sign UN pact on protecting nuclear material 15 Jun, 2007 l 1735 hrs ISTlIANS NEW DELHI: India is to sign and ratify a key UN convention on protecting nuclear material that Washington had insisted on as part of the India-US nuclear deal. The cabinet on Friday approved India's accession to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM), as also an amendment the Indian Extradition Act making unauthorised trade in nuclear material an international offence. India's signing of the convention would "strengthen the international legal framework to combat terrorism", Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi told reporters on Friday after a cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It would "also enhance international cooperation in investigation, prosecution and extradition of those who commit terrorist acts and acts of sabotage involving radioactive material or nuclear devices and facilities", the minister added. The CPPNM is a convention of the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). It aims to prohibit signatory countries from conducting sale, purchase or movement through their territory of any nuclear material from any unauthorised party or non-signatory country. Washington had made the signing of the convention a pre-requisite for India to get nuclear material under the India-US civil nuclear energy agreement. The signatories to the convention, at a conference at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in July 2005, adopted an amendment "with a view to strengthening the provisions of the convention, in particular, for including terrorist acts and acts of sabotage against nuclear materials/nuclear facilities among the offences that state parties are required to make punishable, under their domestic laws". This makes it legally binding for the signatories to protect nuclear facilities and material in peaceful domestic use, storage as well as transport. The convention also provides for expanded cooperation between states on rapid measures to locate and recover stolen or smuggled nuclear material, mitigate any radiological consequences of sabotage and prevent and combat related offences. The amendment to the Extradition Act also seeks to make unauthorised trade in nuclear material anywhere in the world an international offence for which the concerned person could be extradited to a country with which India has an extradition treaty, official sources said. ***************************************************************** 30 The USUK's Uranium Wars: worse than Hitler's Genocide Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:02:31 -0500 (CDT) *The USUK's Uranium Wars: worse than Hitler's Genocide* http://tinyurl.com/3yqsxo Uranium Wars: here's something else you're just not going to hear about on the mainstream media (MSM). Yet this is the reality: since the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US, Britain and the rest of what is called the New World Order has been conducting a systematic program of genocide --or population reduction as it is euphemistically called-- with the use of one or another form of radioactivity. The fact is that the United States and its military partners have staged four nuclear wars, "slipping nukes under the wire" by using dirty bombs and dirty weapons in countries the US needs to control. Depleted uranium aerosols will permanently contaminate vast regions and slowly destroy the genetic future of populations living in those regions, where there are resources which the US must control, in order to establish and maintain American primacy. Described as the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, depleted uranium is the weapon that keeps killing. The half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years, the age of the earth. And, as Uranium-238 decays into daughter radioactive products, in four steps before turning into lead, it continues to release more radiation at each step. There is no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up. It meets the US Government's own definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. (Global Research ) While the Washington neocons continue with their unrelenting campaign to get Bush to attack Iran, an attack which will invariably use nuclear fissile 'tactical' weapons with a yield of anything between one third to seven times that of Hiroshima-Nagasaki, a silent uranium war is being conducted by the US and Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan and by their proxy, Israel, in the Lebanon. The conduct of secret nuclear wars since 1991, through the use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States and Great Britain with their allies, has taken place in the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Lebanon. It has been carried out for the express purpose of destroying the public health and mutilating the genetic future of vast populations in oil rich and/or pipeline regions. Silent because this is a war which is simply ignored by a compliant and complicit MSM. Having embedded themselves so deeply with the war criminals the MSM is just as much part of the genocide which is going on. Naturally, it doesn't like to be compared with Nazis but in the real world what its NWO masters are up to is something even worse than the Nazis perpetrated: permanent genocide through irradiating vast areas of the planet. Depleted uranium is the ideal weapon to bring about the New World Order, which is global depopulation. In just a few years it has turned Planet Earth into a Death Star. For populations that must continue to live in contaminated areas, the long-term effects are lingering illnesses and mutilation of their DNA. Widespread depleted uranium contamination of DNA in populations results in the potential mutilation of future generations. Mutations induced in the DNA of a single egg or sperm which form a fertilized egg are expressed and repeated in every cell of the developing organism, and defects are passed on to all future generations. In a *recent article* , Leuren Meuret reveals how the planning of uranium wars was intended as an effective method of depopulation: The blueprint for depleted uranium radioactive poison gas weaponry -- dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets -- was contained in a declassified memorandum dated Oct. 30, 1943. It was addressed to Gen. Leslie Groves, who was head of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. effort to build atomic bombs in World War II. The recommendation for development of depleted uranium as kinetic energy penetrators was never mentioned in the Groves memo. It was specifically for depopulation. The Groves memo makes it clear that in 1943, U.S. scientists recommended using radioactive poison gas weapons in order to contaminate the air, water, soil, food, environment and the blood of exposed populations. The long-term contamination is permanent, since uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, making contaminated areas uninhabitable for eternity. And more recently: Depleted uranium poison gas weaponry, used on a regional scale, meets U.S. National Security Council goals as stated in the "Global 2000 Report: Vision of a Gloomy World" (1980). This report recommended that depopulation in third world countries was imperative to the U.S. government purpose of securing mineral and other strategic resources. Global atmospheric pollution from depleted uranium particulates will result in massive depopulation on a global scale. By increasing death rates and decreasing birth rates globally, more than 2 billion people will be eliminated. We are not simply talking about intention here. Uranium wars are being conducted secretly in Iraq and Afghanistan where DU-tipped bullets and shells are being widely used and DU bombs being dropped on the population. The evidence of what this causes is both plentiful and horrific. Yet it is being ignored by both governments and anti-war groups. If ever there was proof that the wars conducted in our name are those of the Fourth Reich, well then, here it is. What is being perpetrated by our governments is nothing less than racist genocide. So get used to it: our leaders are mass-murdering Nazis and by letting them get away with it, we're no different to those Germans who pretended they didn't know about the concentration camps. DU WATCH DEPLETED URANIUM: AN INVESTIGATION [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type image/jpeg which had a name of depleted_uranium_baby.jpe] ***************************************************************** 31 Tri-City Herald: PNNL workers contaminated by radioactive leak Published Friday, June 15th, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer Small amounts of radioactive contamination were discovered tracked from the Hanford nuclear reservation Thursday. A Pacific Northwest National Laboratory worker leaving a radiological work area in the Radiological Processing Laboratory triggered a hand and foot survey instrument during a routine check for contamination, according to PNNL. The building is in the 300 Area of Hanford just north of Richland where PNNL uses some Department of Energy laboratory and office space. His steps were retraced to the nearby Materials Sciences Building, where he and three other workers are believed to have been contaminated. The four PNNL workers had been using a sealed radioactive source containing plutonium 238 Thursday that developed an undetected leak. The source is used in tests to verify the accuracy of radiation detection monitors. PNNL is not sure if the contamination occurred Thursday or earlier. Three of the workers had contamination on their skin and a fourth worker had contamination on his clothing. There is no reason to believe their health was harmed, said Greg Koller, spokesman for PNNL. All four were evaluated at PNNL and released to go home Thursday evening. Plutonium 238 emits alpha radiation, which does not penetrate skin. About 70 people work in the building, but no one else was found to have been contaminated, Koller said. The worker on whom the contamination was discovered also had been in the Applied Process Engineering Laboratory, or APEL, in north Richland near Hanford. A survey there found low levels of contamination in his office at APEL and on tools in an APEL lab, according to PNNL. Cars and homes of the contaminated workers also were checked. Minor levels of contamination were found in two cars and very low levels of contamination were found in one staff member's home, according to PNNL. PNNL and DOE will be reviewing the incident over the next few days. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 32 Reuters: U.N. rules to contain health emergencies take hold Fri Jun 15, 2007 11:56AM EDT GENEVA (Reuters) - New rules to help the United Nations contain public health emergencies took effect on Friday, requiring countries to disclose potential threats from disease, chemical agents, radioactive materials and contaminated food. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said its revised International Health Regulations, approved by member states in 2005, would hasten the detection, investigation and control of potentially devastating outbreaks. The regulations build upon 1969 guidelines that required countries to report outbreaks of cholera, plague and yellow fever to the WHO. They were applied a year ago to bird flu and extended on Friday to cover other threats such as polio and smallpox. Under the broadened rules, countries need to set up round-the-clock communication with the WHO and report events that may be a public health emergency of international concern within 24 hours. Countries must also boost their ability to monitor and respond to public health threats within five years. Margaret Chan, who heads the Geneva-based agency, said the expanded regulations should lessen the chance of an influenza, or other, pandemic threat spanning the globe, as occurred in 2003 when SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) spread from China to 30 countries, killing 800 people. "SARS was a wake-up call for all of us. It spread faster than we had predicted and was only contained through intensive cooperation between countries," said Chan, who was director of health in Hong Kong at the time. "Today, the greatest threat to international public health security would be an influenza pandemic. The threat of a pandemic has not receded, but implementation of the (international health regulations) will help the world be better prepared for the possibility of a pandemic." © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 33 Reuters: Russia FSB probes claims Litvinenko was British spy | Fri Jun 15, 2007 10:21AM EDT By Conor Sweeney MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Federal Security Service opened a criminal espionage investigation on Friday into accusations that murdered ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko and a self-exiled Russian tycoon in London were both British spies. Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB bodyguard, told a news conference on May 31 that Litvinenko approached him with offers to spy for Britain's MI6 and collect incriminating evidence against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Lugovoy also said Litvinenko had told him his patron, the London-based Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who is a fierce opponent of Putin, was also working for British secret services. Berezovsky has denied such accusations "As a result of an inquiry into the statement made by Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoy ... the FSB's Investigative Directorate opened on June 14 a criminal case relating to espionage," an FSB statement said. The FSB declined to name the people it was investigating but in his statement Lugovoy accused both Litvinenko and Berezovsky of being British spies. A conviction for espionage can lead to a 20-year jail term for passing on state secrets, according to Russia's criminal code. Britain's Crown Prosecution Service has accused Lugovoy of murdering Litvinenko with radioactive polonium-210 in London on November 1 last year and requested his extradition from Russia. Russia has said that under its constitution it cannot extradite its citizens abroad, but pledged to prosecute Lugovoy if sufficient evidence was handed over by British investigators. Lugovoy has repeatedly denied any role in the murder of Litvinenko, whom he described as "Sasha" during his recent press conference, to indicate their former close friendship. He said either Britain's MI6 or Berezovsky may have killed Litvinenko for a variety of reasons, including Litvinenko's failure to recruit Lugovoy to work for MI6. Berezovsky has resisted the Kremlin's efforts to extradite him on money laundering charges and has recently called for a "revolution" to oust Putin. He was Litvinenko's benefactor in London after the ex-KGB agent left Russia over five years ago, claiming his life was at risk. Berezovsky has dismissed claims he was behind Litvinenko's death and funded a campaign to bring the killers to justice. Litvinenko had become a fierce Kremlin critic and moved to Britain. He fell ill within hours of meeting Lugovoy in a London hotel and suffered an agonizing death in hospital three weeks later. In a letter which friends said was dictated on his deathbed, he accused Putin of responsibility for his murder. The Kremlin has rejected this as ridiculous. Reuters ***************************************************************** 34 TheStar.com: Ottawa approves plan to bury nuclear waste Ottawa approves plan to bury nuclear waste There's a strong likelihood in the years ahead that they'll be able to reuse the spent fuel to recover even more energy out of it Gary Lunn, Minster of Natural Resources Jun 15, 2007 04:30 AM Peter Calamai Science Reporter OTTAWA–Trucks and trains carrying millions of tonnes of dangerously radioactive waste nuclear fuel will be rolling across Ontario within 30 years, the federal government confirmed in giving the go-ahead yesterday to a multi-billion-dollar industry scheme for long-term waste storage. The vehicles would carry waste fuel, now stored at the province's nuclear power reactors, to a holding site about 50 metres below ground at what Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn called a "willing community." Officials of the industry-led Nuclear Waste Management Organization said that site could be in one of the four provinces with nuclear activity – Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, all with reactors, and Saskatchewan, with uranium mines. After roughly another three decades, the nuclear waste would be shifted to a permanent mausoleum as far as a kilometre underground at the same location. "There's a strong likelihood in the years ahead that they'll be able to reuse the spent fuel to recover even more energy out of it," Lunn said. The decision effectively rubber-stamps the scheme proposed in 2005. The nuclear industry would pay most of the research, construction and maintenance costs, estimated at $24 billion. © Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2007 | ***************************************************************** 35 TorontoSun.com: Buried nukes torsun.editor@sunmedia.ca Fri, June 15, 2007 Feds: Waste to be buried By DENNIS BUECKERT, CP OTTAWA -- The federal government has given approval in principle for the underground disposal of nuclear waste. But Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said yesterday it will take years of consultations to choose a site, and decades to actually deposit the waste. "This is just the beginning of quite a long process. It will be a number of years before there is anything further to announce," he said. The minister said the cost of building a waste facility would be in the billions of dollars, but insisted the nuclear industry would foot the bill. Nuclear operators are required to set aside money for storage, and Lunn said there is already $1 billion in the fund. Many environmentalists oppose underground storage because of concern about radioactive leaks or accidents. "Deep geological storage is delayed pollution," said Shawn-Patrick Stensil of Greenpeace. "This material needs to be isolated for a million years." Stensil said the solution is to stop producing the waste. Lunn said the waste would be retrievable so as to allow for the possibility in the future of reusing spent fuel. CANOE home | We welcome your feedback. Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 36 Tennessean: Murfreesboro water meets standards - Nashville, Tennessee - Friday, 06/15/07 - Tennessean.com Legislature passes landfill moratorium By TURNER HUTCHENS Gannett Tennessee MURFREESBORO — Test results received this week showed the levels of radioactive materials in Murfreesboro's water supply to be well below the standards set by federal and state regulators, and in many cases, undetectable. City officials had the water supply tested for radioactive materials which might have leaked from Middle Point Landfill on Jefferson Pike, which sits along the Stones River. Water Treatment Superintendent Alan Cranford said there is no indication that any radiation beyond what occurs naturally is present in the water. "It's at very low levels," he said. Samples of the city's water supply were sent away about two weeks ago for testing after the dumping of low-level radioactive materials at the landfill was brought to light by a report from the anti-nuclear organization Nuclear Information and Resource Service. The water supply was tested for radioactive materials in 2003 as part of regular water quality monitoring. State law requires this type of testing every four years. At that time, no significant levels of radioactive material were found, with the amount of radioactive material generally testing below detectable levels. Moratorium on dumping Before it adjourned Tuesday, the state legislature passed a moratorium on dumping radioactive material at the landfill. The legislation now awaits the signature of Gov. Phil Bredesen. The moratorium halts dumping of radioactive waste in the county under Tennessee's Bulk Survey for Release program, pending the results of a study by the state Municipal Solid Waste Advisory Committee. Under the program, millions of pounds of low-level radioactive materials have been dumped in the landfill. Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, said it's important for the committee to supply hard data about what is going into the landfill. The bill gives the committee until early September to study the impact of the dumping and make a recommendation. Tracy said it took some convincing to get senators from other districts to approve the moratorium, in part because of concerns about where radioactive materials from those districts would go. Copyright © 2007, tennessean.com. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 37 AFP: Canada okays plan for nuclear waste depot - Fri Jun 15, 3:39 AM ET OTTAWA (AFP) - The Canadian government has approved a plan for a below-ground nuclear waste depot that is backed by the nuclear power industry but branded by environmentalists as dangerous. Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said Thursday that the government had accepted a plan to bury radioactive waste from nuclear plants in deep subterranean storage depots after first temporarily storing it in shallower underground facilities. "This is a safe, long-term approach," Lunn said in a statement. The storage method "will ensure the used nuclear fuel is monitored and retrievable," he said. The waste will come from Canada's 22 nuclear plants, 18 of which are now in service, providing 15 percent of the power in the entire country and 54 percent in Ontario province. According to Greenpeace, there is already some 40,000 tonnes of nuclear waste held in the plants. Greenpeace's David Martin called the plan "the worst of all worlds." "Ultimately I don't think the nuclear industry can guarantee that this extremely long-lived waste can be kept isolated from the environment," Martin told AFP. "It's simply not realistic to say that these poisons can be contained for that long, and that's why we say that the first priority should be the phasing out of nuclear power, not the phasing in of a radioactive waste dump." Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 38 Las Cruces Sun-News: State reaches settlement with lab over chromium contamination (5:15 p.m.) LAS CRUCES, NM By The Associated Press Article Launched: 06/15/2007 05:16:55 PM MDT LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — The state Environment Department said Friday it has reached a settlement with Los Alamos National Laboratory over the nuclear weapons lab's failure to report chromium contamination in a monitoring well. The department said the lab will pay a $251,870 penalty as part of the settlement. "This enforcement action should remind the operators of LANL that they have a duty to report significant environmental contamination to the state and residents promptly," Environment Secretary Ron Curry said. "Chromium contamination is a serious issue." The department had accused the lab's operators, Los Alamos National Security LLC and the U.S. Department of Energy, of violating LANL's hazardous waste permit and a 2005 consent order that governs environmental cleanup activities by failing to report increases of chromium in a groundwater monitoring well in 2004. The state said four groundwater samples taken from well R-28 in Mortandad Canyon between 2004 and 2005 detected toxic hexavalent chromium at up to four times the drinking water standard and up to eight times the state groundwater quality standard. Curry's office said the lab didn't report the finding to the state until late 2005. The state said hexavalent chromium is not naturally occurring and is known to cause cancer and kidney and liver damage. Both state and lab officials have said there's no chromium in the drinking water of nearby communities. In addition to the penalty, the settlement requires the lab to regularly review data from all groundwater monitoring and to report findings within one business day if previously undetected contaminant concentrations exceed state or federal water quality standards. The state is also requiring the lab to continue funding the Risk Analysis, Communication, Evaluation and Reduction (RACER) project, which collects environmental data from lab operations. Data from RACER will provide information for a report that will offer recommendations regarding environmental management at the lab. On the Net: New Mexico Environment Department: http://www.nmenv.state.nm.us/ Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://lanl.gov/ Copyright © 2006 Las Cruces Sun-News, a MediaNews Group Newspaper. ***************************************************************** 39 The Australian: PM backs nuclear enrichment plan NEWS.com.au | * June 15, 2007 * Paul Maley PRIME Minister John Howard says he supports an investigation into the feasibility of a uranium enrichment industry in Australia. Mr Howard today rejected Labor claims of secret dealings with start-up companies in the nuclear sector and said the Switkowsky report also canvassed the nation's uranium enrichment options. “Nuclear enrichment is something that should be examined,” he told reporters in Sydney. “There is nothing secret about the fact that Switkowsky had a look at nuclear enrichment. “We have large reserves of uranium, the question of whether it would be feasible to look at uranium enrichment is another matter. “We are not disguising the fact that these are issues that should be looked at and debated.” His comments come after media reports a company called Nuclear Fuel Australia was studying the feasibility of a $2.5 billion plant which could be operational by 2015. Mr Howard said the project would only get the government's approval if it were “completely satisfied on environmental and safety grounds that it was good thing to go ahead”. “I am of the view, and there is plenty of evidence for this, that the latest generation of nuclear power stations are in fact safer than coal fired power stations,” Mr Howard said. Earlier today, the author of the briefing paper on the subject said no sites had been nominated as possible locations for a nuclear enrichment plant. Dr Clarence Hardy, a director of Nuclear Fuel Australia, moved to correct reports that Caboolture in Queensland and Redcliffe in South Australia could be the site of a $2.5 billion uranium enrichment plant. Dr Hardy said the reports appeared to be based on a book he wrote 25 years ago in which he may have identified the two areas as possible locations, although he said he can no longer clearly remember. He said the areas may no longer be suitable as the industrial and residential composition may have changed. It was reported last night that a company called Nuclear Fuel Australia is studying the feasibility of a $2.5 billion plant which could be operational by 2015 Dr Hardy acknowledged it would be hard to find a location for an enrichment plant but said it would be easier than selling a nuclear power plant, as the waste was cleaner. “It’s got a very low environmental impact. It produces very little waste,’’ he said. Dr Hardy said a briefing paper outlining the plan had been sent to Ministers and Shadow Ministers this morning. He said a Coalition government would be more receptive to the idea than a Labor one, as the Coalition was “generally supportive of nuclear things’’. Industry and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane said discussions about a plant were underway, but in their early stages. “I've had discussions with one or two companies about their ideas on it,’’ he said. “But as I've said, I've made it very plain in those discussions that there needs to be a public debate on the future of nuclear power in Australia before we do anything further.'' Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett demanded the government outline its nuclear plans in the wake of the revelation. “If in fact there have been these discussions, they ought to be made absolutely public for Australians to know about them,’’ he said. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said construction of a nuclear plant north of Brisbane would destroy the local community. “How could you possibly put an enrichment plant in the middle of the community at Caboolture?" he said. - with AAP © The Australian ***************************************************************** 40 Money Week: Nuclear waste: a guide to new technologies - moneyweek.com nuclear power, Yucca Mountain, Synroc, Remix & Return How to solve the problem of nuclear waste 15.06.2007 I would like to start on the subject of nuclear waste. I have included a picture that shows the amount of nuclear waste that one person generates. This block contains material chemically identical to high-level waste from reprocessing. A piece this size would contain the total high-level waste arising from nuclear electricity generation for ONE PERSON throughout a normal LIFETIME. Small isn’t it? You’d never believe that it would fit in the palm of your hand – but it can. So, the amount nuclear waste that needs disposing of is not actually as large as some people think. But it is still dangerous. However, progress has been made on safe disposal methods and I do not believe they are as much of a problem as the anti-nuclear lobby would have us believe. Indeed, the World Nuclear Association has said that it believes it is a lack of understanding of the science involved which is the main cause of public concerns. It argued that the industry needed to better understand the public psyche rather than the onus being on the public to understand the industry more. Nuclear waste disposal: pie in the sky Any discussion about nuclear waste management always appears to raise the prospect of space disposal – why don’t we just blast the stuff into space? I believe this is an entirely impractical suggestion – and not only because of the cost. Imagine a rocket of nuclear waste misfiring over Cape Canaveral. The results of such an explosion are too dreadful to consider. I just can’t see it happening. Initially, high-level radioactive waste is stored in fuel pools so the shorter-lived isotopes decay before further handling. Note that radioactive waste is the only type of toxic waste that gets less toxic with time. So, storage is the key. To store radioactive waste for long periods of time the waste needs stabilising. This is usually done by the process of vitrification, as in the photograph above. Vitrification is a process of converting a material into a glass-like amorphous solid. The solid is free of any crystalline structure and this is the process that takes place at Sellafield, under the watchful eye of Henry the One-Headed Shrimp. The process of vitrification forms a substance that is highly resistant to water. This is patently a good thing. The spent fuel is then stored for a very long period of time. I will come onto the storage issue in a moment, but there’s something I want to talk about first – and that is scientific progress. The pace of scientific progress over the past 100 years has been astonishing. I believe that the pace of scientific development over the next 100 years will be just as astoundingly fast. Science will find better and better ways to dispose of nuclear waste as they continue with their quest. Indeed, there is already a process that has been invented that is even better than vitrification. It is currently being used by the US military, but it is expected to hit the commercial nuclear market soon. It was invented by an Australian in 1978 and it is called Synroc. Synroc is regarded as the single most effective and durable means of immobilising various forms of high-level radioactive wastes for disposal. So far… Synroc is a particular kind of "Synthetic Rock" invented in 1978 by Professor Ted Ringwood of the Australian National University. It is an advanced ceramic comprising geochemically stable natural titanate minerals which have immobilised uranium and thorium for billions of years. Nuclear waste disposal: Nature leads the way These can incorporate into their crystal structures nearly all of the elements present in high-level radioactive waste and so immobilise them. In short, it is a form of synthetic rock that immobilised the radioactive isotopes just like Mother Nature does. After all, radio active elements exist naturally all over the world. We didn’t invent them with the invention of nuclear power. A lot of work has gone into finding places to store these treated products – with the first expected to be ready to take waste by 2010. There are even talks about a global repository which would be built in either the Russian taiga or the Australian outback. Indeed, although there has been some substantial antagonism towards this idea in Australia, there is movement on the issue. Just last months a group of Australian Aborigines agreed to have a nuclear waste dump placed on their outback land in return for millions of dollars in benefits. Under the deal, the dump will be built on land leased to the government by the Ngapa clan at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory, who will get it back in 200 years when it is declared safe. As can well be expected, there was a bit of controversy about the decision with protesters declaring that: "This is the first step to making Australia a global nuclear waste dump. It's Howard's vision for the country." Well, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me. The vast central area of Australia is not much use for anything else, after all. Nuclear waste disposal: America’s repository is under construction You probably haven’t heard much about Yucca Mountain – but you will soon. It is a large ridge in the US State of Nevada - and it the site of the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other radioactive waste. Should everything go correctly, Yucca Mountain will be ready to accept nuclear waste by 2017. Currently work is being carried out to determine whether Yucca Mountain is suitable. The proposed repository zone will cover 1150 acres, be 300 metres below the surface of the mountain and 300 metres above the water table. The waste will be encased in a multilayer stainless steel and nickel alloy package covered by titanium drip shields that function also as rock shields. Yucca Mountains is the moist extensively studied geological area in the world. No other rocks have been examined so closely. So far, the geology looks good and things look on track for Yucca Mountain to finally accept waste in 10 years’ time. However, there is another way of storage that is altogether neater. This is called Remix & Return and I believe it offers the potential to deal with the waste in the most environmentally safe way possible. It involves recreating nature, which cannot be a bad thing. Nuclear waste disposal: Diluting toxicity Remix & Return involved blending high-level waste with lower level waste and mill tailings to the level that is below the original radioactivity of the uranium ore dug up from the ground. This can then be used to “fill in” empty uranium mines. This will mean that no high-level waste will be left to be disposed of and it will provide extended work for miners as the mine is filled up after it has come to the end of its natural life. The radiation generated by the stuff placed back in the ground will be of the same level or lower than the original uranium ore. This sounds like a truly elegant solution to the problem. Remember we are not creating uranium out of thin air. Uranium ore in its natural setting also leaks radon gas and other radioactive substances. So, the question of disposing of nuclear waste is an important one, but I believe it not an insurmountable obstacle. We will find better ways of disposing of the waste over the next 10 or 20 years. I do not think the waste issue is something to be feared. We will find a solution. By Garry White for his â€Garry Writes’ newsletter. To find out more about his monthly newsletter, Outstanding Investments, which expands on his views and makes specific recommendations in the resource, infrastructure and biotech sectors, click here: Outstanding Investments The MoneyWeek news service is operated by Digital Look Ltd © Digital Look Ltd 1998-2005. All rights reserved. Republication of redistribution of Digital Look Ltd content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Digital Look Ltd. Please see http://www.DigitalLook.com/newsfeedterms for our terms and conditions. ***************************************************************** 41 globeandmail.com: Nuclear waste storage plan will be safe, minister says SHAWN MCCARTHY GLOBAL ENERGY REPORTER June 15, 2007 Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn yesterday endorsed a nuclear industry plan for long-term storage of radioactive waste underground, as he touted nuclear power as clean and safe. The minister dismissed concerns raised by some environmentalists about the risks of nuclear energy, including the transportation and storage of waste that will remain radioactive for thousands of years. But he said yesterday's decision is not linked to the industry's desire to have a solution to the waste issue as it prepares for proposed nuclear expansion in Canada and worldwide. Mr. Lunn said it is up to provincial governments to decide whether they want to expand their fleet of reactors. "Purely from an environmental perspective, it emits no greenhouse gases and no pollution so I think obviously it is something that has to be very seriously considered," he said. The minister noted Canada has already generated considerable nuclear waste - two million bundles of spent fuel stored at seven reactor sites, according to the industry - so the government has a responsibility to find a long-term plan for waste storage. "We have this spent nuclear fuel now and we need to take the leadership and move forward and make a decision," he said. NDP Leader Jack Layton slammed the plan, saying there is no solution until the government and industry find a community that is willing to accept the waste. "This is not a good way for Canada to go," Mr. Layton said, predicting the industry will look to isolated northern communities to take waste generated in Southern Ontario. The government's acceptance of the plan will kick off a multiyear process of site selection and consultations to identify a community willing to house a centralized storage site for the waste. The spent fuel is now kept at reactors in four provinces, but mainly in Ontario, which relies on nuclear for 50 per cent of its electricity and is planning further expansion. According to the plan put forward 18 months ago by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, the radioactive waste would not be moved for about 30 years. It would then be transported to a centralized storage area where it would be kept either above the surface or in shallow underground storage. Only after another 30 years would it be moved more than 500 to 1,000 metres underground to a mine-like site, where it could be monitored and retrieved if necessary. Greenpeace energy campaigner Shawn-Patrick Stensil said yesterday's announcement appeared designed to provide the nuclear industry with an answer to critics who challenge its waste management plans. "They'll suggest the nuclear waste issue is solved, but it isn't," Mr. Stencil said. "We're going to have a long visit to the dentist over this." Ken Nash, president of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, insisted both the temporary storage on site, and the permanent underground sequestration are safe. He rejected warnings that the temporary sites are vulnerable to terrorist attacks. "[The temporary storage containers] are safe; they are secure, they are very robust structures." © Copyright 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved. globeandmail.com and The Globe and Mail are divisions of CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc., 444 Front St. W., Toronto, ON  Canada M5V 2S9 Phillip Crawley, Publisher ***************************************************************** 42 NEWS.com.au: Uranium enrichment 'a decade away' June 15, 2007 02:31pm Article from: AAP IT is unlikely a uranium enrichment facility will be commissioned in Australia for at least a decade, the head of an inquiry into the nuclear industry says. Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane today admitted the Federal Government had started initial discussions on building such a plant. A company called Nuclear Fuel Australia is believed to be studying the feasibility of a $2.5 billion plant which could be operational by 2015. Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) chief Ziggy Switkowski last year headed a government inquiry into uranium mining, enrichment and nuclear power. Today he said global demand for enrichment was being met and it would be several years before an Australian enrichment facility could be built. "It's certainly feasible and our history is such that we've obviously had the technology (and) know-how in the past," Dr Switkowski said on ABC TV. "But at the moment enrichment is not legally permitted in Australia, so the law would have to be changed and then I suspect we're looking at a period of up to 10 years before an enrichment plant could be commissioned in Australia. "And it would be at a time where there is, at the moment, globally sufficient enrichment capacity to meet the forseeable needs of the nuclear industry." Dr Switkowski said a higher priority should be easing restrictions on uranium mining and building domestic nuclear reactors. "I think the higher priorities are to lift the limitations on uranium mining and export, which I think we now have bipartisan support around, and then to have a debate and then move to the next step of deploying nuclear reactors around the country. "Were that to be in place, which would take about 10, 15, or 20 years, then we're looking at other parts of the nuclear fuel cycle and enrichment is a legitimate consideration for the country." Eighty per cent of the world's uranium capacity was centred in the United States, Russia and France. Other countries where enrichment was carried out included China, Japan, India and Pakistan, Dr Switkowski said. "Clearly, moving into enrichment, or moving to deal with nuclear material which can be misused, requires a very, very kind of careful protocols in place, regimes to monitor and follow for industry," he said. "And as we found in our review last year, it's going to take some years before Australia will be ready to consider an environment proposal." Copyright 2007 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT +10). ***************************************************************** 43 USEC News Release: Loan Program Statement for the Record, John K. Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, USEC Inc., Department of Energy’s Public Meeting On the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Implementing the Energy Loan Guarantee Program at the Department of Energy’s Public Meeting On the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Implementing the Energy Loan Guarantee Program Mr. Secretary, members of the panel, thank you for the opportunity to comment on the recent notice of proposed rules for DOE’s loan guarantee program. My name is John Welch. I am president and chief executive officer of USEC Inc., the sole domestic producer of enriched uranium that supplies fuel to both U.S. and foreign nuclear power plants. USEC supports the implementation of the loan guarantee program as envisioned in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. With regard to nuclear power, in many areas we are a generation behind the rest of the world in investing in new nuclear technologies. But prompt implementation of the Act, and in particular the guarantee program, will help support critical investments that will enable us to recover lost ground and strengthen our nation’s energy security. Deploying these first-of-a-kind projects envisioned by the Act will be difficult without government support. Although capital markets continue to evolve, investors typically look to benchmark potential investments against comparable technologies, projects and competitors. This is not always consistent with promoting investment in new technologies, especially for projects that may require significant amounts of capital with a long time horizon. The loan guarantee program needs to maintain its focus squarely on the notion of supporting commercialization of technologies not mature enough to access the capital markets due to their innovative nature. Government support for the deployment of these critical technologies will strengthen our nation’s energy independence. I commend the U.S. government’s recognition that these innovations need support, and I applaud you for seeking input from the energy industry, financial institutions and other agencies implementing similar programs. But we can’t drag our feet – we must move forward. The proposed rules received significant response from many stakeholders recommending ways that the program could better fulfill its intent. In particular, concerns have been expressed regarding constraints on the amount of guaranteed debt, seniority of debt traunches, and “stripping” of debt into components more suitable for the capital markets. I won’t spend time rehashing these. USEC supports the statements made by the Nuclear Energy Institute, those put forth by the financial community on these matters, and those made in the testimony of Exelon’s Christopher Crane before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality in April regarding the loan guarantee program. I would, though, like to make a few salient points. The proposed rules restrict the program’s ability to meet its objectives. The principal objective of the program is, and I quote, “to encourage commercial use in the United States of new or significantly improved energy-related technologies” with the belief that “accelerated commercial use of energy-related technologies will help sustain economic growth, yield environmental benefits and produce a more stable and secure energy supply and economy for the United States.” To accelerate commercial use of energy-related technology in a manner that promotes the government’s broader policy objectives, the government’s intent is to accept technology risk in an amount or at a pace that exceeds the appetite of the private sector. It should not accept that risk blindly. Rather the Department can protect the government’s interests through a program that provides a framework for rigorous project evaluation and the flexibility to structure a guarantee based on a project’s risk profile. Project evaluation happens in the government and private sector every day. Many benchmarks are already being used in commercial financial institutions, rating agencies and other government loan programs. The Department of Energy should examine best practices and establish a process utilizing the best resources available, outside the Department if appropriate. The U.S. government already operates many successful guarantee programs. Don’t reinvent the wheel. In addition to the project sponsor’s assessment of a project’s risks, the loan program currently contemplates due diligence or credit reviews from additional debt investors and rating agencies. These cannot replace the fact that the Department must complete its own due diligence review of each application, even if other external reviews occur. This may require hiring outsiders with financial or industrial expertise the Department does not already possess. One assumes that Congress intended this staff and resource buildup when it appropriated money in this year’s federal budget creating an office to manage the program. In some cases, DOE’s staff experts will provide the best assessment of a project’s technical risk. But since the Department must be responsible for completing the government’s official assessment of each applicant, the use of outside expertise may be needed. Project sponsors will submit extensive information in their application that will provide an excellent foundation from which the Department can work with a project sponsor to structure a guarantee. By supplementing business plans and information from the project sponsor with reports from independent consultants, the Department can form a view of the project’s credit risk and work with a project sponsor to structure a guarantee that achieves the government’s and the sponsor’s objectives while protecting the public interest. Ultimately, the loan subsidy cost compensates the government for the risk it bears. The subsidy cost should be determined by using a transparent methodology that is commercially reasonable and consistent with other federal programs. It should also be included as part of the total project cost to allow companies to finance it over the term of the guarantee. We also suggest adding a few criteria for selecting technologies. * Judge a project on its alignment with U.S. government objectives outside the scope of the loan guarantee program. * Consider the project’s existing regulatory approvals. * Consider how many direct and indirect U.S. manufacturing and operations jobs the project will create. * Consider how much energy the technology will save versus the one it replaces. * Give preferred consideration to those projects meeting multiple definitions of eligibility. * Evaluate and take into account the limits that U.S. government classification of a technology puts on the ability of investors to fully understand the technology. * And pay particular attention to DOE’s familiarity with the candidate technology. The more familiarity DOE has, the quicker you can proceed with your review and loan guarantee offer, speeding up commercialization. I would like to spend a few minutes discussing a proposal for testing the program – a proposal I believe will benefit everyone involved. It’s no secret that USEC supports the resurgence of nuclear power. We firmly believe the renewal of the U.S. nuclear industry must begin with the deployment of our American Centrifuge uranium enrichment plant. Every cart needs a horse to pull it. As the leading generator of emissions free electricity, U.S. nuclear plants need a reliable, domestic supply of enriched uranium now and in the future. And utility executives need that assurance to justify the large investment required for new reactors. We believe American Centrifuge to be the perfect candidate for the loan guarantee program and I want to offer, right now, to be a pilot loan guarantee. Deployment of this U.S. enrichment technology will meet multiple policy objectives of the Department and the U.S. government, in addition to those addressed in the program criteria. * It will help provide a reliable domestic source of fuel for the 104 operating U.S. reactors and for new reactors being planned. * It will allow for nuclear fuel assurances as envisioned under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). * And it fulfills the 2002 Agreement between USEC and DOE that USEC deploy U.S. enrichment technology to replace the gaseous diffusion plant that America has relied on for the last half century. The American Centrifuge Plant and its advanced centrifuge technology represent an opportunity to achieve several goals for the loan guarantee program in one project. Deployment of the American Centrifuge Plant will represent the commercial use of a significantly improved energy-related technology. Enriched uranium from the plant will help fuel at least 30 years of clean electricity generation by the nation’s nuclear power plants. At the same time, it eliminates electricity demand from our current gaseous diffusion operations equivalent to a 1000 MW power plant. That is one less new coal-fired plant needed to meet rising demand. With annual emission reductions of 9.9 million tons of CO2, thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide, and the retirement of a source of Freon emissions, you have a complete package – an innovative technology with benefits in multiple categories. Earlier this year, DOE completed its own thorough risk-assessment of the technology and our deployment plan. Since DOE developed the original design from which we developed the American Centrifuge machine, the Department has an intimate familiarity with the technology. The project is at a mature stage of development and will be deployed in phases. We have our construction and operating license from the NRC and have commenced construction. As I speak, we are installing machines to demonstrate machine performance in a cascade configuration. We are expecting the lead cascade to be operational in mid-2007. Due to the modular deployment, the American Centrifuge will begin operating and generating cash flow before we complete the construction of the entire plant. We would like to see the loan guarantee program ready in 2008 to support the debt required to fund the remainder of plant construction. By the end of 2007, USEC will have contributed more than $700 million of equity toward the $2.3 billion project. Looking ahead a few years, using USEC as a pilot guarantee now will assist utilities who approach DOE for guarantees for nuclear reactors to be built early in the next decade. They will benefit both from our experience piloting the guarantee program and from the assurance of a domestic source of fuel for their new reactors. And there are further benefits – The project will be built and operated in the United States and create hundreds of skilled, high-paying U.S. manufacturing and construction jobs. With long-term domestic production capacity based on U.S. technology, the U.S. government can still have a seat at the international nonproliferation table. American Centrifuge could provide access to a source of enriched uranium to offer countries forgoing their own enrichment technologies. Given its modular design, the plant has further expansion potential. Assisting this first phase with a guarantee will seed any future expansion. With a long-term and reliable U.S. fuel source, the nation’s nuclear utilities will not become solely dependent upon Russia and European governments for supplying their enriched uranium fuel. They will have a diversity of supply and competitive sources. Finally, the American Centrifuge will yield a return on taxpayer investments in the original DOE centrifuge technology. The sale of product generated by its operations will potentially reap millions of dollars a year in royalties paid to the U.S. government, in addition to the revenue generated for USEC to repay the guaranteed debt. I ask for DOE’s invitation to apply for a loan guarantee based on our pre-application submitted in December 2006, and I offer USEC’s project as a pilot guarantee in what should be a successful program to ensure U.S. energy security and independence. We all need a program that works. Please consider the feedback being given. It reflects a broad consensus of members from the financial community and the commercial nuclear sector. Thank you. Copyright © 2007 USEC Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 44 Reid: Reid Denounces Doe For Using State Water To Drill At Yucca Mountain : 06/14/2007 Washington, DC — U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada today released the following statement on the news that the Department of Energy stole water from the state to drill rigs at Yucca Mountain. “News that the Energy Department has been stealing water from our state is a slap in the face to the people of Nevada who overwhelmingly oppose building a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Using state water resources to lubricate even one drill bit in the pursuit of turning our state into the nation’s nuclear dumping ground is one too many. We cannot allow the federal government to use Nevada’s water supply to sell us down the river when it comes to nuclear waste. I will continue to leverage my leadership position in the Senate to prevent nuclear waste from being shipped to Yucca Mountain.” Reno Bruce R. Thompson Courthouse & Federal Bldg 400 S. Virginia St, Suite 902 Reno, NV 89501 Phone: 775-686-5750 Fax: 775-686-5757 Las Vegas Lloyd D. George Building 333 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Suite 8016 Las Vegas, NV 89101 Phone: 702-388-5020 Fax: 702-388-5030 Carson City 600 East William St, #302 Carson City, NV 89701 Phone: 775-882-REID (7343) Fax: 775-883-1980 Washington, DC 528 Hart Senate Office Bldg Washington, DC 20510 Phone: 202-224-3542 Fax: 202-224-7327 Toll Free for Nevadans: 1-866-SEN-REID (736-7343) ***************************************************************** 45 AU ABC: No sites mooted in uranium enrichment report, says author. 15/06/2007. ABC News Online The author of a submission for uranium enrichment in Australia, Dr Clarence Hardy, says it mentions no specific sites. (7.30 Report) No sites mooted in uranium enrichment report, says author One of the authors of a submission for a uranium enrichment plant in Australia says there is no firm plan on possible locations. One of the directors of Nuclear Fuel Australia (NFA), Dr Clarence Hardy, is rejecting suggestions today that Port Pirie in South Australia or Caboolture in Queensland have been earmarked as sites. Dr Hardy says the development proposal has simply been put to the Federal Government by the company to outline the benefits of having a uranium enrichment plant in Australia. He says the idea of building a plant north of Adelaide or just north of Brisbane was outlined in the 1980s. Dr Hardy says that no specific locations have been suggested in the latest submission and it would be wrong to draw conclusions based on the previous work. "Nothing has been done for 25 years and our new company has decided to resurrect this idea of an enrichment plant," he said. "But we've certainly not suggested any possible sites anywhere in Australia, that's premature." Dr Hardy says the company has had no discussions with the Government and will have to wait and see if the idea wins support. He says there has been no progress beyond a feasibility study which is now being done. Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane says he has not been approached but will not rule out discussing such a proposal. ***************************************************************** 46 AU ABC: Uranium enrichment not top priority, says Switkowski. 15/06/2007. ABC News Online Dr Switkowski says there is already enough enrichment capacity in the world. (File photo) (ABC) The head of Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Ziggy Switkowski, says uranium enrichment is feasible in Australia but that nuclear power should be a higher priority. Dr Switkowski also led the Prime Minister's taskforce inquiry into uranium and nuclear industries and he says if enrichment were legalised in Australia, it could be a decade before any plant is up and running. The private company, Nuclear Fuel Australia, is planning to present a uranium enrichment feasibility plan to the Government. Dr Switkowski says there is already enough enrichment capacity in the world to meet foreseeable needs. "I think the higher priorities are indeed to lift the limitations on uranium mining and export which I think we now have bi-partisan support around, and then to have a debate and move to the next step of deploying nuclear reactors around the country," he said. ***************************************************************** 47 AU ABC: SA Premier in dark on uranium enrichment submission. 15/06/2007. ABC News Online Premier Mike Rann wants to know of any uranium enrichment plan that would affect SA. (ABC TV) Premier Mike Rann says South Australians have a right to know if any nuclear enrichment plant is considered for the state. The private company Nuclear Fuel Australia says it is putting a submission to the Federal Government on the benefits of a uranium enrichment industry. But a director of the company Dr Clarence Hardy is rejecting suggestions that sites near Port Pirie in SA or Caboolture in Queensland have been earmarked in the submission. Dr Hardy says no locations are mentioned. Mr Rann says he should have been involved in talks on any plan for a uranium enrichment industry affecting SA. "No-one had come to see me suggesting building a uranium enrichment plant at Port Pirie or anywhere else," he said. "If there are discussions going on between the Federal Government and a company in regard to building an enrichment plant or a nuclear power plant in SA then the people of SA and the Government of SA have a right to know." ***************************************************************** 48 AU ABC: Alliance reports high-grade uranium in SA mine PM - Friday, 15 June , 2007 18:40:00 Reporter: Neal Woolrich MARK COLVIN: Finally, to business and finance with Neal Woolrich. NEAL WOOLRICH: The Australian share market ended the week on a positive note, rising half a per cent. The ASX 200 was up by 32 points to 6,294. But the industry standout was Alliance Resources, jumping 16 per cent, to close on $2.06. Alliance is reporting high-grade uranium at the Four Mile East mine in South Australia. Babcock and Brown has bought America's leading supplier of laundry equipment. Babcock will pay $850-million for Coinmach at a 15 per cent premium to the company's closing price. Babcock and Brown's shares were up 3.5 per cent to $33.34. Its rival, Macquarie Bank, put on 70 cents to $89.05. The wheat exporter AWB climbed 4 per cent to $3.92. Grain farmers are enjoying the rare double of high prices and the prospect of a bumper crop thanks to recent rains in parts of Australia. Retailers were mixed. Woolworths rose by almost 2 per cent, but JB Hi-Fi gave up some of its recent gains, falling by 32 cents. Telstra added four cents, but Qantas fell by the same amount, to close on $5.79. Media stocks were patchy. News Corp was more than 1 per cent higher, but Southern Cross Broadcasting tumbled 2 per cent. On commodity markets, gold is worth $US651 an ounce. Oil is at $US67.62 a barrel. And the Australian dollar is a fraction weaker, it's now buying 83.7 US cents. MARK COLVIN: Neal Woolrich. ***************************************************************** 49 WSTM.com: WNY nuclear clean-up site puts items up for bidding Associated Press - June 15, 2007 8:25 AM ET ASHFORD, N.Y. (AP) - The federal government is putting equipment from a nuclear waste clean-up site in western New York up for auction. But the feds say bidders don't have to worry about taking home something that glows. Officials at the West Valley Demonstration Project say everything that's up for sale has been tested for radiation and is safe. The demonstration project is located in the northern Cattaraugus County town of Ashford, 40 miles south of Buffalo. It was started in 1980 to clean up high-level nuclear waste products from a nuclear waste processing plant that shut down in the 1970s. With operations at the facility winding down, officials are selling off excess equipment. Some of the items being auctioned off tomorrow include hardware, tools, motors, office furniture, cots and sleeping bags. All content © Copyright 2000 - 2007 WorldNow and WSTM LLC, a ***************************************************************** 50 Memphis Commercial Appeal: Radioactive barge cleanup OK'd By Tom Charlier Contact June 15, 2007 Two years after it rejected a proposed radioactive-waste incinerator that had sparked a citywide uproar, the Land Use Control Board Thursday approved plans by another Presidents Island firm to process tanks containing small amounts of radiation. The board without dissent approved a temporary special-use permit allowing Energy Solutions to conduct a one-time operation in which a Navy barge laden with tanks will be dismantled and processed under a Department of Defense contract. The permit now goes to City Council for final approval. The work is planned for a 22-acre tract leased from Barnhart Crane at the ends of Channel Avenue and Jetty Street at the southwestern corner of Presidents Island. The permit will be good for eight months. During that time, Energy Solutions will lift the barge from the water and transport it 800 feet to a work pad specially constructed for the vessel's decommissioning and dismantling. Homer Branan, an attorney for the company, citing Defense Department requirements, declined to provide details about the vessel. But he said the tanks might contain "a little residual radiation." The tanks will be placed on special gondola rail cars and shipped to Utah for disposal in a landfill, Branan said. The operation won't be the first on Presidents Island involving radioactive material. Energy Solutions recently purchased Duratek, a nearby firm that decontaminated equipment and other material exposed to radiation. The board's action came nearly two years after both it and the Memphis City Council rejected plans by a Presidents Island firm known as RACE to install an incinerator to dispose of a low-level radioactive waste from laboratories, hospitals and other facilities. Branan told the board Thursday that the company had contacted a variety of interested parties but had not heard of any opposition. Energy Solutions has received a license for the project from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. Jim Holt, assistant manager of the pollution-control section of the Health Department, said the department has no objections to the project so long as the firm receives all necessary permits from other agencies. The Office of Planning and Development staff report recommended approval with conditions. One of the conditions requires that the site be returned to "pre-project conditions" once the barge is decommissioned. Other board decisions The Land Use Control Board Thursday also approved a special-use permit for a hotel proposed on the south side of Jefferson, near Third, by Vibrant Hotels Inc. Amid objections by officials from nearby St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and developers of the Uptown project, the board rejected plans for a 160-foot-tall cell tower on Danny Thomas near North Parkway. The OPD staff, citing incompatibility with neighboring developments, had recommended rejection. -- Tom Charlier: 529-2572 ***************************************************************** 51 CanWest: Tories back long-term burial of nuclear industry waste edmontonjournal.com Decision opens door to expansion of atomic energy industry Mike De Souza, CanWest News Service Published: Friday, June 15, 2007 OTTAWA - The Harper government is endorsing a new long-term plan from the nuclear industry to bury its waste underground, opening the door for the sector to expand, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said Thursday. "Really, what this will allow is a permanent storage and a deep geological depository," Lunn told reporters. "This is an important decision for the government of Canada. As you know, the nuclear industry is very, very important." In coming to a decision, Lunn was following through on recommendations drawn from a report prepared by the Nuclear Waste Management Association. He said the plan could also open the door to reusing spent nuclear fuel, but only after consultations that he acknowledged could take years to complete. "This is just the beginning of a long process but they (the industry) will be able to begin that process today," he said. "It will allow the fuel to be retrieved as technology moves forward and, more importantly, allow it to be monitored continuously as it's going through the storage process." Lunn noted that the nuclear industry already supplies 15 per cent of Canada's electricity and half the world's nuclear medicine isotopes. Environmentalists, however, said the government should have been more cautious before announcing the plan. The waste management association "is is pretty much an industry-controlled organization, so basically the polluters are also deciding what to do with the pollution," said Emilie Moorhouse, spokesperson for the Sierra Club of Canada. "Its interests are not public health. Its interests are the promotion of this industry." The plan, Moorhouse claimed, would spell environmental disaster since it could also encourage expansion in the industry. "Frankly, (the government is) really going down the wrong path on this one," she said. "They've already made a big mistake with their green plan -- with the regulatory framework (to fight climate change and air pollution), which is inadequate. And to plan for the expansion or the development of nuclear power is a huge mistake." The organization, chaired by Gary Kugler, a former senior official with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., was set up in 2002 to develop a "management approach for the long-term care of Canada's used nuclear fuel that is socially acceptable, technically sound, environmentally responsible and economically feasible." Although Lunn supports nuclear energy as a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, he said his decision wasn't linked to future development. Rather, it was based on past decades of industry activity and expertise. The waste management organization has been examining technical data over a 30-year period, Lunn said, adding he studied their report carefully before accepting their recommendations. Lunn also said the federal government would contribute a share of costs to pay for the management of nuclear waste for which it was responsible, but the industry would be expected to invest billions of dollars to complete the project. "This is not a cost that will be borne by taxpayers," he said. "In fact, the industry right now has to pay into a fund and they've amassed over a billion dollars in this fund. They continue to pay into that fund so this is a cost that will be borne by the industry itself." © The Edmonton Journal 2007 ***************************************************************** 52 WNN: Thorp products may be sent in advance of recycling 15 June 2007 Uranium, plutonium and wastes that would result from used nuclear fuel recycling at Thorp could be sent in advance to international customers. Thorp amid the Sellafield and Windscale sites (Image: BNG) The UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has begun a six-week public consultation on a proposal by plant owners the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which would ease customers' tension over unfulfilled recycling contracts. Thorp (Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant) is a facility at Sellafield which separates reusable uranium and plutonium in used nuclear fuel from wastes. Thorp processes used fuel from light water reactors in Europe and Japan before all materials are returned to their owners. It also handles used fuel from Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors in Britain. In 2005 it was discovered that a small pipe had fractured within Thorp in a highly radioactive cell. Because it would have been very difficult to repair the pipe, engineers devised a new operating process which was subsequently approved by regulators the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate in January this year. World Nuclear News understands that operators British Nuclear Group Sellafield are preparing Thorp for restart, but experiencing some problems concerning evaporators unrelated to the pipe break. The two-year outage has led to a backlog of work, which the NDA now hopes to relieve somewhat. Because nuclear materials are fungible - that is, like materials can be exchanged - the NDA has proposed to send equivalent quantities of plutonium, uranium and vitrified waste from UK stockpiles while Thorp is not in operation. An NDA statement said it would support such an exchange when there is "specific justification that requires it and where it is satisfied that doing so would be of economic benefit to the UK." DTI approval is necessary because the government's 2002 white paper, Managing the Nuclear Legacy, requires approval from the secretary of state for any changes to existing contracts at Thorp. The NDA said: "The proposal would guarantee the availability of nuclear materials to overseas customers on a timescale that meets their needs and which best facilitiates the timely return of waste, plutonium and uranium." The DTI consultation on the proposal runs until 26 July. Department of Trade and Industry Nuclear Decommissioning Authority WNN: Thorp report calls for sustained excellence WNN: Thorp approved for restart ***************************************************************** 53 AIP: President Would Veto House Version of FY 2008 DOE Funding Bill American Institute of Physics FYI Number 62: June 14, 2007 The language in yesterday's Statement of Administration Policy issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regarding H.R. 2641, the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill could not be clearer: "if H.R. 2641 were presented to the President, he would veto the bill." Congress and the Bush Administration are headed toward a fiscal train wreck because of a fundamental disagreement about the level of discretionary spending in the upcoming fiscal year. While there was a fair amount of grumbling and some creative bookkeeping in previous years, the Republican leadership was able to keep total spending within the parameter set by President Bush. As fully expected, the new House and Senate Democratic leaders disagree with the Administration about the level of FY 2008 discretionary spending. (This spending is in contrast to mandatory spending for entitlement programs and interest on the national debt.) Earlier this year, OMB statements indicated that appropriations bills would be vetoed if total discretionary spending exceeded the Administration's limit. The statements were somewhat hazy about timing, e.g., would only the bill which exceeded the overall spending limit be vetoed? Since the congressional leadership intends to send the Defense bill to the president as the last of the twelve appropriations bills, it would have presented a considerable dilemma to the White House. OMB removed any uncertainty by announcing this week that the president would veto the first three bills that the House Appropriations Committee has sent to the House floor in their current form (Homeland Security; Energy and Water; and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs). In almost identical language in three Statement[s] of Administration Policy issued this week, OMB raised objections about overall spending and earmarking. The following is the language regarding the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill: "The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 2641 because, in combination with the other FY 2008 appropriations bills, it includes an irresponsible and excessive level of spending and includes other objectionable provisions. "The President has proposed a responsible plan for a balanced budget by 2012 through spending restraint and without raising taxes. To achieve this important goal, the Administration supports a responsible discretionary spending total of not more than $933 billion in FY 2008, which is a $60 billion increase over the FY 2007 enacted level. The Democratic Budget Resolution and subsequent spending allocations adopted by the House Appropriations Committee exceed the President’s discretionary spending topline by $22 billion, causing a 9 percent increase in FY 2008 discretionary spending and a nearly 10 percent increase in the projected deficit for FY 2008. In addition, the Administration opposes the House Appropriations Committee’s plan to shift $3.5 billion from the Defense appropriations bill to non-defense spending, which is inconsistent with the Democrats’ Budget Resolution and risks diminishing America’s war fighting capacity. In combination with other spending bills, H.R. 2641 would lead to spending and tax increases that put economic growth and a balanced budget at risk. "H.R. 2641 exceeds the President’s requests for programs funded in this bill by $1.1 billion, part of the $22 billion increase above the President’s request for FY 2008 appropriations. The Administration asked that Congress demonstrate a path to live within the President’s topline and cover the excess spending in this bill through reductions elsewhere. Because Congress has failed to demonstrate such a path, if H.R. 2641 were presented to the President, he would veto the bill." The Statement of Administration Policy on the Energy and Water Development bill offered the Administration's additional views on specific provisions of the legislation. Selections follow: "AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS INITIATIVE: The Administration commends the Committee’s implementation of the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative with its strong support for the Office of Science." "ADVANCED ENERGY INITIATIVE: The Administration appreciates the broad support for the President’s Advanced Energy Initiative, but the unrequested funding provided in the bill, particularly the significant increases provided for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, are not necessary to achieve performance goals." "YUCCA MOUNTAIN: The Administration appreciates the Committee’s support for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository program and its recognition of the enormous costs of delay in fulfilling the Government’s responsibility for disposing of the Nation’s nuclear waste." SEQUESTRATION (Fossil Energy Research and Development): "The Administration agrees with the bill’s focusing of efforts within Fossil Energy Research and Development on technology for carbon capture and sequestration, but the funding levels are excessive. In particular, savings could be realized by terminating the Innovations for Existing Plants program -- rather than creating a new mission for this program -- and the oil and gas technology programs, as well as by moderating the proposed increases in Sequestration and Advanced Research." "NUCLEAR ENERGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT: The Administration is disappointed with the reduction to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a key part of the Administration’s strategy to promote the use of nuclear energy domestically and internationally, and for the funding reduction for Nuclear Power 2010, a program that will assist companies with the nuclear licensing process. GNEP can extend the useful life of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository by reducing the waste placed in the repository. GNEP is also gaining growing support from other nuclear supplier countries, which a cut in funding would put at risk. The Administration urges the House to restore funding for these critical programs." "NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (NNSA): The Administration appreciates the Committee’s support for the important work of NNSA. Of particular note is the Committee’s support for the vital work of the Administration’s priority non-proliferation programs. "The Administration notes the Committee’s continued interest in the effort to eliminate 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium through the creation of mixed oxide fuel. However, the reduction of $284 million would result in the termination of construction and procurement activities for the MOX facility and in lay-offs of approximately 500 contractor employees. In addition, the Administration disagrees with the Committee’s decision to change the structure of the fissile materials disposition program, which involves interdependent facilities that should be managed in one program. "The Administration understands the need to work with the Committee on a plan for transforming the nuclear weapons stockpile and complex that is aimed at assuring bipartisan support. However, the Administration strongly opposes the Committee’s decision to eliminate funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). Congress has consistently supported this vital effort to modernize the nuclear weapons stockpile. Failure to continue the program will contribute to increasing concern about weapon performance/reliability and may in turn require the maintenance of a larger size stockpile than was contemplated with RRWs. "The Administration strongly opposes the reduction for Weapons Activities of approximately $600 million from the President’s request. At the lower funding level, activities and programs critical to transform the nuclear weapons complex and allow it to become more cost-effective and responsive to rapidly changing requirements will be severely curtailed." The House may consider H.R. 2641 as early as today or tomorrow. While passage is expected in the House, the final bill's parameters will not be settled until a way can be found to bridge the $22 billion gap between the White House and the Democratic congressional leadership on total spending for FY 2008. Richard M. Jones Media and Government Relations Division American Institute of Physics fyi@aip.org 301-209-3095 Back to FYI Home ***************************************************************** 54 DOE: DOE and Disney Join Forces to Promote Energy Savings June 14, 2007 WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman today announced that DOE and The Walt Disney Company are cooperating in a nationwide campaign to promote energy efficiency through a TV spot based on the upcoming film Disney*Pixar film “Ratatouille.” “Combining the energy expertise of the Department of Energy with the promotional ingenuity of Disney is a unique way to raise energy awareness,” Secretary Bodman said. “I hope this will be the first project in a continuing effort to leverage the resources of the entertainment industry and government to encourage smart energy choices.” Featuring the Ratatouille characters Remy, Emile and Skinner, the 30-second animated spot encourages viewers to switch from incandescent light bulbs to EnergyStar® compact fluorescent lighting (CFL) and points them to the energy.gov website for more tips on saving energy or using renewable energy technologies in the home. Beginning June 15, the spot will air on cable networks nationwide, with a particular emphasis in northern portions of Virginia as well as in northern and southern California, and will continue through the summer. While the spot points out that energy can be used in a variety of ways, it emphasizes that it can be used more efficiently by employing technologies such as CFLs. DOE leads federal efforts to research, develop and deploy alternative and renewable technologies that will help consumers save energy and money, furthering President Bush’s Advanced Energy Initiative, which seeks to change the way we power our homes, offices and transportation sector. To view the spot, and for tips on saving energy visit the Department of Energy's homepage. 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 ***************************************************************** 55 DOE: DOE Cites CH2M-Washington Group Idaho for Price-Anderson Violations June 14, 2007 WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today notified CH2M-Washington Group Idaho (CWI) that it will fine the company $55,000 for violations of the Department's nuclear safety requirements. CWI is the prime contractor responsible for managing the Idaho Cleanup Project at the Idaho National Laboratory site. The Preliminary Notice of Violation (PNOV) cites violations associated with radiation safety and quality improvement deficiencies identified during a DOE Idaho Operations Office May 2006 assessment of radioactive waste processing activities at the Accelerated Retrieval Project (ARP). The PNOV cites the following violations: insufficient radiation safety practices for control of contaminated survey instruments, recordkeeping, calibration, repair of airborne radiation monitoring equipment, and changes to procedures controlling surveys of personnel exiting contamination areas; and the failure to identify these and other issues in contractor management assessments of ARP work activities. The DOE Idaho assessment was conducted in response to a CWI employee’s claim that radiation safety practices were deficient at the ARP. The proposed civil penalty of $55,000 is based on the significance of the violations yet reflects a 50 percent mitigation granted by the Department for corrective actions taken by CWI to prevent recurrence of the identified deficiencies. CWI is required to respond to the Preliminary Notice of Violation within 30 days and document any additional specific actions taken since DOE's investigation concluded. The Price-Anderson Amendments Act of 1988 authorizes the Energy Department to undertake regulatory actions against contractors for violations of its nuclear safety requirements. The Price-Anderson Enforcement program in the Department’s Office of Health, Safety, and Security encourages DOE contractors to identify and correct nuclear safety deficiencies at an early stage, before they contribute to or result in more serious events. Read additional details on this and other enforcement actions at the Office of Enforcement's homepage. Media contact(s): Megan Barnett, (202) 586-4940 U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 ***************************************************************** 56 Santa Fe New Mexican: LANL security problem catches boosters unaware By ANDY LENDERMAN | June 14, 2007 State lawmakers learn about latest claims in magazine Board members of Los Alamos National Security LLC are involved in another serious lab security problem, a pair of congressmen reported Thursday. The mid-January incident “involved the loss of control of top-secret restricted data by several officials, including board members,” U.S. Reps. John Dingell and Bart Stupak, both Michigan Democrats, wrote to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on Thursday. “Apparently, open e-mail networks were used by several LANS officials to share classified information relating to the characteristics of nuclear material in nuclear weapons,” Dingell and Stupak wrote. The news comes at a sensitive time for the lab, which could face budget cuts as the new Congress changes national energy priorities. And at least three members of New Mexico’s Congressional delegation say they were in the dark about the matter until Thursday. The lab would neither confirm nor deny the congressmen’s claims. “For reasons of national security, and consistent with federal law and the laboratory’s own long-standing policy, Los Alamos National Security LLC will not discuss the details of any purported security violation or vulnerability, regardless of whether it exists,” spokesman Jeff Berger said Thursday. Spokesman Bryan Wilkes of the National Nuclear Security Administration also would neither confirm or deny the claims, but issued this warning: “The secretary of energy and the administrator of NNSA have made it very clear: There will be no compromises or shortcuts on security.” Dingell chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which also has a Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. He said an official with the University of California notified the NNSA of an “Impact Measurement Index 1” security incident on Jan. 19. “An IMI-1 reportable incident is one, which ‘poses the most serious threats to national security interests and/or critical (Department of Energy) assets or creates serious security situations,’ ” Dingell and Stupak wrote. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory “took immediate steps to identify, recover, and sanitize the computer laptops and hardware involved in the incident,” the congressmen wrote. Dingell and Stupak also want to know why lab and federal administrators didn’t share the news with them even though they were testifying before Dingell’s subcommittee in January and April about a separate security matter involving a contract worker who took classified information home. “As noted earlier, committee staff discovered this incident from sources outside NNSA and DOE,” the congressmen wrote. They asked Bodman for a copy of the investigation, completed May 18; an explanation for why the subcommittee wasn’t notified; and a summary of all security incidents at the lab since June 1, 2006, when the new company took over management there, among other requests. The news first broke midday Thursday in Time magazine. “If this report is accurate, I am deeply disturbed that it happened even after extensive security measures were to have been put in place at the laboratory, and that I would have to learn about it from a news account,” U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in a statement. U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said the agency, the company and lab Director Michael Anastasio “have assured us that they have been implementing effective measures to put a stop to this nonsense. ... Enough is enough, and for the sake of the lab’s future, those who are responsible must be held accountable to put an end to this broken record of breaches.” U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., was also reportedly unaware of the matter until Thursday. “I am again troubled and disappointed by reports of security problems at Los Alamos National Laboratory,” he said in a statement. “... However, I do not believe this should be used as another excuse to punish the entire laboratory.” Last year, Domenici encouraged the new managers to be “as open and forthright as possible about what is happening at LANL, even if the news is problematic.” Contact Andy Lenderman at 995-3827 or alenderman@sfnewmexican.com. Copyright 2007 The New Mexican, Inc. ***************************************************************** 57 Tri-City Herald: A piece of nuclear history A look inside Hanford (w/video) Published Friday, June 15th, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer Melvin and Laverne Hudson traveled from their home in Arlington, Texas, to get a look inside the security gates at the Hanford nuclear reservation Thursday. It was their third stop on a planned round of visits to Manhattan Project sites across the nation this year. And why not? It's not much different than touring Civil War battle sites, said Michele Gerber, of Fluor Hanford, a historian who led one of six Hanford public tours this week. Hanford played central roles in World War II and the Cold War. Its B Reactor was the nation's first production-scale nuclear reactor, racing to produce plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, to help end World War II. Hanford continued to produce the majority of the nation's plutonium in the nuclear weapons buildup of the Cold War. But getting onto Civil War battle sites is far easier than getting into Hanford. "It's like winning the lottery," said Russ Staska of Benton City, who had a seat on the Hanford tour bus. When Internet registration opened for the June Hanford tour, seats filled within one minute. Fluor Hanford figures that just one in 11 people who tried to register succeeded. The tour drew World War II buffs like Melvin Hudson, self-described nuclear nerds, retired Hanford workers who wanted to see how the site had changed and Tri-City residents curious about what was in their back yard. "I've driven around it 100 times, but never got to be in the site itself," said Joel Smeby, of Kennewick, who got off a night shift as a railroad manager just in time to take the tour. For Charles Conway of Kennewick it was a chance to reminisce about life at the Hanford construction camp in 1943 as the bus drove past fields of cheat grass and sagebrush where the third-largest city in the state once stood. Just six months after the Army took control of the land that would become the nuclear reservation, 51,000 people were living in a construction camp built on farmland condemned by the government for the war effort. Conway was one of them, a 15-year-old boy bunking in a barrack with his father, a sign painter. "It was exciting for me," he said. Workers put in long hours as they raced to build the reactors and processing plant that would produce plutonium during World War II. But Conway remembered the entertainment used to encourage workers to stay at the remote camp. A circus tent was thrown up as an entertainment venue and there were always long lines to get in -- except on Sunday mornings when a priest visited the site to offer Mass, Conway remembered. He remembered ice skating and fishing on the river and the fun of going to a high school where each Monday there would be new girls to meet because of the high turnover among workers at the remote site. The bus tour included a swing through the center of Hanford where 53 million gallons of radioactive waste is held in underground tanks, a look at the $12.2 billion vitrification plant under construction and a view of the processing canyons -- each as long as the Space Needle is tall. But the highlight was a walking tour inside B Reactor, which supporters are working to save as a museum. Today it looks much it did when it powered up for the first time just 11 months after construction started. Before then, the entire supply of plutonium in the world was about as large as the head of a pin. It's like saying maybe you could squirt a little gasoline into a metal cylinder and 11 months later having an entire car running, said Dave Brunker of Portland. He and Leanna Brunker came equipped with a Geiger counter and personal dosimeters, just for curiosity's sake. "I'm seeing something I've always dreamed of seeing," Dave Brunker said. He's intrigued by the danger and the sense of mystery surrounding the top secret work of nuclear production during World War II and the Cold War. His interest in all things nuclear began when he just missed getting to visit the Trojan Reactor in Oregon before it was shut down. "At the time I realized they were going to tear down everything nuclear," he said, fueling his ambition to see as much of the early nuclear era as possible. What Manhattan Project workers accomplished in a few years was remarkable, said Melvin Hudson, who has long been interested in researching World War II. "I knew it was huge," he said, after touring B Reactor. "But to walk in and see the innovation and imagination involved in the construction" was worth the trip from Texas. Just before Easter he and his wife visited the Trinity Test site in New Mexico, where plutonium made at Hanford was used in the world's first nuclear explosion. Last week they toured the Oak Ridge site, seeing the small prototype reactor for B Reactor. But Melvin Hudson rated the Hanford site the most interesting of his Manhattan Project trips so far. His only complaint was that the bus tour allowed him only 90 minutes in B Reactor. "I'd like to spend two or three more hours," he said as tour participants were pointed back to the bus. The Department of Energy plans two more sets of tours this year on dates to be announced in September and October. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 58 POGO: Congress Accuses DOE of Los Alamos Security Breach Cover-Up The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog: TIME magazine has reported on yet another major security breach at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab – this one considered an Impact Measurement Index 1 reportable incident which “poses the most serious threats to national security interests and/or DOE critical assets or creates serious security situations.” In a letter sent (pdf) to Department of Energy Secretary Bodman yesterday, members of Congress spank DOE for keeping the January 2007 breach under wraps while testifying before the Committee twice in recent months concerning the infamous meth lab drug bust where hundreds of pages of classified Los Alamos National Lab documents were discovered. In the most recent event, an unclassified email with information about the “characteristics of nuclear material in nuclear weapons” was sent over unsecured networks to the board of Los Alamos, snagging the highest levels of the organization in its security failures. -- Beth Daley June 15, 2007 in Nuclear Security | Permalink TrackBack TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/108150/19331682 Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Congress Accuses DOE of Los Alamos Security Breach Cover-Up: ***************************************************************** 59 Idaho Mountain Express: INL all clear after facility incident - June 15, 2007 Officials say no radiation was released in Tuesday fire By TREVOR SCHUBERT Express Staff Writer Emergency crews at the Idaho National Laboratory extinguished a small fire Tuesday inside a laboratory at the site's Reactor Technology Complex. A spokesperson said no radiation was released at the site and the public faces no health risks as a result of the fire. According to a news release from the U.S. Department of Energy, a laboratory technician was transferring about an ounce of red phosphorous powder to a stainless steel container at about 1:40 p.m. when the material flashed, igniting a small fire. The technician received minor injuries, including burns and respiratory complications, the DOE reported. She was wearing protective clothing and working in a fume hood when the incident occurred. Red phosphorous is a material commonly used to make roadside flares. The technician was treated and released at the onsite Central Facilities Area Medical Facility, the news release stated. The INL Fire Department extinguished the fire and issued an "all-clear" order late Tuesday afternoon. Forty workers were evacuated and evaluated as a precautionary measure. The Advanced Test Reactor, the 40-year-old centerpiece of the 890-square-mile federal nuclear reserve, was not affected, INL spokesperson John Epperson told The Associated Press. The Advanced Test Reactor is located within the Reactor Technology Complex. "The public is not in any risk or danger," Epperson said. The INL is located in the desert west of Idaho Falls and is home to three reactors, including the Advanced Test Reactor, which was originally designed to test fuel for nuclear submarines. A June 12 AP news article reported that Epperson said no radiation was released, but that he declined to give more specifics about the incident. He said state, county and tribal officials on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation to the south were notified of the incident. "Industrial accidents happen and the nuclear industry is very dangerous," said Ester Ceja, outreach director for the Snake River Alliance, a nonprofit nuclear watchdog group. "We're glad nothing more serious happened." The INL has formed an investigative team to determine the cause of the fire. The team will include experts from several organizations. No time has been set for completing the investigation and the subsequent report. Produced & Maintained by Idaho Mountain Express P.O. Box 1013 Ketchum, ID 83340-1013 208.726.8060 Voice 208.726.2329 Fax Express Publishing Inc . ***************************************************************** 60 lamonitor.com: New security breach revealed The Online News Source for Los Alamos ROGER SNODGRASS Monitor Assistant Editor Reports of a major breach of security involving the board of directors of the corporation managing Los Alamos National Laboratory came to light Thursday. The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees the nuclear complex wrote to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman citing information obtained by committee staff from sources outside the department. The letter expressed concern that information about the breach, reported on Jan. 19, 2007, was withheld from the committee, despite two subcommittee hearings that were held in the meantime for the express purpose of investigating security practices at LANL. Largely because of a series of security problems in the past, the contracts for LANL and its sister laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were put out to bid. LANL's contract was awarded to Los Alamos National Security, (LANS), LLC, and they assumed responsibility on June 1, 2006. "Apparently, open e-mail networks were used by several LANS officials to share classified information relating to the characteristics of nuclear material in nuclear weapons," wrote committee chair John Dingle, D-Mich., to Bodman, in a letter detailing what the committee knows now. An article in Time magazine, first to publish the story on Thursday, said the highly sensitive message at issue came from the laptop computer of Harold P. Smith, a LANS consultant. The article said at least five LANS board members received the e-mail. The reported breach was rated as an Impact Measurement Index 1 (IMI-1) security incident, a reportable incident which "poses the most serious threats to national security interests and/or critical DOE assets or creates serious security situations." According to DOE guidelines, IMI-1 is "the most serious of the four categories of security incidents, established by DOE's Safeguards and Security Program Planning and Management manual dated Aug. 26, 2005." It is characterized by "actions, inactions, or events that pose the most serious threats to national security interests and/or critical DOE assets, create serious security situations, or could result in deaths in the workforce or general public." For comparison, IMI-2 involves those incidents "that potentially create dangerous situations." According to Dingell's letter, a University of California official notified the National Nuclear Security Administration about the breach on Jan. 19. NNSA is the agency that supervises the nuclear complex for DOE. NNSA deployed a team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to "identify, recover and sanitize the computer laptops and hardware involved in the incident," Dingell wrote. LANS also began an investigation, completing a report conducted by LANL employees on May 18. LANL and NNSA have both declined comment on the issue, citing federal law. "For reasons of national security and consistent with federal law and the Laboratory's own longstanding policy, Los Alamos National Security, LLC, will not discuss the details of any purported security violation of vulnerability, regardless of whether it exists," stated Jeff Berger, director of the LANL Communications Office in a prepared statement Thursday afternoon. Bryan Wilkes, spokesperson for NNSA, in a prepared message Thursday, said much the same thing, adding that NNSA holds "our sites to very high levels of accountability when it comes to security." He stated, "If procedures are found to have been violated, then appropriate actions are taken." Peter Stockton, chief investigator for the Project on Government Oversight said he was concerned that NNSA had allowed LANL to investigate its own incident. "The first guy to the document and the witnesses can steer the investigation," he said. "They should have had federal guys out there to do that, whether it's the FBI or capable people from the Inspector General." POGO has specialized in safety and security incidents in the weapons complex and executive director Danielle Brian testified during the hearing on Jan. 30. Dingell's letter to Bodman requested answers to questions and additional documents, including a briefing and access to the investigation inquiry and an unclassified version of the report for the committee. Additionally, Bodman was asked to explain NNSA failure to notify the committee, and to emphasize the point, requested a list and summary descriptions of all reportable security incidents at LANL since June 30, 2006. At the time the e-mail incident was being reported to NNSA, the House was preparing to hold the first of two investigative hearings they conducted into security problems at LANL earlier this year. The first one on Jan. 30 focused on classified material found in a Los Alamos mobile home during a drug investigation. Thursday's article in Time magazine erroneously reported that "police stumbled on 1,500 highly classified nuclear weapons designs stashed in a trailer park near the lab..." In fact, the police found computer storage devices known as jump drives and pages of classified documents. Thomas D'Agostino, who was named acting NNSA administrator on Jan. 20, the day after the undisclosed breech occurred, was nominated to become deputy administrator and administrator of NNSA on May 17, the day before a report was completed on the LANS e-mail violation. In the acting capacity, D'Agostino replaced former administrator Linton Brooks, whose resignation was linked to the previous breach of security. The New Mexico Congressional delegation expressed concerns about the new revelations. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., referring to the Time article said he was once again "troubled and disappointed." He cautioned those who might try to use it "as another excuse to punish the entire laboratory," but he traced the root of a particular shortcoming by which sensitive material is still technically able to migrate to unclassified computers. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in his statement, "I am deeply disturbed that it happened even after extensive security measures were to have been put in place at the laboratory, and that I would have to learn about it from a news account." "I have no doubt the LANL community is as tired and frustrated with these repeated incidents as I am," said Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M. in a statement on LANL security. He continued, "Enough is enough, and for the sake of the lab's future, those who are responsible must be held accountable to put an end to this broken record of breaches." © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 61 KNDO/KNDU: 4 lab workers receive minor radioactive contamination Associated Press - June 15, 2007 2:05 AM ET RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - Four Pacific Northwest National Laboratory workers received minor radioactive contamination this afternoon while doing research in a lab. Spokesman Greg Koller says the workers were evaluated at the scene, cleaned up and sent home. They were not taken to a hospital. Koller says this kind of radioactivity does not penetrate the skin. He said he did not know Thursday night if the workers were men or women. Koller says the workers had been testing the accuracy of radiation detection monitors and had been using a sealed radioactive source to do that. That radioactive source leaked, causing the contamination. The reason for the leak was not immediately known. He says they were working in a building on the Hanford nuclear reservation that is permitted to do radiologic work. According Koller, 3 of the workers received skin contamination, while the four had contamination on clothing. An initial survey showed no other workers in the same building to be contaminated. PNNL is 1 of the U.S. Department of Energy's 10 national laboratories. It also performs research for other government agencies, universities and industry. PNNL and the federal Department of Energy will review the incident. All content © Copyright 2000 - 2007 WorldNow and KNDO/KNDU. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 62 Guardian Unlimited: Lab Managers Accused of Security Breach From the Associated Press Friday June 15, 2007 4:46 PM By DEBORAH BAKER and JENNIFER TALHELM Associated Press Writers SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Officials with the contractor that runs Los Alamos National Laboratory sent top-secret data regarding nuclear weapons through open e-mail networks, the latest potentially dangerous security breach to come to light at the birthplace of the atomic bomb, two congressmen said. The breach was investigated by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which rounded up laptop computers from Los Alamos National Security LLC's board members and sanitized them. But NNSA and lab officials who subsequently appeared before a congressional committee investigating security problems at the nuclear weapons lab never mentioned it, according to a letter the congressmen sent Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. Reps. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who heads the panel's oversight subcommittee, called that ``unacceptable'' and demanded an explanation. ``This facility's mind-bogglingly poor track record makes me repeat my question: What do we do at Los Alamos that we cannot do elsewhere?'' Stupak said Thursday. The northern New Mexico lab has been plagued by security lapses, from missing data storage devices to the Wen Ho Lee case to the discovery of classified data on a computer found during a drug bust at a former lab contract worker's trailer. The problems led the Department of Energy's inspector general to describe security at Los Alamos as ``seriously flawed'' and prompted federal officials last year to put the lab's management contract up for bid for the first time in decades. LANS, which took over the lab's operation, is made up of the lab's former manager, the University of California; Bechtel Corp.; and two other companies. The e-mail case, the latest to come to light, was reported to NNSA by a University of California official on Jan. 19, according to the congressmen. ``Apparently, open e-mail networks were used by several LANS officials to share classified information relating to the characteristics of nuclear material in nuclear weapons,'' the congressmen said in the letter. The breach occurred when a consultant to the LANS board, Harold Smith, sent an e-mail containing highly classified, non-encrypted nuclear weapons information to several board members, who forwarded it to other members, according to a Washington aide familiar with the investigation who asked not to be named because the information is sensitive. The notice went out that there had been a breach, an official was pulled out of a White House meeting and told, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory flew a team across California and recovered the laptops within six hours, the aide said. Lawmakers were assured no damage was caused, according to the aide. A spokesman for LANS, Jeff Berger at Los Alamos National Laboratory, declined to discuss the security breach. He cited national security, federal law and the lab's longstanding policy as reasons that LANS ``will not discuss the details of purported security violations or vulnerabilities, regardless of whether they exist.'' NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said: ``As a matter of federal law, we don't confirm, deny or acknowledge allegations of security violations.'' ``Any allegations of potential security violations at our sites is fully investigated,'' Wilkes said. ``If procedures are found to have been violated, then appropriate actions are taken.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************