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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 AFP: NKorea will only declare three nuclear sites - report - 
2 [NYTr] Doubts Grow Over US-India Nuclear Deal
3 [NYTr] Indian Opposition Threatens Nuclear Cooperation Pact w/US
4 Reuters: U.S. appears to adjust stance on Pakistan 
5 Guardian Unlimited: IAEA Chief Criticizes U.S. Military Aid 
6 Sydney Morning Herald: Howard dodging fallout of pro-nuclear positio
7 Star Tribune: A nuclear arms policy for the 21st century
8 AFP: Japan plant designers did not foresee strong quake - 
9 BBC NEWS: Pakistan tests new cruise missile
10 SF Chronicle: Musharraf has become a dangerous friend
11 UK: Independent: Atomic Energy Authority in bid for Trident stake - 
12 Telegraph: Terror label 'paves way for air strikes' - 
13 asahi.com : EDITORIAL: Japan-India summit - 
14 Guardian Unlimited: Pakistan Tests Nuclear-Capable Missile 
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
15 The Hindu: RSS backs Left, says its posturing over 123 justified
16 Times of India: Relax, Mr Karat: 123 is a non-starter
17 Indiatimes: Nuke deal salvo?
18 Indiatimes: It can really make us powerful
19 Indiatimes: Beyond the text lies the n-ucleus
20 US: Rutland Herald: Yankee strike averted
21 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Rockland joins effort to expand Indian Point licen
22 US: Times Argus: Vermont Yankee officials are baffled by cooling tow
23 US: toledoblade.com: Strickland plan could 'green' Ohio
24 The Hindu: Value Parliament's view on nuclear deal, CPI(M) tells PM
25 US: chicagotribune.com: Restored faith in nuclear power -- 
26 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Investigation begins at VY
27 US: TCPalm: Reactor on Hutchinson Island to remain shut down until n
28 UPI: U.S.-India nuke talks unravel
29 US: MHNN: Entergy asks NRC for another extension
30 The Australian: Rudd renews anti-Nuclear pitch | 
31 AFP: King wants to speed up Jordanian nuclear energy drive - 
32 US: washingtonpost.com: Investing in Renewable Energy - 
33 News Post India: India Finds Uranium In Icy Ladakh
34 The Telegraph: Govt ready to raise the bar in nuclear power
35 EnergySWEDEN: Vattenfall nuclear reactor shuts after fire alarm - 
36 EnergyRUSSIA: Atomenergoprom acquires another civilian nuclear asset
37 EnergyGEORGIA: Construction of Georgian NPP considered - 
38 Guardian Unlimited: Doubts Grow Over U.S.-India Nuclear Deal 
39 US: Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear Board Mulling Opening Records 
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
40 US: long over due Piketon Ohio
41 US: Arizona Daily Star: Cancer in Iraq vets raises possibility of to
42 US: Tri-City Herald: 7 Hanford workers reported symptoms after spill
43 US: Minor radioactive leakage at LAX
44 US: Chillicothe Gazette: Judge says Piketon plant suit can move forw
45 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Nuke plants in Utah would pose public health 
46 UPI: Study: Nuclear test vets depressed
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
47 The Sydney Morning Herald: US wants Australia in nuclear group - 
48 US: Buffalo News: 27 workers lose jobs as N-cleanup winds down
49 US: Seattle Times: Hanford eyed for additional nuclear storage 
50 US: TheStar.com: Reviving Uranium City's nuclear past
51 US: Daily News Journal: Commissioner wishes county had control of la
52 US: Tennessean: Firm sought secrecy on dumping - 
53 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Green River's ups and downs featured uranium,
54 US: Albuquerque Tribune: Speedy approvals of uranium leaching can ha
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
55 KCBS: Hunter's Point Air Harmful to Your Health
56 Tennessean: Nuclear monitoring problems cited at Oak Ridge facilitie
57 Chillicothe Gazette: USEC inks deal to produce rotor tubes to be use
58 lamonitor.com: Labs power up packs of intellectual property
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 AFP: NKorea will only declare three nuclear sites - report - 

Sunday August 26, 05:23 AM

TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese newspaper on Saturday said North Korea 
insisted in disarmament talks this month that it would only 
declare and disable three nuclear facilities -- none of them with 
atomic weapons.

Under a landmark February deal, the secretive communist state 
agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons programmes in exchange for 
aid and diplomatic concessions, and it has already shut down its 
main Yongbyon nuclear facility.

But in the next stage of the six-nation disarmament deal, the North
has committed to declaring and disabling all its nuclear facilities.

In a story datelined from China, where talks on the so-called
"declare and disable" stage were held earlier this month, the Tokyo
Shimbun newspaper said North Korea had announced it would only list
three sites.

All three are at the Yongbyon facility, the paper said, citing
sources close to the negotiations.

It said the North Korean delegation did not refer to other
facilities that the five other nations suspect exist.

According to the paper, when they were asked to discuss other
programmes, the North Koreans responded: "We will bring that back
home for further discussions."

The United States suspects North Korea is running a secretive highly
enriched uranium programme in addition to the projects connected to
the plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon.

Both highly enriched uranium and plutonium can be used to make
nuclear weapons. North Korea carried out its first test of an atom
bomb last year.

At the meeting this month, the North proposed inspections and
disablement of a reactor, a spent fuel reprocecssing facility, and a
nuclear fuel processing plant, all of them at Yongbyon, the
newspaper said.

North Korea has never admitted to having a highly enriched uranium
programme.

The six-nation talks group North and South Korea, China, Japan,
Russia and the United States.


Copyright © 2007 Yahoo!7 Pty Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 2 [NYTr] Doubts Grow Over US-India Nuclear Deal
 
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 21:12:36 -0500 (CDT)


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
AP - Aug 26, 2007
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/INDIA_US_NUCLEAR?SITE=WILAC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Doubts Grow Over U.S.-India Nuclear Deal

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
Associated Press Writer

NEW DELHI (AP) -- The United States gave India nearly everything it
wanted in a landmark nuclear energy deal, but that may not be enough
for a vocal chorus of Indian critics.

A wave of opposition has left India's government reeling and raised
serious doubts about the deal's future. Critics argue the agreement
could undermine India's cherished nuclear weapons program and allow the
U.S. to dictate Indian foreign policy.

Leading the charge are the communist allies of India's prime minister,
and beneath their arguments many here see a deeper objection - they
don't want New Delhi drawn closer to Washington under any circumstances.

For both countries, the stakes are enormous.

The deal has been repeatedly touted as the foundation of an alliance
that could potentially redraw the global balance of power, completing
the transformation of a once-hostile relationship between the world's
two largest democracies.

U.S. policymakers see India as a counterweight to an ever-more powerful
China, and the deal reverses three decades of American policy by
allowing the shipment of nuclear fuel and technology to India, which
never signed international nonproliferation accords and has tested
atomic weapons.

The two years of painstaking negotiations to reach the deal have also
provided President Bush with a foreign policy achievement amid the Iraq
war and other crises.

For India, the benefits are arguably greater. Its booming but
energy-starved economy would gain access to much-needed nuclear fuel
and technologies that it has been long denied by its refusal to sign
nonproliferation accords. Even though the deal only covers civilian
nuclear power, it tacitly acknowledges India as a nuclear-weapons
state, giving its weapons program a degree of international legitimacy
- and adding to India's growing clout.

The deal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in an Aug. 13 speech to
Parliament, is "another step in our journey to regain our due place in
global councils."

But few of the deal's opponents heard his speech that day - they were
too busy shouting him down and disrupting Parliament, as they have done
nearly every day since.

The opponents run the gamut from right-wing Hindu nationalists to the
communists, who are key to Singh's parliamentary majority. The nuclear
agreement does not need parliamentary approval, but Singh's government
could collapse if his communist allies pull their support because of
the deal.

Most of their criticism stems from the Hyde Act, passed last year by
American lawmakers to allow nuclear trade with India.

It contains a nonbinding clause directing the U.S. president to
determine whether India is cooperating with American efforts to
confront Iran about its nuclear program. That has been seized on by
Indian critics as proof that Washington intends to direct New Delhi's
foreign policy.

The nuclear deal does not address what happens if India tests an atomic
weapon - a sign, American critics say, that New Delhi got too much out
of the pact.

Indian critics, meanwhile, argue that the lack of an explicit right to
test is a sign the U.S. aims to shut down the country's weapons program.

But for the communists, their ultimate objection appears simply to be
the United States.

"We must stand against a strategic partnership with the United States
of America," said Basudeb Acharya, a top official of the Communist
Party of India (Marxist).

He called the invasion of Iraq and Washington's efforts to stop Iran
from producing nuclear weapons "foreign policy adventures," and said:
"We want no part of this."

The standoff has the communists warning Singh not to press ahead with
the next steps in the deal - negotiating agreements with the
International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a
group of nations that export nuclear material - and the prime minister
daring them to stop him.

But with talk of early elections growing louder, both sides have
started to back down. They are expected to announce this week the
creation of a committee to examine the deal before pushing ahead with
it.

That, Indian and American officials privately say, could end up
scuttling the pact, which still has to be approved by U.S. lawmakers,
delaying it to the point where it is no longer viable.

"We will talk and talk and talk and nothing will be done," said a
senior member of India's scientific establishment with knowledge of the
nuclear deliberations.

"The Americans will not wait forever," he said, speaking on the
condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivities. "And we
will never get an agreement like this again."

American officials, who have publicly stayed out of the fray, privately
confirmed that view, saying that with U.S. presidential elections
coming up next year, they could only wait so long.

Washington acceded to most of New Delhi's demands, giving India the
right to stockpile nuclear fuel and reprocess it, a key step in making
weapons.

Abandoning such a deal would "be a major setback to India's
international ambitions," said retired Gen. Ashok Mehta, a strategic
analyst in New Delhi.

"Long-term, India, without the help of the United States and or any
other big power, will take much longer to be counted globally," he said.

B) 2007 The Associated Press.

 
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 3 [NYTr] Indian Opposition Threatens Nuclear Cooperation Pact w/US
 
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 03:34:16 -0500 (CDT)


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by rick kissell

The Washington Post - Aug 26, 2007

Dissent Threatens U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation Deal

Delhi Parties Say Pact Limits Sovereignty

By Emily Wax and Rama Lakshmi

NEW DELHI -- After two years of painstaking negotiations, a historic 
nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and India 
appears to be unraveling as a broad spectrum of political parties calls 
on the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to scrap the deal, 
saying it limits the country's sovereignty in energy and foreign policy 
matters.

The landmark accord that just weeks ago looked like a major foreign 
policy triumph for this energy-starved subcontinent has become a 
political liability for India's fragile ruling coalition.

The brouhaha over the deal has surprised some nuclear analysts in 
Washington, partly because the Bush administration was widely perceived 
as having caved in to key Indian demands. The administration had
assured the government here that it could receive uninterrupted nuclear
supplies from the United States and maintain the right to reprocess
spent nuclear fuel -- a potentially dangerous prospect because
reprocessing technology can also be used to make weapons-grade
plutonium. To many Western observers, India already had the upper hand
in the deal, a testament to its growing international influence.

"The Indian negotiators were as tough or tougher than anyone that the 
U.S. has encountered in recent years," said Philip D. Zelikow, former 
counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a key player in
the accord. "India won a great deal."

In return, the Bush administration firmed up a strategic alliance with
a country that in many ways is expected to shape the future of Asia. 
India's nuclear program serves as a check on Pakistan's, as well as a 
counterbalance to China's nuclear prowess.

But in the latest twist of the saga, an alliance of Indian communist 
parties has called on Singh's government to scrap the deal. The parties 
say India's sovereignty was compromised by the agreement because it 
includes a condition that all but requires the government's cooperation 
in U.S. foreign policy matters.

Partly at issue for India is whether it can conduct further nuclear 
tests without violating the terms of its agreement with the United 
States. The right to do so is fiercely protected by politicians in 
India, whose lingering mistrust of Western powers dates back to British 
colonial rule.

"We have the right to test. They have the right to protest," the 
embattled Singh said when asked by Indian reporters what would happen
if India tested another nuclear bomb, as it did in 1998.

All week, breaking news about the "government in crisis" has been 
splashed across the newspapers and broadcast on television, with
anxious reports about the looming demise of the U.S.-India nuclear deal
and, along with it, Singh's coalition government.

"The deal is frozen. It is stuck," a senior Indian government official 
said on condition of anonymity. "Now only a miracle can retrieve the
deal."

The push for India to renege on the nuclear pact has vexed U.S. 
officials, who are facing their own domestic criticism for reaching an 
agreement with a country that has refused to sign the nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nuclear experts say the Bush administration 
was too lenient with India.

In India, some analysts say India is already in a good position.

"We have sufficient weapons-grade plutonium for maintaining the minimum 
credible arsenal," said K. Santhanam, a defense expert in New Delhi, 
adding that the deal would not affect India's nuclear weapons program. 
"We are and can remain a regional power and should be able to vacate
all nuclear threats."

Some analysts say the communist parties are using anti-Americanism 
surrounding the nuclear issue to court Muslim votes in a country with 
the world's second-largest Muslim population. The conservative Hindu 
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, also wants to help sink the 
nuclear deal, saying it objects to it not on the basis of anti-American 
sentiments but because outsiders should not have control over India's 
foreign policy or its right to test weapons.

The U.S.-India agreement was made possible by the so-called Hyde Act, 
which was approved by the U.S. Congress last December and which created 
an exception to the U.S. policy of not cooperating on nuclear issues 
with countries that have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Critics say the act is vague. It will create "a minefield of future 
misunderstanding between India and the U.S.," said Yashwant Sinha, a
BJP leader and former foreign minister. "The U.S. and India have
interpreted the agreement in two different ways. Unless you have a
common understanding of what you are doing, you will run into problems."

But from the U.S. point of view, such statements are ironic.

"If they back out, they are looking a gift horse in the mouth," Zelikow 
said of the groups opposed to the nuclear agreement. "There has never 
been a hidden agenda to try and control India's foreign policy. Any 
problems with this deal are domestic and political posturing for a 
future election. Maybe this is something that India's democracy and 
civil society has to work through."

Relations between the United States and India historically have been 
antagonistic, a carry-over from the Cold War era, when India appeared
to warm to the Soviet Union while the United States fostered ties with 
India's nemesis, Pakistan.

The relationship has improved in the past decade, because the two 
nations today share both people and politics.

With 2 million Americans of Indian origin living in the United States, 
India receives the largest number of U.S. visas, second only to Mexico, 
according to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. Trade between the two 
countries has also intensified, spurred largely by India's growing 
information technology industry.

Still, problems in the relationship remain. In May, Congress expressed 
"grave concerns" about India's friendly relationship with Iran, which 
has its own nuclear program. Indian officials are discussing with Iran 
the prospect of partnering in the construction of a natural gas
pipeline.

A vote on Capitol Hill is expected on the nuclear deal in coming
months. Meanwhile, India still needs to reach separate agreements
concerning additional nuclear safeguards with global regulating
agencies, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear
Suppliers Group.

Even if India goes ahead with its plans, nuclear power will satisfy
only about 8 percent of the country's current energy needs, nuclear
analysts said.

"To make India's foreign policy and strategic autonomy hostage to the 
potential benefits of nuclear energy does not make any sense, except
for the American imperative to bind India to its strategic designs in
Asia," Prakash Karat, head of the country's Communist Party, wrote in
the /Hindu/, an English-language daily newspaper.

Other analysts say that India should now have the economic and
political confidence to solve its domestic political woes and go
forward on the deal, lest the government appear immature on the world
stage.

"This is extremely important for India's growth. It opens up avenues to 
power which we have not had access to in the past," said R.K. Pachauri, 
head of the Tata Energy Research Institute in New Delhi. "You can't 
expect the world to deliver us a blank check."
 
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 4 Reuters: U.S. appears to adjust stance on Pakistan 

Sun Aug 26, 2007 11:52AM EDT

By Arshad Mohammed - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While still solidly behind Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf, the United States appears to be bracing
for the possibility that he might have to give up or share power,
analysts said.

An ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, Musharraf has seen his
popularity erode this year following a failed attempt to oust
Pakistan's chief justice and a series of bombings and clashes across
the nuclear-armed South Asian nation.

While analysts said Washington was by no means abandoning Musharraf,
a general who seized power in bloodless 1999 coup, his diminished
popularity and Pakistan's pro-democracy clamor appear to have made
the United States consider contingencies.

"Their preference would certainly still be that Musharraf continue.
They are comfortable working with him and they probably consider him
a stronger leader than the alternatives," said Teresita Schaffer of
the CSIS think tank.

"But I think they would like to see him joined to one or another of
the secular parties because they think that provides a stronger
combination," she added. "That is a recalibration, but I don't think
they would characterize it as moving away from Musharraf because
they still want him."

Ten days ago, a diplomat said Washington had urged Musharraf to
explore ways of cooperating politically with former Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto, whose father, also a Pakistani leader, was executed
during a previous period of military rule.

The effort to encourage a political deal, first reported by The New
York Times, appeared aimed at shoring up Musharraf's domestic
support and ensuring Pakistan's continued cooperation with the
United States in the war on terrorism.

The strategy carries risks for Washington, which could be seen as
meddling in Pakistan's internal affairs, and for Bhutto, who could
taint herself by allying with Musharraf, the latest of a long line
of military officers to rule Pakistan.

Last week, Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled that another former prime
minister, Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf ousted in 1999, could return
to Pakistan after seven years in exile.  


There is no love lost between the two. Pakistan's military 
overthrew the former prime minister after he sought to replace 
Musharraf as army chief of staff while the general was out of the 
country.

Analysts said the prospect of Sharif's return was sure to raise 
domestic pressure on Musharraf, who hopes to win a second term as 
president in an election expected to be held this autumn. Fresh 
parliamentary elections are expected afterward.

'NOT WALKING AWAY FROM MUSHARRAF'

A senior U.S. official denied any effort by the United States to 
distance itself from Musharraf, who chose after the September 11, 
2001, attacks to support Washington in its effort to topple the 
Taliban regime in Afghanistan that harbored al Qaeda.

While declining to detail U.S. contacts with Sharif or Bhutto, 
the official said contact with opposition parties was natural 
ahead of Pakistan's elections.

"We're not walking away from Musharraf," the U.S official said 
flatly. "We're just talking to more people because it's a 
political year and more people are coming up in importance."

"We are trying to help him make a successful transition because 
he knows and we know that is the only way to continue the 
alliance ... and to continue moving the country in the direction 
he's charted," he added.

Stephen Cohen, an analyst at the Brookings Institution think 
tank, said he thought the U.S. emphasis in recent months on the 
importance of Pakistan holding free and fair elections bespoke a 
slight shift in the U.S. approach.

"We hadn't been talking about that at all, or if we had, it was 
in the most abstract way," Cohen said. "I think that's language 
that probably reflects an adjustment in policy -- not a change -- 
but an adjustment to support Musharraf, but to be prepared if 
things go in different directions."

Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation think tank said U.S. 
officials had been "somewhat behind the curve" in grasping how 
much Musharraf's standing had diminished and how strong the 
pro-democratic sentiment was in Pakistan.

"The political landscape has changed drastically inside Pakistan 
over the last six months, with Musharraf's popularity plummeting, 
and I think the administration understands that and is now 
seeking to adapt its policy accordingly," Curtis said.

"Given the severe strains in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, I 
believe it is critical that the administration not be seen as 
solely supporting Musharraf against the will of the people, who 
are obviously clamoring for democratic rule," she said.


*****************************************************************
 5 Guardian Unlimited: IAEA Chief Criticizes U.S. Military Aid 

Sunday August 26, 2007 3:16 AM

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog 
criticized U.S. moves to assist in the supply of weapons to its 
allies in the Middle East, saying the money would be better spent 
on regional development projects.

 In an interview with the Austrian newsweekly Profil, to be 
published Monday, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the 
Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said a U.S. 
strategy to support a weapons buildup in countries such as 
Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt was not helpful for improving 
security in the Middle East.

 ``Pouring more money into arms is not going to resolve the 
issue,'' ElBaradei said. ``You can end up in a situation like the 
Cold War in the past ... Does that provide security? Does that 
provide stability? It doesn't.''

 Audio excerpts of ElBaradei's comments, in English, were shared 
with The Associated Press before the interview is published in 
German Monday. The IAEA has not released a transcript on its Web 
site, but IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming confirmed ElBaradei's 
quotes late Saturday.

       Earlier this month, the United States offered Israel an 
unprecedented $30 billion of military aid over 10 years. It is 
also proposing weapons packages to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf 
states to help them counter growing Iranian assertiveness.

  The U.S. has expressed grave concern over Iran and Syria's 
backing of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. In addition, the 
United States says Iran is backing Shiite insurgents in its war 
in Iraq and trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
*****************************************************************
 6 Sydney Morning Herald: Howard dodging fallout of pro-nuclear position - 

Opinion - www.smh.com.au

August 27, 2007

A major tenet of the Government's climate-change policy is being 
cleverly exploited by Labor, Michelle Grattan writes.

Sue Page is the Nationals' candidate in the northern NSW coastal
seat of Richmond, once the political kennel of the Anthony family,
but currently in Labor hands.

Page, a former president of the Rural Doctors Association who knows
her mind and is not afraid to speak it, is considered a strong
contender by her party. Although it would be extraordinary if the
Coalition won any Labor seats in NSW, the Nats say their research is
showing she is doing well in Richmond.

But Page anticipated the risk of Labor's campaign on the threat of
nuclear reactors in people's backyards. Her fears increased after
the Liberals' June federal council passed a strongly pro-nuclear
motion.

Page spoke to Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile at the Nationals'
state conference in June. A week ago she issued a statement
declaring that "there will be no nuclear power stations or waste
storage facilities on the North Coast or anywhere else in Australia
if the Coalition government is re-elected".

The Nationals' position, she said, was that "there will be no
nuclear power industry ... unless and until it is supported by all
major political parties at the state and federal level".

In the same statement, NSW Nationals senator Fiona Nash said
pointedly that no legislation on any potential nuclear power
industry would be passed "without the support of the Nationals in
the Senate". The Vaile office knew the statement was coming and,
when it did, Vaile backed Page.

It wasn't only Page who was reacting on nukes. A number of Liberals
had also been chiming in with the "not in our backyard" line.

When cabinet last Tuesday considered nuclear issues, it was clear
the debate was going pear-shaped for the Government and something
needed to be done.

Ministers agreed the Government would say that local plebiscites
would be allowed. This was despite Howard only a week before
dismissing a question about plebiscites, declaring commercial
investment would determine the plants' locations.

Precisely how influential the Nationals were is unclear, but the
seat-by-seat feedback was obviously a big factor in the plebiscite
decision.

Also, after the Prime Minister had offered ballots to Queenslanders
upset by council mergers, it smacked of hypocrisy to reject them out
of hand on nuclear reactors.

By Wednesday, Vaile had blurted out the new line. His timing was a
surprise, even to his own office.

The next day Howard formally announced the Government had decided
"there will be binding local plebiscites conducted in communities
where power stations are proposed to be built".



It must go down as one of the more bizarre promises of this
election, especially as Howard reiterated that "the Government will
not build nuclear power stations and does not expect to see
proposals for private nuclear power stations for 10 to 15 years".

By that time we could have seen a Rudd government come and gone. Or
a Costello one.

Howard, knowing he won't be around to allow or refuse plebiscites,
was talking through his hat.

But the Government needed to react in a debate that, instead of
wedging the Opposition, has burnt the Coalition.

Howard had placed domestic nuclear power on the agenda as what it
hoped would be an offensive political weapon, as well as a partial
neutraliser to criticism of the Government on climate change. But
instead it has become ammunition for Labor, with the Coalition now
being the one on the defensive.

Labor's anti-nuke campaign is simple, based on six words: "Where do
the nuclear reactors go?" Its polling has shown the potency of the
scare, which it is not letting up on. It is currently running a TV
ad in Queensland exploiting local fears: "[Howard] refuses to talk
about a list of possible sites for reactors that includes
Rockhampton, Bundaberg, Mackay, Townsville, the Sunshine Coast, even
Bribie Island."

The Government now finds itself conflicted. On the one hand it is
arguing nuclear power must be considered in tackling climate change.
On the other, it is trying to sweep the reactors off the agenda for
this election.

Howard is left with the rather feeble proposition that he is sure
public opinion will eventually turn in favour of nuclear power.
Perhaps - but not in his political lifetime.

Labor will continue to go on the front foot by putting the
frighteners into everyone. But Sue Page is less concerned than she
was, after making what she describes as her "pre-emptive strike".

Source: The Sun-Herald

Copyright © 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald.
*****************************************************************
 7 Star Tribune: A nuclear arms policy for the 21st century

America has long maintained a strategic right to strike first.
That's no longer helpful.

Steve Andreasen

Published: August 27, 2007

In the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, the suggestion that a 
supposedly trigger-happy Barry Goldwater might as president order 
the use of nuclear weapons (remember the famous "Daisy ad") 
helped send Lyndon Johnson to a landslide victory in 1964. Today, 
the issue of whether and when a president might use nuclear 
weapons has made a surprising comeback in the context of the 2008 
campaign.

The discussion began at the June 5 Republican debate, where 
front-runners Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani implied that they 
would consider a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran's nuclear 
facilities. On Aug. 2, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, responding 
to a question over the possible use of nuclear weapons against 
terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said, "I think it would 
be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any 
circumstance." He went on: "Let me scratch that. There's been no 
discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table."

Reacting to Obama's remarks, Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton 
said, "Presidents should be careful at all times in discussing 
the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons. I don't believe any 
president should make blanket statements with regard to use or 
nonuse." And during the Aug. 19 Democratic debate, former Sen. 
John Edwards said, "I do not want to limit my options, and I 
don't want to talk about hypothetical use of nuclear weapons," 
prompting New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to declare, "I 
wouldn't, as an American president, use nuclear weapons first."

Clinton is on well-trod ground: Historically, America has 
maintained a policy of "strategic ambiguity," refusing to rule 
out a nuclear first strike. Richardson's statement aside, the 
early salvos in the 2008 campaign suggest that by next summer, 
there will be little divergence from this norm. The rhetoric of 
the Republican candidates will likely run closer to "not taking 
any option off the table" rather than proposing a preemptive 
nuclear strike. And Obama -- who appeared at first to be 
questioning the nuclear status quo -- quickly clarified his 
remarks.

But this is one instance where the seemingly safest political 
course may be far divorced from today's reality and 
counterproductive to America's long-term security interest in 
reversing reliance on nuclear weapons around the globe.

Today, it is hard to define a credible scenario for the first use 
of American nuclear arms. To begin, there is no longer a Soviet 
Union that threatens vital strategic interests and requires the 
threat of nuclear first use to deter. Moreover, other nations -- 
in particular, China, North Korea and Iran -- understand that a 
conventional challenge to core U.S. interests in Asia or the 
Middle East would inevitably run up against America's 
overwhelming superiority on the conventional battlefield. Even 
with American forces tied down in Iraq, U.S. conventional assets 
appear both durable and sufficient to deter and, if necessary, 
defeat any state or combination of states.

It is also hard to see how the threat of nuclear first use would 
play any discernible role in deterring a committed terrorist. 
Al-Qaida may perversely welcome a U.S. nuclear strike, assuming 
it would inflame passions against the United States. Indeed, 
there may be no better catalyst to a radicalized Pakistan armed 
with nuclear weapons than for the U.S. to launch such a strike in 
the region.

No matter the scenario, the first use of nuclear weapons by the 
United States in the 21st century would inevitably lower the 
global nuclear threshold -- which undermines U.S. security to a 
greater degree than any other nation's. A nuclear explosion in 
New York, London or Tokyo would trigger casualties at least on 
par with the deadly Asian tsunami of 2004. It would severely 
cripple the global economic system upon which America relies. And 
it would challenge civil liberties and freedoms in ways that 
would affect every American citizen and our society collectively. 
Finally, the possibility of nuclear arms in the hands of more 
nations in volatile regions of the globe raises the possibility 
of another costly preemptive U.S. military strike or competition 
with a nuclear-armed adversary.

For these reasons, America's national interest would be best 
served by advancing the proposition that nuclear weapons are 
legitimate in only one role: preventing their use. For this 
policy to be credible, the United States would have to lead the 
way in revising its policy and state publicly that it retains 
nuclear weapons only for the purpose of deterring aggression 
involving these weapons.

Explaining the merits of such a policy shift during a 
presidential campaign constrained by sound bites and 
counterattacks may be too difficult. Then again, a candidate who 
can articulate a new policy designed to make the use of any 
nuclear weapon even more remote might hit a welcome note with the 
American people. As LBJ said as the little girl in the Daisy ad 
disappeared behind a mushroom cloud: "These are the stakes -- to 
make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go 
into the dark."

Steve Andreasen, the director for defense policy and arms control 
on the National Security Council from 1993 to 2001, teaches at 
the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public 
Affairs.

© 2007 Star Tribune. All rights reserved. Feedback|Terms of 
Service|eEdition|Newspaper In Education 425 Portland Av. S., 
Minneapolis, MN 55488 (612) 673-4000
*****************************************************************
 8 AFP: Japan plant designers did not foresee strong quake - 

Sunday August 26, 06:01 PM

TOKYO (AFP) - An earthquake last month that forced the closure of 
the world's largest nuclear plant in Japan was about 2.7 times 
stronger than the maximum considered in the plant's design 
guidelines, a report said Sunday.

The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which operates the 
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, registered the July 16 
quake at 993 gals, the Mainichi Shimbun reported. Gal is a unit 
measuring the speed of acceleration.

The government's guidelines for the design of nuclear power plants
only envisioned quakes of up to 370 gals, the report said, adding
eight of the country's 17 plants were built based on that estimate.

Experts are now calling for a review of the guidelines in the wake
of last month's 6.8-magnitude quake in central Japan which shut down
the plant, which supplies 10 percent of TEPCO's electricity.

The giant facility northwest of Tokyo caught fire and leaked a small
amount of radiation following the quake, which killed 11 people in
unrelated incidents.

Japanese nuclear authorities expect the plant to be offline for
about a year for safety checks, although the UN International Atomic
Energy Agency said last week the plant had no major safety problems.

Despite its propensity for earthquakes, Japan relies on nuclear
plants for nearly one-third of its power needs as it has virtually
no natural energy resources.

The company and government have already acknowledged that they never
anticipated that such a strong quake would hit the area near the
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.

Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 9 BBC NEWS: Pakistan tests new cruise missile

Last Updated: Saturday, 25 August 2007, 13:17 GMT 14:17 UK

This is the latest in a series of missile tests by Pakistan this 
year

Pakistan has successfully test-fired a new cruise missile capable 
of carrying nuclear weapons, its military said.

The missile, named Hatf-VIII (or Raad, "thunder" in Arabic), has 
a range of 350km (220 miles), and can carry all types of 
warheads, a statement said.

Pakistan and its neighbour India - both nuclear powers - 
routinely carry out missile tests.

The missile "has been designed exclusively for launch from a 
variety of Pakistan's air platforms, providing these with a 
strategic stand-off capability on land and at sea," the Pakistani 
military said.

"The Raad can carry all types of warheads and has an accuracy 
comparable to Pakistan's longer Babar cruise missile," the 
statement said.

The Babar or Hatf-VII missile, which was tested in March, has a 
range of 700km (430 miles).

In February, Pakistan test-fired a nuclear-capable, 
surface-to-surface Hatf VI missile, with a much longer range of 
2,000 km (1,250 miles).

* BBC Copyright Notice
*****************************************************************
 10 SF Chronicle: Musharraf has become a dangerous friend

Joel Brinkley

Sunday, August 26, 2007

WHEN you draw up a list of the nations whose stability can bear
directly on the United States, Pakistan is near the top.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons and the world's worst record of
proliferation. In the northwest of Pakistan is Waziristan, the
tribal region on the Afghanistan border that is now home for the
Taliban and al Qaeda - even, most likely, Osama bin Laden.

Pakistan's unending conflict with India, another nuclear state,
often seems on the verge of hostilities - potentially nuclear war.

So it makes perfect sense that any U.S. administration should work
to have strong relations with the Pakistani government -
particularly after 9/11. Pakistan probably shelters more potential
terrorists than any other nation.

Nonetheless, when I consider the Bush administration's continuing
support for Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, even as his
support at home crumbles, I am filled with a frightening sense of
deja vu. I think back to the Cold War. With that, my thoughts return
to the devastating consequences that often came from sticking with
uncomfortable alliances that lived on long past their prime.

Back then, the United States and its allies were united in
opposition to communism. And in the pursuit of anti-communist
alliances, various administrations, Democratic and Republican,
allied themselves with unsavory leaders around the world. It didn't
seem to matter much if these leaders were vicious dictators or
corrupt autocrats. If they were anti-communist, that was all it took
to be Washington's friend.

Bush's war on terrorism has a similar feeling. We have cozied up to
unsavory leaders here and there - if they offer help for
Washington's anti-terrorism campaign. That is understandable
following 9/11. Washington had to make friends with most anyone who
could help assure that we were not attacked again. Clearly,
Musharraf headed that list.

Eight years ago, he seized power in a military coup, and since then
Pakistanis have lived under a quasi-dictatorship, albeit with more
freedoms than most dictators allow. That helped assure that
Pakistanis abided him. In recent years, however, his hold on power
has weakened - in part because most Pakistanis abhor his close
relations with President Bush.

Then in March, Musharraf dismissed the chief justice of the
Pakistani supreme court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, setting off
riots and bombings. In July, the court reinstated him. For
Musharraf, that was a serious blow - an embarrassment. A few weeks
later, when his troops laid siege to the Red Mosque, held by Islamic
militants, he lost the support of the very Islamists who had served
as his political base.

So now he hangs onto power with little domestic support. What is
Washington to do? The Bush administration mantra all along has been
that Musharraf is a critical ally in the war on terrorism. But let's
look back at some previous "critical allies."

For example, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran. Who could have
been a better anti-communist ally? He allowed the United States to
position massive electronic monitoring stations in Iran, aimed at
the Soviet Union. We supported the shah past his prime, and what did
we get? An Islamic revolution that took power with the primary
precept that the United States was enemy No. 1, the "great Satan."
The 1979 hostage crisis was just the first in a series of hostile
acts from the new Islamic government. They continue today.

Closer to home, successive administrations lavished praise and aid
on the Somoza family that ruled Nicaragua. To Washington, the
Somozas stood as a bulwark against Fidel Castro, the despised
communist leader of Cuba. At home, however, Anastasio Somoza, the
last in the line, grew to be ever-more hated, and when an insurgent
group toppled him in 1979, who did it turn to? Not Washington. The
Sandinistas allied with Castro. Then came the Contra war and the
Iran-Contra scandal that nearly toppled the Reagan presidency.

Pakistan seems poised for a similarly unsatisfactory result.
Washington has poured aid into the country - $10 billion since 2001.
But almost none of that has gone to the Pakistani people. A study by
the Center for Strategic and International Studies showed that only
$900 million has gone to health, education or similar programs. Most
of the rest went to the military, which Musharraf leads.

Washington should be commended for urging Musharraf to share power
with Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister. At least the Bush
administration recognizes the problem. But the idea seems unlikely
to go anywhere.

So now the lessons of history clearly show that Washington should
cut its ties to Musharraf. If he falls, the United States may well
be the next government's chief villain. Why not, at a minimum, step
forward and call for full, free and fair elections, meet with
opposition candidates - then send election monitors. That might not
solve Pakistan's problems. But it would show, at least, that
Washington is acting with the Pakistani people in mind.

Joel Brinkley is a professor of journalism at Stanford University
and a former foreign policy correspondent for the New York Times.

This article appeared on page C - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

*****************************************************************
 11 UK: Independent: Atomic Energy Authority in bid for Trident stake - 

By Tim Webb

Published: 26 August 2007

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) is among the bidders for the
Government's one-third stake in the company responsible for running
the Trident submarine nuclear missile programme at Aldermaston.

First-round bids for the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) stake,
belonging to state -owned British Nuclear Group (BNG), are due in
this week. Industry sources said it could fetch between Ł100m and
Ł200m.

American nuclear group CH2M Hill, which has formed a joint clean-up
venture with UKAEA, is also understood to have submitted a bid and
could link up with the UK company.

The energy authority, which is itself state owned but is earmarked
for part-privatisation later this year, carries out nuclear
decommissioning work and research into nuclear fusion. It declined
to comment.

Services group Serco and US defence firm Lockheed Martin own the
other two AWE stakes and released a joint statement last month
expressing an interest in exercising their pre-emption rights to buy
out BNG's stake.

But the Government, which earlier this year won a controversial
Commons vote to renew the programme, is understood to be keen to
bring in a partner which can provide new skills and expertise. BNG,
Serco and Lockheed Martin signed a contract with the Government in
2000 to run AWE for 25 years.

According to accounts filed at Companies House, AWE made a pre-tax
profit of Ł44m in 2005.

Other bidders are thought to include Amec and US engineering giant
Bechtel. NM Rothschild is running the auction as part of the
Government's tortuous sell-off of its nuclear assets.

© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
*****************************************************************
 12 Telegraph: Terror label 'paves way for air strikes' - 

By Philip Sherwell in New York, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 1:41am BST 26/08/2007

The White House's plans to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards 
Corps as a terrorist organisation are intended to give the Bush 
administration cover if it launches military strikes on the 
Islamic republic, according to a prominent former CIA officer.
 

   Washington accuses Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps of backing
                  attacks on American forces in Iraq


Robert Baer, who was a high-ranking operative in the Middle East,
said last week that senior government officials had told him the
administration was preparing for air strikes on the guards' bases
and probably also on Iran's nuclear facilities within the next six
months.

The US is expected to list the guards as a terror group in the
coming weeks. Washington accuses them of backing attacks on American
and British forces in Iraq, as well as supporting the Hezbollah
faction in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

The designation will make it easier to target international
financial transactions by the guards' lucrative business operations,
which The Sunday Telegraph disclosed last week had made
multi-millionaires of many senior commanders. It will also bolster
American calls for tougher sanctions on Iran over its illicit
nuclear programme at the United Nations next month.

But among President George W Bush's closest advisers, there is a
fierce debate about whether to take unilateral military action
independently of any UN security council moves.

While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is set on diplomacy,
Vice-President Dick Cheney is understood to favour air strikes.

The justification for any attack, according to Mr Baer, would be
claims - denied by Iran - that the guards are responsible for the
sophisticated armour-penetrating improvised explosive devices that
are exacting a heavy toll on US forces in Iraq.

Mr Baer said: "The feeling in the administration is that we should
have taken care of the guards a long, long time ago. We won't see
American troops cross the border. If this is going to happen, it is
going to happen very quickly and it is going to surprise a lot of
people."

The White House has publicly insisted there are no preparations for
military action against Iran.


© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2007. | Terms
*****************************************************************
 13 asahi.com : EDITORIAL: Japan-India summit - 

08/25/2007

According to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's value-driven diplomacy,
Japan should cooperate with the United States, India and Australia.
These are countries, he says, with which Japan shares fundamental
values such as freedom and democracy. For Abe, this week's visit to
India can be seen as a platform for putting that policy into action.

Yet at the same time, it also provided a wake-up call to the fact
that even when allies share the same basic values, it is no easy
task to surmount differences in national interests.

Abe effectively said the following in his speech to India's
Parliament: Insofar as we embrace a reverence for the natural world,
it is my conviction that the Japanese and Indian people share
certain qualities in common.

Abe also called for support of his own "Cool Earth 50" vision which
is aimed at curbing global warming by halving greenhouse gas
emissions from the current level by 2050.

India agreed that the global warming issue is a universal agenda.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured Abe that India would give
serious consideration to participating in post-Kyoto Protocol
efforts to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. The
Protocol expires in 2012.

At the same time, Singh did not neglect to add that India regards
further development of its economy and reduction of the number of
those living in poverty as critical issues ranking on a par with
reducing global warming.

India and other developing nations currently have no official
obligation to lower their greenhouse gases. This raises the question
of what types of responsibilities these states should bear on this
front in the future. Abe's meeting with Singh in New Delhi was also
an omen of the difficulties ahead in any negotiations aimed at
forging concrete strategies in that direction.

One area boldly underscoring the differences in national interests
is the issue of the civil nuclear agreement between India and the
United States.

India has pushed ahead with nuclear testing without being a party to
the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Under the accord, however,
Washington agreed to supply India with civilian use nuclear
technology and fuel on the condition that it undergoes proper
inspections. France and Russia have also followed in this path,
effectively expanding the move to treat India as an exception to the
nonproliferation regime.

During Wednesday's summit meeting, Singh sought Japan's support of
this accord. Abe stopped short of taking a clear stance on this
issue, and noted: "As the only country in the world to have
experienced atomic bombings, we will carefully consider the impact
the agreement will have on the nuclear nonproliferation regime."

We find this response inscrutable. It is inexcusable for the prime
minister of the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks to be
so vague. Even the closest of friends must be reprimanded when the
time is right. Isn't it the role of Japan to clearly state that no
concessions can be made on the issue of nuclear nonproliferation?

Abe's value-driven diplomacy has been colored with the nuance of
outflanking China from the very start. Since fiscal 2003, India has
replaced China as the top recipient nation of yen credits. The value
of this loan assistance, in fact, has swelled hand in hand with the
advance of Abe's value-driven diplomacy.

To Japan, however, the significance of China is too immense to even
justify comparisons with India. In terms of the number of Japanese
citizens living abroad, for example, while close to 100,000 reside
in China, the number of Japanese in India is only around 2,000. The
degree of interdependence is totally different.

It is painfully clear that Abe's diplomatic approach is to use India
as a lever in a strategy aimed at containing Beijing. India,
however, is also expanding its ties with China, and is not the type
of country to easily accept Japan's approach. Abe needs to rethink
his simplistic diplomacy that just shouts values.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 24(IHT/Asahi: August 25,2007)

*****************************************************************
 14 Guardian Unlimited: Pakistan Tests Nuclear-Capable Missile 

Saturday August 25, 2007 3:16 PM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan on Saturday successfully 
test-fired a new air-launched cruise missile capable of carrying 
a nuclear warhead, the military said.

   The missile, named Hatf-8 or Ra'ad, has a range of 220 miles, 
an army statement said.

 The missile gives the air force a ``strategic standoff 
capability'' - the ability to strike over a long distance - and 
could be fitted with any type of warhead, the army said.

   President Gen. Pervez Musharraf congratulated the scientists 
and engineers who developed the weapon, it added,

   Pakistan routinely tests various nuclear-capable missiles in 
its arsenal, believed to be designed mainly to match that of 
neighboring archrival India.

 The two countries have fought three wars since gaining 
independence from Britain in 1947. Both carried out underground 
nuclear tests in May 1998.

  However, in 2004 they began a series of negotiations to 
normalize relations and settle their dispute over the divided 
Himalayan territory of Kashmir, over which two wards have been 
fought.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
*****************************************************************
 15 The Hindu: RSS backs Left, says its posturing over 123 justified

Saturday, August 25, 2007 : 1730 Hrs

New Delhi, Aug. 25 (PTI): The Left has received support for its
opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal from unexpected quarters,
with the RSS saying its "posturing" over the 123 agreement is
justified.

"Whatever be the explanation for the Congress party's new-found
arrogance, the Left is justified in its posturing (over the nuclear
deal," an editorial in Sangh mouthpiece Organiser said.

It came in the wake of senior BJP leader L K Advani's unsuccessful
bid to seek the Left's support in his party's call for a vote in
parliament on the nuclear agreement, which both say will limit
India's strategic options.

"There is no mention in the deal in the common minimum programme,
under which this bizarre government was formed. There was no need
for the UPA to take forward the deal compromising national
interest," the Sangh write-up said.

It accused the ruling UPA of using tricks to avoid early elections
and said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could have avoided
confrontation with the Left over the deal.

"The Left is understandably hurt that the prime minister chose to
take to the street a matter that could have been sorted out at the
dining table," the editorial said.


Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the
*****************************************************************
 16 Times of India: Relax, Mr Karat: 123 is a non-starter

Swaminomics-Swaminathan A Aiyar-Columnists-Opinion-

Updated: 27 Aug 2007, 0337hrs IST  |  Powered by Indiatimes

26 Aug 2007, 

Even if the US converts the 123 agreement into law, no US supplier
will look at India until it passes a liability protection law. Since
the Congress-led coalition lacks a majority, it cannot pass any
legislation without your support. By refusing to support legislation
on liability protection, you can ensure that the agreement is not
operationalised.

Dear Prakash Karat,

You are so upset at the thought of India becoming a strategic
partner of the US that yo-ur Left Front is determined not to allow
nuclear cooperation between the two countries. You have said that
the honeymoon between the Congress Party and CPI(M) is over, but the
marriage is not. But you have threatened to end the marriage too if
the Congress Party takes the next steps to make operational the
so-called 123 agreement negotiated by the two countries.

Before the 123 deal can be submitted to the US legislature, India
has to negotiate a formal agreement with the International Atomic
Energy Authority on safeguards. That will be followed by clearance
from the Nuclear Suppliers Group to resume supplies to India. After
that, the 123 bill will go to US Congress for approval, following
which India can once again get nuclear supplies from the world.

You have threatened to withdraw support to the ruling coalition if
it starts talks with the IAEA and Nuclear Suppliers Group. You want
to stymie the deal now itself, so that it cannot go to US Congress.
To this end, you have threatened to pull down the government and
precipitate an early general election. That is risky: given your
party's troubles in West Bengal and Kerala, you may lose many of the
seats (and veto power) that you have in the Lok Sabha today. Why
take such a risk? You seem unaware of a key technical issue that
gives you a very powerful hand indeed, strong enough to trump the
Congress Party's cards. Even if the government clears all hurdles
and the 123 agreement becomes law, it is in your power to prevent
any US multinational from making any nuclear supplies.

The reason lies in the potential liability of US suppliers for any
future nuclear accident. For most industries, an accident affects
only a limited number of people in the neighbourhood. But the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union sent nuclear
radiation all the way to Scandinavia. A future accident could kill
or maim millions of people across several countries, all of whom
could sue the plant operators and suppliers of equipment. The legal
damages would bankrupt any supplier.

In the Bhopal gas case, Indian courts issued a warrant for the
arrest of the head of Union Carbide on criminal charges. The Three
Mile Island accident in the US further raised public apprehensions,
and Chernobyl was the final straw. So, US companies today refuse to
supply equipment, know-how or blueprints to a country unless it
first enacts legislation limiting the liability of suppliers.
Indeed, the UN nuclear industry wants all countries to sign a
comprehensive convention channelling all liabilities of an accident
to the operator of the plant, leaving the suppliers unscathed.

In the US itself the liability of the nuclear industry is capped,
with the US government guaranteeing to pay damages over and above
the cap. Similar laws have been enacted in Japan, Korea and even
China. But for this, China would not have received so many bids for
its new generation of nuclear plants.

However, India does not have any such law. At a meeting of the CII
and US Chambers of Commerce in Washington in June, Mr Omer Brown,
one of the top legal experts on nuclear liability who also
represents the US nuclear industry, said that no American firm would
supply even a blueprint, let alone equipment, until India provided
nuclear liability protection.

A nuclear liability regime would ensure compensation to the public
in the event of an accident, he explained. Such a regime would also
channel all liabilities to the nuclear facility's operator
(eliminating the need to prove fault or sue multiple parties), and
would designate a single competent court to consolidate all claims
and give a final, binding verdict. It would cap the liability of the
industry, with the government paying damages above the cap.

So, Mr Karat, even if the US converts the 123 agreement into law, no
US supplier will look at India until it passes a liability
protection law. Since the Congress-led coalition lacks a majority in
Parliament, it cannot pass any legislation without your support. By
refusing to support legislation on liability protection, you can
ensure that the 123 agreement is not operationalised.

Now, foreign government-owned companies may be happy to supply
nuclear equipment because they have an implicit government
guarantee, and cannot be bankrupted by legal suits. Russian nuclear
companies are government controlled, and would be willing to make
supplies without a liability law. They are already doing this for
the Koodankalam nuclear plant. The French nuclear industry is also
government controlled. But it has strong private shareholders too,
and these may insist on liability protection. Without question, the
Russians would have a huge advantage over all others.

So Mr Karat, relax. Let the government negotiate with the IAEA and
Nuclear Suppliers Group. Let the US pass the 123 law. And then sit
back happily and watch Russia win all the nuclear contracts that
follow. No need to file any divorce papers, you have veto power in
this marriage.

Copyright © 2007 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 17 Indiatimes: Nuke deal salvo?

Updated: 27 Aug, 2007, 0506 hrs IST  |  Powered by Indiatimes

26 Aug, 2007, 0454 hrs IST,Shantanu Nandan Sharma , TNN

Tuesday, August 21

Parliament witnesses pandemonium over India’s ambassador to US
Ronen Sen’s remark that the Indo-US nuclear deal had caused people
in New Delhi to run around like “headless chicken”. Barely two
kms away at A K Gopalan Bhawan, a handful of young CPI(M) cadres are
busy decorating the place and setting up a shamiyana (temporary
tent) for the next day’s big event — central committee meet to
endorse politburo’s decision on nuke deal. Monitoring the work of
the spirited lot is none other than Brinda Karat, a politburo member
and wife of the party chief Prakash Karat. Politely refusing to
answer SundayET’s queries, Ms Karat says: “We are having the CC
(central committee meet) tomorrow. I can’t tell you anything
now.”

Wednesday, August 22

A VVIP ambassador car is parked at Ajoy Bhawan, CPI headquarters in
Delhi. Union minister of state for mines T Subbarami Reddy, a
Congress leader, is struggling hard to find the workstations of CPI
bigwigs A B Bardhan and D Raja. He finally meets the leaders and
exchanges niceties. When encountered by SundayET, Mr Reddy refuses
to divulge what transpires during that short meeting. Late in the
evening, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury bunks the last one hour of
the discussion of the CC meeting and drives down his blue Maruti Zen
to attend Prime Minister’s dinner in honour of Japanese PM Shinzo
Abe.

Thursday, August 23

The CPI(M) Central Committee does endorse the politburo’s nuke
decisions, but by then, Left supremo Prakash Karat calms down
considerably and signals that the fall of the UPA government is not
imminent.

The government heaves a sigh of relief, albeit temporarily. This
means that it remains in the saddle for a few months more, and if
analysts are to be believed, the next wave of turbulence may come
only after the government presents the Union Budget. While the
political circle in New Delhi is abuzz that the UPA government is
safe till May next year, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will have
no other option but to yield to the wishes of the Left parties and
unwillingly slow down his pace of action to clinch the nuke deal.

However, it’s not the first time that the UPA government has
with-stood the pressure from the Left parties. In the last 39 months
of co-existence, the UPA has gone ahead with certain decisions, such
as oil prices hike, despite massive opposition from the Left.

Yet, the reformist camp within the UPA had to succumb to the wishes
of the Left and junked the second wave of economic reforms in
bank-ing, pension, insurance and labour issues. No wonder, the
momentum of the 1991 reforms initiated by Dr Manmohan Singh as the
finance minister, has slowed down mainly because of coalition
compulsions.

Disinvestment of public sector undertakings was the first casualty
once the Congress-Left marriage took place at the Centre and agreed
on a common minimum programme. The reformist leadership made
unsuccessful bids to convince the Left on labour reforms by
attempting to club it together with a sound social security net. But
that attempt failed miserably.

Says a senior bureaucrat connected to the development: “The
gov-ernment started working on labour reforms, but had to abandon it
midway because of political compulsions. But India is losing huge
contracts as industries can’t afford to hire labourers for three
to six months.”

However, CPI national secretary D Raja refuses to believe that the
Left parties are stalling the government’s second generation
reforms agenda. “At times, we have agreed to something which we
don’t believe in. For example, the private participation in
modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports. They (Congress) talked
about the urgency because of the Commonwealth Games and we finally
agreed. Ideally, the Airport Authority of India should build our
airports, as it will be done in case of Kolkata and Chennai
airports. Also, why do you want to increase FDI in the insurance
sector when our own PSUs are so effective,” asks Raja.

That’s not all. On their reservation about the introduction of
labour reforms, which in turn would have created more employment
opportunities in addition to helping 90% of the labour force working
in unorganised sector, Raja says: “We will oppose any attempt to
bring in contract labour and mitigate trade unionism.”

Whereas the Left has stalled all major reforms agenda of the UPA, it
has whole-heartedly supported the government’s initiatives which
are relatively restrictive in nature. The Indian post office
amendment bill, 2007 is a classic example.

The Left lends its support to the bill which intends to prevent
private courier companies from carrying any letter or parcel below
150 grams, and also seeks to limit the FDI in the sector to 49%.

At times, the Left has opposed government’s initiatives which are
largely acceptable to most state governments as well. Despite
several state governments notifying a revision in their respective
pension and GPF rules, the Left expressed its reservations in
pension reforms. But the government is getting nervous as the total
pension liabilities of the states and the Centre may go up to
whopping Rs 1,00,000 crore by 2009-10.

CPI(M) member of Parliament and the party’s central committee
member Nilotpal Basu argues that the government can’t take
decisions in isolation if those are not included in the common
minimum programme. “We can’t agree with certain reform
proposals. How can we support any attempt to place pension fund in
the stock market? Even in developed countries, where there is a
sound social security net, such reforms have backfired. Similarly,
we can’t accept labour reforms which are tantamount to hire and
fire policy,” he says.

Senior Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi, however, feels that the
final buck stops with the government. “The coalition dharma
requires wide-ranging consultation and appreciation of different
viewpoints. Once everyone’s views are understood and appreciated,
ultimately the decision has to be that of the government, and in
such decision-making, no individual constituent can have a veto.”

But have the UPA managers at times failed to convince the Left? Or
has the Left remained unsuccessful in bringing in political and
social reforms despite their proximity to the corridors of power.
Analysts feel that both have hits and misses. Boston Consulting
Group (BCG) chairman Arun Maira says that coalition politics is not
always ugly. “In coalition politics, different interest groups get
represented. But it could be successful only if their views are
integrated.

The second wave of economic reforms was held up because of the
government’s inability to execute political and social reforms,”
he reasons.

But should the nuke deal, which will make India energy efficient, be
a casualty of India’s coalition politics. The Left is crystal
clear that it is opposing the deal because of the growing US
influence in India. Basu from CPI(M) argues: “We can’t look at
the development in isolation. It’s a part of the US strategy to
make India a subservient state. It’s not acceptable to us.”

So where does the deal stand now? Will it survive at the cost of the
government, or the government will survive at the cost of the deal.
“Unless there is a change to report, you must assume that the
original position remains. In that sense, no change like no news is
good news,” says Singhvi.

But the million dollar question is how long “no news” remains.

Copyright © 2007 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 18 Indiatimes: It can really make us powerful

Updated: 27 Aug, 2007, 0316 hrs IST  |  Powered by Indiatimes

27 Aug, 2007, 0312 hrs IST,Subhash Narayan , TNN

The Indian power sector has come a long way since Independence. From
a generation capacity of mere 1,362mw in 1947, it has grown to
1,32,329mw by the end of fiscal 2006-07. While the growth has been
phenomenal, the country is still faced with acute power shortage
—with energy and peak shortages of 9.5% (55,000 million units) and
14.2% (14,500mw).

The new Electricity Act has given a fresh impetus to growth of
generation capacity to enable the government to provide power for
all by 2012. While policy is aiding growth, it has continued to base
a substantial share of this on development of thermal power
projects, which already account for about 60% of country’s total
power generation capacity.

Even future projects of growth are largely dependant on coal, which,
at current level of usage, is expected to last only 65 years.

The growth of hydel power has progressed slowly owing to land
acquisition and environment-related problems. Nuclear power, which
accounts for a mere 3% of our total generation capacity, is
projected to evolve as one of the future sources of energy for the
country. One reason for its stunted growth is acute shortage of fuel
— uranium.

It is here that the Indo-US deal will give a big boost to the
nuclear sector. The most important boost will be that our
fuel-starved nuclear power stations could hope to get adequate
supplies to bring back the plant load factor (PLF) from present 60%
to over 90% as was the case earlier.

In the medium term, the deal would provide room for faster expansion
of our network of nuclear power stations. “If we are looking at a
long-term solution for building energy security, nuclear energy’s
contribution would have to go up to at least 10% in medium term.
This would mean about 100,000mw of capacity by 2030 by when total
generation is expected to rise to 1 million mw. If this has to
happen, the Indo-US deal would play an important role,” said Mr
Kirit Parikh, member (energy), Planning Commission.

Mr Parikh said the uranium fuel in India’s nuclear plants costs
three times than the prevailing global prices due to poor deposits.
It is, therefore, important that foreign players bring in technology
for scientific mining of uranium ore so that not only quantity of
ore in increased but also quality is improved,” Mr Parikh said. At
present, uranium ore is a low-grade 0.1% compared with 12-14%
globally.

Copyright © 2007 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. For
*****************************************************************
 19 Indiatimes: Beyond the text lies the n-ucleus
 
Updated: 27 Aug, 2007, 0351 hrs IST  |  Powered by Indiatimes

27 Aug, 2007, 0345 hrs IST,T K Arun, TNN

The nuclear deal advances, rather than caps, India’s strategic
capabilities. And instead of making India a US vassal, it would make
India stronger to pursue its own agenda resisting pressure from all
quarters. The trouble is, all this cannot be read from the text of
the deal. Marxists are rarely fond of Derrida, but the CPI(M) polit
bureau insists that everything’s in the text. Perhaps, they should
also take a look at the nuclear deal’s context as well.

The text of the deal is designed to enable Indian and US leaders to
tell their respective constituents that all their concerns have been
taken care of. On its basis, the US President can tell Congress that
all its laws, including the Hyde Act, complete with its provision
for terminating nuclear co-operation with India should India conduct
a nuclear test, would be honoured. On the basis of the same text, Mr
Manmohan Singh can assure Parliament that the deal delivers on his
promises on the subject. Both would be entirely honest, too.

The short point is that, verbal jugglery aside, the chain of events
set in motion by the deal’s consummation would ensure neither
India’s nuclear energy programme nor its weapons programme would
come to harm. The 1954 Atomic Energy Act, under whose Section 123
the US finalises a co-operation agreement with every country with
which it wants to deal in nuclear commerce, provides for
presidential waiver of mandated sanctions if such waiver is in the
US national interest.

It is in pursuit of US national interest that president Bush wants
to end India’s nuclear isolation: a democratic India is a
desirable counterweight to the growing might of China in the region.
This is not the first time the US has created such counterweights.
Nixon and Kissinger enabled China to walk in from the cold and into
the hall of the world’s powers in the seventies, to create a
counterweight to the Soviet Union. Is it anybody’s case that
China, as a result, has evolved as a US puppet?

Even if some legal provision comes in the way of the US continuing
to advance its national interest by maintaining nuclear co-operation
with India, India would not suffer. Once India secures nuclear
material supply agreements from individual members of the Nuclear
Suppliers’ Group, non-US members like Russia could step in where
the US leaves off. But the 123 deal and active US lobbying on
India’s behalf within the NSG are key for India to secure deals
with NSG members.

This is why, as G Balachandran explains more elaborately on these
pages, the time for India to negotiate agreements with the IAEA and
the NSG is now, not later. Subsequent US administrations, too, are
likely to see a strong India as a desirable strategic counterweight
to China. But they may not display the same enthusiasm for ending
India’s technology denial regime as the present one has. We want
to strike deals with NSG members when an NSG member seeking onerous
conditions from India is likely to encounter a US administration
mouthing a charming request for the member to pipe down.

It would be wholly unfortunate if India were to allow this moment to
pass, thanks to internal wrangling. The reality is that, in
extenuating circumstances, every country acts in its own interest,
walking away from deals and treaties, to begin life afresh.
Elaborate discussion of contingency planning for remote
possibilities is what think tanks are paid for. To give up what is
on offer, for fear of what remotely could be, is even less Marxist
than post-modernism.

Copyright © 2007 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 20 Rutland Herald: Yankee strike averted

August 25, 2007

By Susan Smallheer Herald Staff

VERNON — It's been a long week at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant:
A strike of unionized workers appeared imminent and Entergy Nuclear
officials cut power production, and revenue, by 50 percent because
of the partial collapse of a cooling tower.

Company officials Friday said they still had no idea how a
three-story section of one of its giant cooling towers unexpectedly
collapsed Tuesday, even though the tower was inspected earlier this
year.

But the threat of a strike appeared to have been averted when a
company official announced Friday evening that a tentative agreement
was reached shortly before 9 p.m.

"This averts any action tomorrow," said company spokesman Larry
Smith, referring to the promise by the union to strike Saturday
afternoon if a deal wasn't reached.

Smith said members of the International Brotherhood of Electric
Workers, Local 303, Unit 8, were slated to vote on the new offer
Monday afternoon.

Contract talks were held all day in a motel in nearby Brattleboro as
the strike deadline set by 157 unionized workers for Saturday
afternoon grew closer. But around suppertime, a union rally
scheduled for Saturday in Brattleboro was abruptly cancelled.

With the threat of a strike looming, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission had sent a special team to the Vernon plant Friday to
ensure that if there was a strike, Entergy Nuclear's contingency
plan of operating the reactor with managers would go smoothly.

Plant officials let news reporters and photographers view the damage
to the cooling tower for the first time Friday, relenting after
three days of turning down requests for photos or a tour.

John Dreyfuss, director of quality assurance for Entergy Nuclear,
said Friday that Entergy was dismantling the damaged tower but still
didn't know what caused its collapse earlier in the week.

The plant remained at 50 percent power, which forced Vermont
utilities to find replacement power on the spot market.

"We don't understand the cause of [the collapse] yet," Dreyfuss said
Friday afternoon, as mist from the one operating cooling tower fell
on plant workers, keeping them cool on a very hot day.

Barricades had been erected to keep construction workers from the
high-security part of the nuclear plant.

Dreyfuss said the company would take down the wooden timbers that
survived the collapse "piece by piece" to try to determine what
caused the collapse.

Dramatic photos taken within minutes of the collapse, either by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission or Entergy staff, were obtained and
circulated by the anti-nuclear group New England Coalition on
Wednesday night. Those photos show a 54-inch broken pipe gushing
350,000 gallons of water a minute onto the ground, amid a pile of
debris.

Dreyfuss said the company had heard sounds coming from the cooling
tower last week, but he said that sounds are not usual, since there
is only 1/8-inch clearance between the giant fans and their housing.
He said that section of the plant is usually reviewed twice a day.

But he said the collapse Tuesday took the company by surprise, even
though the company knew something was wrong and was getting ready to
reduce power and take that cooling tower off-line so it could
investigate.

Dreyfuss said there had been no talk about seeking a waiver from the
state Agency of Natural Resources or relief from the state
Environmental Court so that it could discharge hotter water back
into the Connecticut River and use just the one, undamaged cooling
tower.

The company has state approval to use the cooling towers less and
discharge hotter water back into the river, but that discharge
permit has been successfully fought by environmental groups, forcing
the company to use the cooling towers and adhere to earlier, lower
temperatures. Under the new permit, Entergy was given permission to
increase the temperature of the Connecticut River by 1 degree; the
water it discharges routinely can hit 100 degrees.

"That 1 degree would be helpful to us right now," Dreyfuss said.

The towers had been under regulatory scrutiny for the past two years
or more, since the New England Coalition had raised questions about
their safety in light of the 20 percent power boost. Larger and
heavier fans were placed on top of the cooling towers to help
dissipate the additional decay heat generated by the reactor.

Raymond Shadis, senior technical advisor for the New England
Coalition, said the best thing would be if Entergy shut the entire
plant down, instead of running at 50 percent.

"If they do a thorough exam on the cooling towers, they either have
to shut the plant down, or seek emergency relief from the
Environmental Court."

The green shroud that housed a giant fan on top of the structure had
been removed and placed on the ground next to the two banks of
towers.

Dreyfuss, who is directing the cleanup and repair effort, said the
plant would remain at 50 percent power for the foreseeable future,
and he said there was no pressure from Entergy Nuclear executives to
get the plant back on line with hotter weather unfolding over New
England. He refused to say how much money the company was losing at
50 percent power.

The cooling tower, one of two structures south of the reactor
building, sits on top of a 1.5 million-gallon cooling water
reservoir. The water, taken from the nearby Connecticut River, is
piped through the towers and allowed to trickle down inside the
wood, fiberglass and metal structure, which company officials called
a "rain forest."

Dreyfuss said the two cooling towers were the most "low-tech"
equipment at the Vernon reactor, and he downplayed the collapse,
saying it didn't affect the safety of the plant. Giant cranes were
in place next to the west cooling tower, which also contains that
one cooling cell that is needed for safety backup of the reactor.

Also visiting Vermont Yankee were Vermont State Police investigators
with the Homeland Security division, according to Entergy officials,
returning to the site after an initial visit Wednesday.

And the Department of Public Service sent the state's nuclear
engineer to the plant Thursday to begin its own investigation into
the failure.

With the strike deadline looming, workers put up an informational
picket line on Putney Road, across from the Colonial Motel, where
contract talks were being held.

About a dozen workers with signs that said things like "I don't want
to strike, but I will," and "Honk if you hate greed," were greeted
with a constant barrage of honking horns as members of the community
expressed support.

A tentative agreement reached last week was rejected Tuesday by the
157 members in secret balloting. The next day the union gave Entergy
Nuclear the required 72-hour notice that a strike might occur.

Workers on the picket line Friday afternoon said the dispute
centered on wages and cuts in health insurance, and they said they
were the lowest-paid workers in Entergy's nuclear plants, at wages
$3 to $9 per hour less.

One worker, Marleen Souligny of West Brattleboro, who said she has
worked at 40 different nuclear plants in radiological protection,
said that the top Entergy brass were making big increases, while the
workers were not sharing in record revenue and profits.

A lot of experienced workers are leaving Vermont Yankee for work at
other nuclear power plants because of low-for-the-industry wages,
said several workers.

Dave Truesdell of Shelburne Falls, Mass., said he had worked at the
plant for 36 years — dating back to when it was under construction.

Truesdell, who works in the water chemistry department, said workers
were also concerned that health benefits for retirees were being cut.

Truesdell and others said that this was the first full three-year
contract under Entergy ownership, and that it was a very different
contract atmosphere since the multi-state corporation had taken over.

He said there had been two other strikes at Vermont Yankee, in 1974
and 1979; one lasted one week, the other five weeks.

Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
said that strikes at nuclear plants were rare. There was an 11-week
strike at the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey in 2003, he said, and
strikes at plants in Virginia in 2002.

"Strikes do occur but they're rare," he said.

Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.

   © 2007 Rutland Herald
*****************************************************************
 21 JOURNAL NEWS: Rockland joins effort to expand Indian Point licensing review

Saturday, August 25, 2007

By LAURA INCALCATERRA

NEW CITY - Rockland County has joined an effort to get the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission to change its relicensing criteria 
regarding Indian Point.

Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano took the case to 
federal court in February after the NRC denied the county's 
petition to change the criteria. He said the agency decided 
without holding hearings or making fact-finding efforts.

The NRC does not consider factors such as population density and 
the ability to conduct an effective emergency evacuation as part 
of the relicensing process.

Spano wants the NRC to consider both those issues, along with 
plant security, including its vulnerability to terrorist attacks.

Rockland County is now seeking the same.

"We want them to look at the plant as if it were a brand-new 
plant coming in," County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef said. 
"Would you put it here if you were starting over?"

The case is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit 
in Manhattan and could be heard in mid-October.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan, said yesterday that the agency's 
primary areas of focus was plant operations, including safety 
systems, structures and components, and potential environmental 
impacts that could result from a 20-year license extension.

He said the NRC had received requests over the years to expand 
its criteria, but it had not done so because the agency routinely 
reviewed many of the issues raised by Spano.

For example, the NRC does not wait 20 years to review evacuation 
plans but does so routinely, he said.

"We're not looking at it separately as part of the license 
renewal," Sheehan said. "We're looking at it on an ongoing 
basis."

Rockland Legislature Chairwoman Harriet Cornell said she expected 
that more action would be needed and that it was possible the 
county would officially intervene in the NRC's review process. 
Such action would provide the county with certain legal standing 
as the review proceeded.

Vanderhoef said it might be difficult to intervene if the county 
cannot determine specific scientific and environmental concerns. 
The county cannot raise issues such as population density and its 
compatibility with nuclear power, since the NRC does not consider 
those criteria in its review.

Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which owns and operates Indian Point 2 
and Indian Point 3, announced plans the day before Thanksgiving 
to apply for license extensions for both plants. If granted, the 
renewals would allow the plants to operate until 2033 and 2035, 
respectively.

The original 40-year license for Indian Point 2 will expire in 
2013. A similar license for Indian Point 3 will expire in 2015.

Staff writer Greg Clary contributed to this report. Reach Laura 
Incalcaterra at lincalca@lohud.com or 845-578-2486.

 plants' cleanup may create side-effect

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070826/ap_on_bi_ge/clean_air_dirty_land&p
rinter=1;_ylt=Ak0UCEUr8nnHsUtna.s0wzFv24cA

By ANNA JO BRATTON, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 47 minutes ago
As the nation's coal-fired power plants work to create cleaner
skies, they'll likely fill up landfills with millions more tons of
potentially harmful ash.

More than one-third of the ash generated at the country's hundreds
of coal-fired plants is now recycled — mixed with cement to build
highways or used to stabilize embankments, among other things.

But in a process being used increasingly across the nation,
chemicals are injected into plants' emissions to capture airborne
pollutants.

That, in turn, changes the composition of the ash and cuts its
usefulness. It can't be used in cement, for example, because the
interaction of the chemicals may keep the concrete from hardening.
That ash has to go somewhere — so it usually ends up in landfills,
along with the rest of the unusable waste.

"You're replacing an air problem with a land problem — a disposal
problem," said Bruce Dockter, a research engineer with the Energy
and Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota.
Coal ash naturally contains arsenic and mercury, and if the elements
leach into groundwater they can contaminate drinking supplies. The
EPA says ash disposed of in landfills could pose significant risks
when mismanaged, and there are gaps in state regulation.

And the chemicals added to clean up emissions — such as ammonia,
lime and calcium hydroxide — make the ash worse, environmental
groups say, because they take toxins such as mercury out of the air
but leave higher levels of it in the ash.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency doesn't classify coal ash —
with or without the added chemicals — as a hazardous waste, although
many environmental groups say it should.

"As a general rule, anything you do to make the air emissions
cleaner makes the ash more toxic," said Lisa Evans, an attorney with
Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm.

More than 120 million tons of ash and other leftovers come from coal
combustion each year in the United States, and more than 46 million
tons are reused, according to the American Coal Ash Association.

Environmental groups encourage reuse of the ash because it keeps
most of the waste out of landfills. And substituting ash for cement
means less mining for the materials typically used to make cement —
consequently causing a drop in the amount of carbon dioxide that
would be emitted by mining machinery.

But the EPA is pushing power companies to cut emissions of the
sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which add to smog and acid rain
and contribute to thousands of premature deaths, asthma and other
respiratory ailments. A large portion of those emissions come from
coal plants, the EPA says.

"If you live near a power plant, you want the cleanest air
possible," said Dave Goss, executive director of the American Coal
Ash Association. "If in exchange for clean air they have to dispose
of material — that's the challenge. The only option may be putting
it in a landfill."

It's not clear how many plants already using or will use the new
technology or how much ash may be affected, but the technique is
becoming widespread as companies work to comply with federal
guidelines, Goss said.

The issue was raised as the EPA developed air emissions rules, but
the power sector has found ways to minimize the impact, said EPA
spokesman John Millett, who said the agency doesn't believe the
increased injection of the chemicals into ash will cause a
significant drop-off in ash recycling.

But the effects are evident in Nebraska, for example, where the
Omaha Public Power District sells about 135,000 tons of ash from its
current plant near Nebraska City every year. Ash from a new plant
being built nearby will be injected with chemicals to clean
emissions, and it will be dumped in a 16-acre landfill to be built
onsite at a cost of $2.7 million, said Mike Jones, a spokesman for
the utility.

"You've got to do something with it," Jones said. "This was the best
option."

The landfill will fill up in about five years and likely have to be
expanded.

Xcel Energy Inc. will use the injection equipment on a new plant
near Pueblo, Colo., and also will install the equipment on two
existing units there. The ash will be dumped in a 250-acre onsite
landfill.

But even if there is a drop in recycling, the trade-off might be
worth it.

"The benefits of the additional (emission) reductions from these
controls is immense," Millett said.

In Nebraska, the dump sites are closely regulated, said Bill Gidley,
a section supervisor with the state's Department of Environmental
Quality. Landfills must have liners to collect seepage, and they are
inspected every year.

This month, the Maryland Department of the Environment ordered the
operator of an 80-acre Anne Arundel County coal ash dump to clean
contaminated water detected near the site. Cancer-causing metals
were discovered last fall in almost two dozen wells in the area.
BBSS Inc. also was fined an undisclosed amount.

In a 2000 report, the EPA promised to re-evaluate the potential
risks of coal ash and is developing regulations for disposal of coal
byproducts in landfills, spokeswoman Roxanne Smith said.

There are ways to remove the pollutants from emissions without
making the ash unusable. But that equipment can be up to four times
more expensive, adding millions of dollars to the cost of meeting
EPA guidelines, Goss said.

"The utility's primary goal is to provide cheap, dependable
electricity for you, the consumer, connected to the grid," he said.
"In order to do that and maintain compliance, sometimes the only
thing they can do is make the ash unusable."
___

On the Net:
American Coal Ash Association: http://www.acaa-usa.org
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov
Coal Ash Research Center, University of North Dakota:
http://www.undeerc.org/carrc


Virtually all of the waste produced by nuclear power is contained
onsite and stored for eventual disposal. And most all of the
radioactivity decays in about one hundred years. All of Indian
Points used fuel is stored in a very small pool - the pool is only
about 10 meters by 15 meters across. Anti nuclear wackos have
created a myth that the used fuel is lethal for thousands of years.
That is simply not true.

Don't expect riverkeeper, Gannett, or Harry Reid to acknowledge this
inconvenient truth.

Posted by: nuclear environmentalist on Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:17 pm

======================================================================

 We had thought at first that Greg Clary had taken a well-earned
vacation. However, it seems he has been rotated out of the IPEC
chair, and less informed staffers such as Mr. Risinit, and Ms.
Incalcatera have been rotated in. So be it.

Luckily for Americans, some positions of responsibility are not
subject to the popularity reviews , and the resultant pandering that
elective office brings.

Residents and officials in the Hudson Valley have been blitzed with
nonsense concerns having more to do with Robert F. Kennedy jr.'s
electoral ambitions, than with any true granting of safety and
security to the populace. Ignoring dam failures, train bombings,
bridge collapses, and a host of more plausible scenarios, Mr.
Kennedy's rather aloof hubris has assigned priority numero uno to
the local electrical plant-- a plant that will be sorely needed, if
local lifeways are to be sustained, and continued, ........which is
not a concern to Kennedy, maintaining simultaneous residencies in
Virginia, Hyannis Mass, and Bannff Canada.

Out of touch as he has been, he nevertheless has provided the media
ticket to elevate lacklustre local politicoes to near-viability, in
wrongly singling out a generating station as the sum of all
terrorist aims, the sum of all fears, and the sum of all local
activist complaint. Fortunately, people do not buy it.

We need that electricity. We think America is more secure than
insecured. We want life to be free of maudlin calls for
renunciation, for internal scorched-earth venom pogroms, and for
domestic dissension. We long for mutuality, clarity, normalcy, and
an absence of anarchist kant.

The Indian Point issue is decided.

Lacking any replacement, the facility must be preserved, to the
preservation of lifeways to which we are entitled. Those seeing
lacks are urged to fill those lacks, protect our American lifeways,
and get on with being responsible citizens.

Posted by: VP_VP on Sat Aug 25, 2007 7:52 pm

Copyright © 2007 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper 
serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York.

*****************************************************************
 22 Times Argus: Vermont Yankee officials are baffled by cooling tower collapse

August 25, 2007

By Susan Smallheer Rutland Herald

Vermont Yankee officials walk by the damaged cooling tower at the 
nuclear power plant in Vernon. The huge fan blade can be seen 
above. Photo: Vyto Starinskas/Rutland Herald

VERNON — It's been a long week at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant:
A strike of unionized workers appeared imminent and Entergy Nuclear
officials cut power production, and revenue, by 50 percent because
of the partial collapse of a cooling tower.

Company officials Friday said they still had no idea how a
three-story section of one of its giant cooling towers unexpectedly
collapsed Tuesday, even though the tower was inspected earlier this
year.

But the threat of a strike appeared to have been averted when a
company official announced Friday evening that a tentative agreement
was reached shortly before 9 p.m.

"This averts any action tomorrow," said company spokesman Larry
Smith, referring to the promise by the union to strike Saturday
afternoon if a deal wasn't reached.

Smith said members of the International Brotherhood of Electric
Workers, Local 303, Unit 8, were slated to vote on the new offer
Monday afternoon.

Contract talks were held all day in a motel in nearby Brattleboro as
the strike deadline set by 157 unionized workers for Saturday
afternoon grew closer. But around suppertime, a union rally
scheduled for Saturday in Brattleboro was abruptly cancelled.

With the threat of a strike looming, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission had sent a special team to the Vernon plant Friday to
ensure that if there was a strike, Entergy Nuclear's contingency
plan of operating the reactor with managers would go smoothly.

Plant officials let news reporters and photographers view the damage
to the cooling tower for the first time Friday, relenting after
three days of turning down requests for photos or a tour.

John Dreyfuss, director of quality assurance for Entergy Nuclear,
said Friday that Entergy was dismantling the damaged tower but still
didn't know what caused its collapse earlier in the week.

The plant remained at 50 percent power, which forced Vermont
utilities to find replacement power on the spot market.

"We don't understand the cause of [the collapse] yet," Dreyfuss said
Friday afternoon, as mist from the one operating cooling tower fell
on plant workers, keeping them cool on a very hot day.

Barricades had been erected to keep construction workers from the
high-security part of the nuclear plant.

Dreyfuss said the company would take down the wooden timbers that
survived the collapse "piece by piece" to try to determine what
caused the collapse.

Dramatic photos taken within minutes of the collapse, either by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission or Entergy staff, were obtained and
circulated by the anti-nuclear group New England Coalition on
Wednesday night. Those photos show a 54-inch broken pipe gushing
350,000 gallons of water a minute onto the ground, amid a pile of
debris.

Dreyfuss said the company had heard sounds coming from the cooling
tower last week, but he said that sounds are not usual, since there
is only 1/8-inch clearance between the giant fans and their housing.
He said that section of the plant is usually reviewed twice a day.

But he said the collapse Tuesday took the company by surprise, even
though the company knew something was wrong and was getting ready to
reduce power and take that cooling tower off-line so it could
investigate.

Dreyfuss said there had been no talk about seeking a waiver from the
state Agency of Natural Resources or relief from the state
Environmental Court so that it could discharge hotter water back
into the Connecticut River and use just the one, undamaged cooling
tower.

The company has state approval to use the cooling towers less and
discharge hotter water back into the river, but that discharge
permit has been successfully fought by environmental groups, forcing
the company to use the cooling towers and adhere to earlier, lower
temperatures. Under the new permit, Entergy was given permission to
increase the temperature of the Connecticut River by 1 degree; the
water it discharges routinely can hit 100 degrees.

"That 1 degree would be helpful to us right now," Dreyfuss said.

The towers had been under regulatory scrutiny for the past two years
or more, since the New England Coalition had raised questions about
their safety in light of the 20 percent power boost. Larger and
heavier fans were placed on top of the cooling towers to help
dissipate the additional decay heat generated by the reactor.

Raymond Shadis, senior technical adviser for the New England
Coalition, said the best thing would be if Entergy shut the entire
plant down, instead of running at 50 percent.

"If they do a thorough exam on the cooling towers, they either have
to shut the plant down, or seek emergency relief from the
Environmental Court."

The green shroud that housed a giant fan on top of the structure had
been removed and placed on the ground next to the two banks of
towers.

Dreyfuss, who is directing the cleanup and repair effort, said the
plant would remain at 50 percent power for the foreseeable future,
and he said there was no pressure from Entergy Nuclear executives to
get the plant back on line with hotter weather unfolding over New
England. He refused to say how much money the company was losing at
50 percent power.

The cooling tower, one of two structures south of the reactor
building, sits on top of a 1.5 million-gallon cooling water
reservoir. The water, taken from the nearby Connecticut River, is
piped through the towers and allowed to trickle down inside the
wood, fiberglass and metal structure, which company officials called
a "rain forest."

Dreyfuss said the two cooling towers were the most "low-tech"
equipment at the Vernon reactor, and he downplayed the collapse,
saying it didn't affect the safety of the plant. Giant cranes were
in place next to the west cooling tower, which also contains that
one cooling cell that is needed for safety backup of the reactor.

Workers on the picket line Friday afternoon said the dispute
centered on wages and cuts in health insurance, and they said they
were the lowest-paid workers in Entergy's nuclear plants, at wages
$3 to $9 per hour less.

One worker, Marleen Souligny of West Brattleboro, who said she has
worked at 40 different nuclear plants in radiological protection,
said that the top Entergy brass were making big increases, while the
workers were not sharing in record revenue and profits.

A lot of experienced workers are leaving Vermont Yankee for work at
other nuclear power plants because of low-for-the-industry wages,
said several workers.

Dave Truesdell of Shelburne Falls, Mass., said he had worked at the
plant for 36 years — dating back to when it was under construction.

Truesdell, who works in the water chemistry department, said workers
were also concerned that health benefits for retirees were being cut.

Truesdell and others said that this was the first full three-year
contract under Entergy ownership, and that it was a very different
contract atmosphere since the multi-state corporation had taken over.

He said there had been two other strikes at Vermont Yankee, in 1974
and 1979; one lasted one week, the other five weeks.

Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
said that strikes at nuclear plants were rare. There was an 11-week
strike at the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey in 2003, he said, and
strikes at plants in Virginia in 2002.

"Strikes do occur but they're rare," he said.

Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.

   © 2007 Times Argus
*****************************************************************
 23 toledoblade.com: Strickland plan could 'green' Ohio

Sunday, August 26, 2007

He sees role in renewable energy technology

Four wind turbines operate at the Wood County Landfill in Bowling
Green. Wind power is a source of renewable energy.
( THE BLADE/LISA DUTTON )

By JIM PROVANCE BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU

COLUMBUS - Gov. Ted Strickland doesn't like the word "quota," but 
he said the proposal that he plans to put before lawmakers as 
soon as this week should help make Ohio a player in renewable 
energy technology.

Environmental groups raise their eyebrows, though, when talk of 
setting enforceable "benchmarks" for utilities to go "green" is 
accompanied by talk of an "advanced energy portfolio" that 
encompasses cleaner-coal - and nuclear technology.

"I want my plan to be a comprehensive approach," Mr. Strickland 
said. "It will deal with rates. It will deal with an advanced 
energy portfolio. It will deal with efficiency. There's no 
question in my mind that an emphasis on advanced energy will 
result in jobs being created and new industries being developed."

Environmental groups have called for a minimum standard requiring 
utilities to find 20 percent of their power from renewable 
sources by 2020.

They count wind, solar, low-impact hydroelectric, and landfill 
gases in that mix.

"I've heard that utilities think that's too aggressive, but when 
you look at the rest of the country, it's not an unreasonable 
expectation," Ohio Consumers' Counsel Janine Migden-Ostrander 
said.

"We can accept the 2020, but nothing less."

A study released last week by the nonprofit Environment Ohio 
estimated that 3,100 jobs could be created in the manufacture of 
products related to wind power alone if the state committed to 
going 20 percent wind by 2020.

Ohio gets about 87 percent of its electricity from coal-fired 
power plants that are expected to be the focus of tighter federal 
regulation.

"I understand the concerns related to nuclear power," Mr. 
Strickland said.

"I also understand the concerns related to global warming, and I 
believe there is an increased understanding that, if we're going 
to deal with global warming issues, we're going to have to have a 
very broad portfolio of approaches to this.

"I'm willing to accept whatever concerns may be associated with 
nuclear power because of what I consider to be the greatest, most 
immediate threat to the environment and humankind, which is 
global warming," he said.

He stressed that no utility at the table has indicated plans to 
build a new nuclear power plant, and that there will be nothing 
in his proposal specifically encouraging them to do so.

Inclusion of nuclear power as an advanced technology, however, 
might make it easier for a utility like FirstEnergy Corp., Akron 
parent of Toledo Edison, to meet whatever benchmarks the governor 
proposes.

"Nuclear is a nonemitting source, and for our company, nuclear 
produces 40 percent of the generation our customers' use," 
FirstEnergy spokesman Ralph DiNicola said. "But every power 
source has its issues and you have to deal with them accordingly.

"Clearly, we feel nuclear falls into the renewables camp, from a 
carbon dioxide standpoint, as a nonemitting source," he said.

Amy Gomberg of Environment Ohio said nuclear power shouldn't be 
mentioned in the same breath as renewable energy.

"The problem with coal is that it emits carbon dioxide and 
contributes to global warming, and there's high-level radioactive 
waste associated with nuclear power plants," she said.

"At Davis Besse, we were nearly a quarter of an inch away from a 
nuclear disaster in Ohio," she said.

"It would be short-sighted to consider nuclear power as part of 
the energy makeup of the future."

Blade business writer Jon Chavez contributed to this report.

 © 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
*****************************************************************
 24 The Hindu: Value Parliament's view on nuclear deal, CPI(M) tells PM

Sunday, August 26, 2007 : 2035 Hrs

Ahmedabad, Aug. 26 (PTI): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should 
value the opinion of Indian MPs on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal 
more than that of American lawmakers, senior CPI(M) leader Brinda 
Karat said today.

"We (Left parties) urge the Prime Minister to value the vote of 
the Indian Members of Parliament above the vote of an American 
MP. What we are saying is not to operationalise the deal as the 
issue deeply concerns our future," Karat, who was in the city for 
a party function, told mediapersons.

"We hope the PM takes into account the view that majority in 
Parliament was against the (123) Agreement."

"This is the first time that the interests of the Indian people 
are going to be subordinate to another country's law and legal 
framework," she said.

"The (UPA) govt is at pains to explain that the Hyde Act is not 
applicable to India. But this is a India-centric Act specifically 
cleared by the US Senate," the CPI(M) Polit Bureau member said.

The legislation, which allows the US to initiate civil nuclear 
commerce with India, is named after Republican Congressman Henry 
Hyde, the primer mover of the act. 

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of 
*****************************************************************
 25 chicagotribune.com: Restored faith in nuclear power -- 

August 26, 2007

If an earthquake of about 6 or larger occurs anywhere around the
globe, every single sand grain dances on this planet.

-- Ross Stein, U.S. Geological Survey

Amid the photos of collapsed houses, shattered roads and buckled
bridges, the most arresting image out of Japan after last month's
6.8-magnitude earthquake was of black smoke billowing from an
electrical transformer at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power
plant, near the epicenter. The plant has seven reactors and 8.2
million kilowatts of generating capacity, making it the world's
largest nuclear facility.

Initially, officials said damage was confined to a small fire and a
300 gallon leak of water with negligible amounts of radioactivity.
But that was followed by reports of toppled barrels of low-level
nuclear waste. Then came word that Tokyo Electric may have
unwittingly situated the plant atop an active seismic fault.

After a recent three-day examination of the plant, however, six
international safety experts dispatched by the International Atomic
Energy Agency reported better news. The July 16 earthquake exceeded
the level of seismic activity the facility was designed to
withstand, but the design still helped contain the damage. No one
was hurt, and there was no measurable environmental fallout from the
plant.

"Safety related structures, systems and components of the plant seem
to be in a general condition, much better than might be expected for
such a strong earthquake, and there is no visible significant
damage," the IAEA report said.

That's comforting for Japan, and good news for those who want to
revive the nuclear energy industry in the U.S.

The U.S. has 104 operating reactors at 65 sites, providing roughly
20 percent of the country's energy needs, according to the U.S.
Energy Information Administration. Illinois, with 11 reactors at six
sites, has the highest nuclear capacity of any state.

With energy consumption and concerns about global warming rising,
more nuclear power is a must. It can be done efficiently,
cost-effectively ... and safely.

Before a plant is built in the U.S., extensive studies are done at
the site to account for potential natural hazards. Plants in
different areas are built to different codes, to account for the
likelihood of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding and other
natural disasters.

"They're overdesigned," said David Wald of the U.S. Geological
Survey. "They're very tough structures."

They had at one time also become prohibitively expensive structures.
Unit 1 of the Watts Bar nuclear plant in Tennessee, the last nuclear
reactor to go into service in the U.S., took 23 years to build and
open and cost $6.2 billion. Though the 1979 accident at Three Mile
Island stopped nuclear expansion, skyrocketing costs and endless
construction delays had already started to cripple the industry.

The cost of nuclear power, however, is poised to come down, and its
efficiency has been rising.

In mid-May, the Tennessee Valley Authority successfully rebuilt and
restarted Unit 1 of the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, a five-year,
$1.8 billion effort that came in on time and on budget. The reactor,
which went into service in 1974, was shut down in 1985 after a
series of problems, including a fire.On Aug. 1, the TVA agreed to
complete work on Unit 2 of Watts Bar, a project that was suspended
in 1985. The TVA is approaching this project the same way it
approached the restart of Browns Ferry's Unit 1, laying out a
realistic construction timeline.

Construction also isn't expected to take as long as it once did. The
Harris 1 reactor outside Raleigh, N.C., received a construction
permit in 1978, but didn't receive its operating permit until 1987.
By combining the planned construction and anticipated operation
review into one, the fast track licensing process instituted by the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to compress the
normal time frame to four years. Construction on a plant could be
finished in 36 months.

Inception to operation would take just seven years, meaning that new
nuclear power plants could come online as early as 2015.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said
last May that nuclear power, along with renewable energy sources
such as solar and wind power, has to be in the mix of technologies
to curb global warming.

Nuclear power is a safer industry, it is a more efficient industry,
and it is critical to answering energy demands and protecting the
environment. The U.S. can have faith in nuclear power.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
*****************************************************************
 26 Brattleboro Reformer: Investigation begins at VY

BRATTLEBORO, VT
 
By BOB AUDETTE, Reformer Staff
Saturday, August 25

BRATTLEBORO -- Hard-hatted workers clambered over and around the
wreckage that used to be the wall of one of Vermont Yankee's
external cooling fans Friday, looking for clues as to why the
structure gave way.

Tuesday afternoon, the plant had to ratchet back on its power output
after the wall gave way, spilling plastic slats, asbestos panels and
wood beams onto the ground between the two banks of 11 cooling fans
each.

VIDEO: Close-up look at cooling tower collapse

Normally, a visitor to the site would see water vapor rising from
the cowling around each of the 22 huge fans and hear them spinning,
sucking heat from the water and moving it into the atmosphere.

A visitor would also hear the more than 350,000 gallons of water a
minute that flow through the system, falling through thousands of
plastic slats to cool the water before returning it to reactor,
where it is used to cool and convert steam produced by the reactor
back into water.

Near the top of the cooling tower, a 52-inch pipe that runs along a
platform abruptly ends where a section of the pipe fell to the
ground during the collapse.

The pipe carried the water from the plant and distributed it to the
11 fans in the bank creating what John Dreyfuss, director of nuclear
safety assurance at Vermont Yankee, called "a little rainstorm
inside there."

But on Friday, the fans were turned off. With the reactor running at
50 percent its thermal output is reduced, so the cooling towers are
not needed. Though its power output has fluctuated since the
failure, it is producing on average about 265MWe.

Over the next few days, workers will go through the tangle of debris
piece by piece, trying to find the reason for the failure.

"Not the kind of equipment performance to expect," said Dreyfuss.
"As we remove timbers, we'll also be performing our investigation to
find out what happened," a process he called "very deliberative."

Operators will not crank the plant back up to full power until
workers can confirm the structure of the cooling fans is sound, he
said.

Prior to the wall failure, technicians had shut down the fan because
employees had reported hearing noises coming from it, which they
were unable to reproduce.

"There was no evidence of structural issues (at that time)," said
Dreyfuss.

As for the debris that collapsed out from the wall, "most the
material you see is cosmetic," he said.

On hand to assist in the investigation were state inspectors, two
resident inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and
officials from the state's Office of Homeland Security.

Dreyfuss said homeland security had determined the failure wasn't
caused by sabotage, and discounted the notion that it was related to
ongoing contract negotiations between Entergy, the owners of the
power plant, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, which represents 157 workers there.

"We've ruled that out as well," he said.

Entergy recently received permission to increase Vermont Yankee's
power output by 20 percent, from 540MWe to 650MWe, but Dreyfuss said
there was nothing to indicate the power uprate had anything to do
with the failure.

But not everyone is convinced.

"Did increased water flow rate through the cooling towers, or higher
cooling tower fan turning rates, cause the collapse?" asked David
Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned
Scientists, in an e-mail to the media. "If so, why didn't the
company's and the NRC's pre-uprate reviews identify this threat and
prevent it from happening?"

If they did miss the problem, he wrote, "what other misses have not
yet revealed themselves?"

Nuclear reactors such as that at Vermont Yankee are 33 percent
efficient, wrote Lochbaum.

"While the reactor core may produce three units of energy, only one
unit of electricity is generated," he wrote. "The remaining two
units of energy must be discharged to the environment as waste heat.
Nuclear plants rely on large amounts of water to carry away this
waste heat."

Vermont Yankee has a single-unit boiling water reactor that had a
maximum reactor core power level output of 1593 Megawatts thermal
before its uprate approval. At 120 percent, the plant produces
1912MWt.

Plant cooling is provided by either an open-cycle system, a
closed-cycle system or a hybrid of the two. How the plant cools
depends on various factors, including river and air temperatures,
but its cooling systems are meant to minimize its impact on the
river.

When the plant uses its closed-cycle system, the cooling towers
dissipate heat to the atmosphere. When cooling towers are used,
water from the river is used to replace vapor blown out by the fans.
Most of the rest of the water is sent back to the plant's main
condenser, thousands of metal tubes that carry cooling water which
are used to cool steam from plant turbines and convert it back into
water. That water is sent back to the reactor to produce more steam,
and the water in the condenser is sent back to the towers for
cooling.

In the open-cycle mode, no water passes through the cooling towers.
Water is taken from the river and discharged south of the facility.

Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com or 802-254-2311,
ext. 273.

*****************************************************************
 27 TCPalm: Reactor on Hutchinson Island to remain shut down until next week 

St. Lucie County : 

By Gabriel Margasak (Contact)

Friday, August 24, 2007

HUTCHINSON ISLAND ? A nuclear reactor at Florida Power and Light’s
St. Lucie Plant will remain shut down until next week after
radioactive water used to cool it leaked from a pipe inside the
dome-shaped containment building.

But there was never a danger to public safety, federal regulators
and power company officials said Friday.

An FPL official said the incident at the dual reactor plant would
not affect power output to customers as the company can boost
generation at its other properties.

FPL spokesman Tom Veenstra also said Friday the situation was not
severe enough to trigger an emergency notification to local
authorities or the public. No one was reported hurt shutting down
the reactor.

“Yes it’s radioactive. That’s why you have to take special
precautions and safety when you’re working on that. But it’s in
a containment unit so it would never get out into the atmosphere or
the environment,” he said

Further, he said, “There’s no threat to anyone’s health and
safety.”

The plant had to shut down reactor Unit 2 after crews noticed a
water pipe leak increased from 0.16 gallons per minute to 0.45
gallons per minute during a two-day period, according to a report
from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“It’s not an every day occurrence but obviously when you have
that many pipes and that many seals and the large volume of water
under high pressure . . . plants do identify leaks,” said Roger
Hannah, a spokesman for the regulatory commission.

The leaked water was captured in a sump pool at the bottom of the
concrete and steel containment building residents see from miles
outside the plant near Fort Pierce.

The fact that the pool is protected in the containment dome means
power plants sometimes leave very small leaks alone until a reactor
is scheduled for routine maintenance, Hannah said.

Veenstra said the leak was in the primary water system where uranium
fuel heats water through fission. The hot water is pumped into a
steam generator.

The leak was found in a Âľ-inch diameter pipe, but the exact reason
for why it broke had yet to be determined, according to federal
regulators and FPL.

Veenstra said FPL would issue a report with a detailed analysis of
the incident, and added that he didn’t immediately know if such a
leak had occurred before.

He said crews would inspect other equipment in the reactor as they
made repairs to the pipe.

The federal spokesman said there was nothing to indicate anything
was done wrong at the plant.

“You can do perfect maintenance on an automobile, and something
can go wrong . . .,” Hannah said. “It’s not indicative of them
doing something wrong.”

Veenstra added that, “If there were any kind of a danger, you
would know pretty quickly.”

© 2007 The E.W. Scripps Co.
*****************************************************************
 28 UPI: U.S.-India nuke talks unravel

United Press International - NewsTrack - Top News - 

Published: Aug. 26, 2007 at 9:43 AM

MUMBAI, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- An alliance of national communist parties
is urging India to scrap a proposed nuclear pact with the United
States, it was reported Sunday.

The parties object to a condition that all but requires India's
cooperation in U.S. foreign policy matters and limits on nuclear
testing, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The right to conduct nuclear tests is fiercely protected by
politicians in India, whose mistrust of Western powers dates to
British colonial rule, The Post reported.

The objections threaten two years of negotiations toward what was
supposed to have been a major foreign policy triumph for India, but
now has become a political liability for India's fragile ruling
coalition, The Post reported.

"The deal is frozen. It is stuck," said an unnamed senior Indian
government official. "Now only a miracle can retrieve the deal."

© Copyright United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 29 MHNN: Entergy asks NRC for another extension

August 25-26, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Mid-Hudson News Network, a division of Statewide

Buchanan – Riverkeeper, Congressman Eliot Engel and Senator
Hillary Clinton claim Entergy missed its deadline to have its new
Indian Point nuclear power plant siren system up and running by
Friday because it did not alert the NRC that it was ready to go on
line until Wednesday.

They maintain since Entergy sent the NRC volumes of backup
materials, it did not give the agency time to review the documents
and give the go ahead for the siren system to be activated.

In an August 23 letter to the NRC, Entergy said FEMA told them it
wanted more information before it passed judgment on the new sirens
and review of that could take up to 45 days.

As a result, Entergy has asked the NRC to consider modifying the
terms and conditions of its July 2007 order mandating that the new
siren system be approved and operational by August 24.

NRC spokesman Diana Screnci Friday said the request is under review
with a decision likely to be made after the weekend.

  HEAR today's news on MidHudsonRadio.com, the Hudson Valley's only
                     Internet radio news report.
*****************************************************************
 30 The Australian: Rudd renews anti-Nuclear pitch | 

NEWS.com.au Network

AAP | August 24, 2007

IF Australians don't want nuclear power plants in their communities
they should vote for Labor at the next election, Opposition Leader
Kevin Rudd says.

Prime Minister John Howard's announcement yesterday that plebiscites
would be held before nuclear power plants were built was dishonest,
Mr Rudd said today.

The only option for a nuclear-free Australia was to vote for Labor,
he told reporters.

"You can't trust Mr Howard on nuclear reactors. His plan is to build
25 nuclear reactors right around the Australian coastline and four
weeks before an election he says, `Oh, but I might not proceed with
it. I will talk to the community first'," he said.

Mr Howard told parliament last week the construction of nuclear
power plants would be in the hands of commercial interests, but
yesterday he made a policy reversal, announcing locally binding
plebiscites would decide their future.

He also said communities would relish nuclear energy by the time the
issue became pertinent to Australia.

"Mr Howard can read into the future?" Mr Rudd asked.

"If Mr Howard is committed to his nuclear reactor policy, which he
is, he has to be fair dinkum with the policy and say, `This is where
my 25 nuclear reactors are going to go'," he said.

Mr Rudd urged Mr Howard to publicly list communities he believed
wanted to use nuclear energy.

"Under no circumstances will Labor allow nuclear reactors to be
constructed in Australia if we are the next government of the
country," he said.

Copyright 2007 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT +10).
*****************************************************************
 31 AFP: King wants to speed up Jordanian nuclear energy drive - 

Sun Aug 26, 3:25 PM ET

AMMAN (AFP) - King Abdullah II called Sunday for Jordan's drive 
to set up a civilian nuclear programme to be accelerated in order 
to wean the desert country off oil and gas imports.

"Energy represents the main challenge and we must think about
radical long-term solutions," the king told the supreme committee
for nuclear energy strategy, according to a palace statement.

"It's important to accelerate the establishment of the Jordanian
nuclear programme," he said, underlining the need to "find
alternative energy sources (...) aimed at reducing Jordanian
imports."

Minister for Education and Higher Education Khaled Tuqan said
meanwhile that "nuclear energy will account for 30 percent of the
total energy produced in Jordan from now until 2030."

Jordan hopes to build its first nuclear power plant by 2015. In
April, the Jordanian parliament adopted a law allowing for the use
of nuclear energy to produce electricity and desalinate water.

The desert kingdom, which imports 95 percent of its energy needs, is
the among the 10 most water-deprived countries on the planet, with a
deficit of more than 500 million cubic metres a year, according to
official estimates.

Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 32 washingtonpost.com: Investing in Renewable Energy - 

Solar Power

Solar power, which is much more expensive than other forms of power
generation, would become more competitive if lawmakers tax or price
carbon-dioxide emissions.

Transportation

California and Florida plan to require the carbon content of
tailpipe emissions to drop by at least 10 percent by 2020. That
won't help just Toyota and its hybrid vehicles. Tenneco, a U.S.
automotive-parts supplier of emission-reduction technologies for
diesel-fueled engines, could benefit, Citig...


Biofuels

Federal regulations requiring growing use of ethanol by gasoline
refiners have boosted the fortunes of countless ethanol producers.

Nuclear

Advocates for nuclear power believe their time has come. The Bush
administration has been pushing for a nuclear power revival, and the
Energy Policy Act of 2005 contains powerful financial incentives,
especially for the first half-dozen plants.


Wind

There is a giant backlog of orders for wind turbines. Most
manufacturers have enough orders to keep busy through 2009.
Gearboxes, blades, castings and bearings are all in short supply.


Light Bulbs

New climate legislation would encourage the use of more
energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs. If one-fifth of
the world's bulbs were replaced by 2030, carbon dioxide emissions
would drop by about 400 million tons, experts said.


Coal

If Congress and the White House agree on legislation that puts a
price on carbon dioxide emissions, utilities that have a lot of
nuclear power capacity, such as Exelon, could benefit from being
able to sell carbon-free electricity.

Natural Gas

The natural-gas emissions of carbon dioxide are far lower than those
of other fossil fuels. That should keep demand strong for domestic
natural gas producers and importers of liquefied natural gas.

© 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
*****************************************************************
 33 News Post India: India Finds Uranium In Icy Ladakh

New Delhi, India - India

Sunday 26th of August 2007

Sunday 26th of August 2007 Scientists have for the first time found
uranium in 'exceptionally high concentration' in Ladakh, the icy
Himalayan region in Jammu and Kashmir that has strategic
significance for India.

Samples of rocks analysed in a German laboratory have revealed
uranium content to be as high as 5.36 percent compared to around 0.1
percent or less in ores present elsewhere in the country.

India badly needs uranium to fuel its nuclear power plants and the
proposed India-US nuclear deal is all about importing it. The Ladakh
find may cheer those opposed to the deal even though detailed
exploration and mining may take years.

The Ladakh block lies between the Indian plate in the south and the
Asian plate in the north and is bounded by the 'Indus and the Shyok
suture zones'. Collision between the two plates 50-60 million years
ago formed the Himalayas.

The earth's crust that got crushed and melted during collision and
pierced the surface, cooled and solidified becoming 'magmatic' rocks
dotting what geologists call the Ladakh 'batholith'. It is in these
rocks that uranium is found.

'The presently recorded uranium rich zircons from young magmatic
intrusions of the Shyok suture zone and associated sequences is the
first record from these remote regions,' Rajeev Upadhyay, a
geologist at Kumaon University in Nainital, told IANS in an e-mail
interview.

'In geological terms, these uranium-bearing magmatic rocks exposed
in Ladakh are very young (between 100 million and 25 million years
ago),' he said.

Other uranium rich rocks in India such as in Andhra Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan are very old geological
terrains known as the Precambrian (2,500-3,000 million years old),
he said.

For his study, reported in the journal Current Science, Upadhyay
took samples from thick exposed granite from a place north of Udmaru
village in Leh district. The village in the Nubra-Shyok River Valley
is situated on a volcanic rock formation known as the Shyok
Volcanics.

The samples of rock mineral (zircon) were analysed at the isotope
laboratory of the University of Tuebingen in Germany where he had
gone under the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship.

'Geochemical analysis of the separated zircon grains showed
exceptionally high concentration of both uranium (0.31-5.36 percent)
and thorium (0.76-1.43 percent),' Upadhyay said. He added that the
study is preliminary and 'detailed work is in progress'.

According to Upadhyay, uranium-bearing magmatic rocks are located
all along Kohistan, Ladakh and southern Tibet (from east to west).
'However, contents of uranium may differ from place to place,' he
said.

Officials of the atomic minerals division under the Department of
Atomic Energy (DAE) did not reply to questions about the
significance of this new find or whether the Ladakh uranium could
augment India's reserves.

The total established uranium resources of the country so far (in
the form of uranium oxide or yellow cake) are 94,000 tonnes. The
majority of these resources, according to DAE, occur in three
'provinces': Singhbhum in the east, Mahadek in the northeast and
Cuddapah in the south.

The low uranium content in ores, however, makes mined uranium in
India expensive compared to that in Australia whose ores contain as
much as 15 percent uranium.


Copyright © 2007 News Post India | All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
 34 The Telegraph: Govt ready to raise the bar in nuclear power

Calcutta : Business

JAYANTA ROY CHOWDHURY

AIM BIG

New Delhi, Aug. 26: The government is planning to raise the target
for nuclear power generation to 40,000MW by 2030 from 36,000MW.

The Prime Minister?s energy co-ordination council had chalked out a
plan to add 16,000MW of the power by 2020 and another 20,000MW over
the next 10 years.

Vilas Muttemwar, the minister for non-conventional energy and a
member of the council, told The Telegraph, ?We now plan to increase
nuclear power generation capacity to 40,000MW by 2030.?

The plans will, however, depend on the Left and the Congress-led
alliance working out a compromise that will allow India to import
uranium from Australia and Russia.

?We laid a lot of stress on nuclear power because it is clean power,
does not pollute much and the plant load factor is high at about
80-85 per cent,? Muttemwar said.

The higher targets will mean a huge spend on plants. This is now
being estimated at about Rs 150,000 crore instead of earlier
estimates of Rs 60,000 crore.

Capital costs have come down from $5,000 per kilowatt in the 1970s
to about $1,000-1,400 per kilowatt at present, officials said.

This makes nuclear power a viable option.

Initially, because of the large costs involved, state-run utilities
will start setting up plants.

Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd has already drawn up plans to
set up four plants in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Bengal.

The utility wants to buy the AP1000 series of reactors from the
US-based Westinghouse, the ABWR series from General Electric, as
well as 1,000MW reactors from France?s Areva and VVR 1,000 reactors
from Russia.

Nuclear Power Corporation is also eyeing minority stakes in
Australian uranium mines.

Australia has already committed to sell India uranium after the
International Atomic Energy Agency negotiated a safeguard agreement
with the country.

NTPC, which generates thermal power, is also planning to diversify
into nuclear energy and plans to add 2,000MW by 2012. It is scouting
for sites in Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh.

It is also in preliminary talks with a number of global technology
leaders.

It is felt that it may partner with the Russians because of lower
costs.

The government also wants to throw open the sector to private
players.

Leading energy players such as the Tata group, Anil Ambani-led
Reliance Energy, GMR and Essar are expected to set up nuclear power
plants.

Others, such as L&T and Bhel, are expected to form alliances with
global equipment suppliers.


 Copyright © 2006 The Telegraph. All rights reserved. Disclaimer |
*****************************************************************
 35 EnergySWEDEN: Vattenfall nuclear reactor shuts after fire alarm - 

New Europe News: #1 The European News Source

A reactor at the Swedish energy company Vattenfall-operated nuclear
power plant at Ringhals in Western Sweden was automatically shut
down on August 20 after a fire alarm went off, according to
management at the plant.The alarm was set off by smoke at one of the
two generators, according to management.
  

25 August 2007 - Issue : 744

A reactor at the Swedish energy company Vattenfall-operated nuclear
power plant at Ringhals in Western Sweden was automatically shut
down on August 20 after a fire alarm went off, according to
management at the plant.

The alarm was set off by smoke at one of the two generators,
according to management. However, there was no actual fire. The
reactor was brought back into use after the incident and resumed
electricity production at half-strength.

The plant was disrupted by shutdowns and security problems last
summer and Vattenfall drew criticism after a fire in a transformer
station shut down the Kreummel power plant it operates east of
Hamburg in June. The company last year shut down reactors at its
Forsmark nuclear plant in Sweden for two months after a fault in the
plant’s back-up power system was discovered.

The problem this time was minor, but the power plant has suffered a
series of complications that has led to severe criticism of its
operation, including the failure of its management to notify the
public about a fire there earlier in the summer. “Information to the
general public was inadequate," said Vattenfall CEO Lars G.

Josefsson, about the fire in a transformer at its Kruemmel plant.
The Swedish state-owned company, in June reported that its
second-quarter earnings rose 87 percent, came under scrutiny after
the fire and a temporary shutdown of another plant in Germany,
Brunsbuettel.

Copyright © The Media Company S.A. 2006. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 36 EnergyRUSSIA: Atomenergoprom acquires another civilian nuclear asset - 

New Europe News: #1 The European News Source

Monday, 27 August 2007 Home / Back My Account | Contact Us  

25 August 2007 - Issue : 744

OJSC Atomenergoprom, the company that is consolidating Russia's
civilian nuclear industry enterprises, has acquired the latest of a
string of assets on the road to completing the first phase of its
formation.

Atomenergoprom, which recently received 100 percent of the shares in
nuclear materials trader OJSC Techsnabexport (Tenex), OJSC
Atomredmetzoloto, the umbrella for the country's uranium mining
assets and nine other enterprises and institutes, has now received
the state's 49 percent interest in OJSC Mospromtekhnomontazh, the
successor to a trust of the same name that used to be controlled by
the USSR Medium Machine Building Ministry and Atomic Energy and
Industry Ministry and which is a known for building and
commissioning a number installations in the sphere of experimental
physics, Atomenergoprom said in official materials.

OJSC Mospromtekhnomontazh, registered as a joint stock company on
May 18, 1993, put a synchrophasotron in the city of Dubna, a
circular accelerator in Protivno and the Tokamak thermonuclear
installations at the I.V. Kurchatov into action, and has installed
induction accelerators and betatrons for medical and industrial
purposes at many organizations and enterprises in Russia.

Atomenergoprom is due to receive state shares in 31 enterprises
during the first stage of its formation. Atomenergoprom's charter
capital will initially be 3.4 billion rubles, consisting of 3.4
million common shares, par value 1,000 rubles each. The state will
own all of the shares.

    Copyright © The Media Company S.A. 2006. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 37 EnergyGEORGIA: Construction of Georgian NPP considered - 

New Europe News: #1 The European News Source

25 August 2007 - Issue : 744

A special state commission will study the feasibility of building a
nuclear power plant in Georgia, Energy Minister Nika Gilauri said at
a briefing on August 16, Interfax reported.

Gilauri also said that he will head the commission, the creation of
which was approved at the governmental meeting on August 16. "The
commission will scrutinize both the positive and negative aspects of
building a nuclear plant in Georgia and report to the highest
authorities of the country," Gilauri said. However, the minister
refused to name the possible sites for the plant or discuss safety
and security issues.

"The commission will work until all positive and negative aspects of
the plant construction have been examined. It is too early to speak
about the rates for electricity generated at the nuclear plant or
the date that construction will begin. We are only looking into the
feasibility of such a decision," Gilauri said.


    Copyright © The Media Company S.A. 2006. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 38 Guardian Unlimited: Doubts Grow Over U.S.-India Nuclear Deal 

Sunday August 26, 2007 8:01 PM

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG Associated Press Writer

NEW DELHI (AP) - The United States gave India nearly everything 
it wanted in a landmark nuclear energy deal, but that may not be 
enough for a vocal chorus of Indian critics.

 A wave of opposition has left India's government reeling and 
raised serious doubts about the deal's future. Critics argue the 
agreement could undermine India's cherished nuclear weapons 
program and allow the U.S. to dictate Indian foreign policy.

     Leading the charge are the communist allies of India's prime 
minister, and beneath their arguments many here see a deeper 
objection - they don't want New Delhi drawn closer to Washington 
under any circumstances.

             For both countries, the stakes are enormous.

 The deal has been repeatedly touted as the foundation of an 
alliance that could potentially redraw the global balance of 
power, completing the transformation of a once-hostile 
relationship between the world's two largest democracies.

    U.S. policymakers see India as a counterweight to an 
ever-more powerful China, and the deal reverses three decades of 
American policy by allowing the shipment of nuclear fuel and 
technology to India, which never signed international 
nonproliferation accords and has tested atomic weapons.

   The two years of painstaking negotiations to reach the deal 
have also provided President Bush with a foreign policy 
achievement amid the Iraq war and other crises.

    For India, the benefits are arguably greater. Its booming but 
energy-starved economy would gain access to much-needed nuclear 
fuel and technologies that it has been long denied by its refusal 
to sign nonproliferation accords. Even though the deal only 
covers civilian nuclear power, it tacitly acknowledges India as a 
nuclear-weapons state, giving its weapons program a degree of 
international legitimacy - and adding to India's growing clout.

 The deal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in an Aug. 13 
speech to Parliament, is ``another step in our journey to regain 
our due place in global councils.''

   But few of the deal's opponents heard his speech that day - 
they were too busy shouting him down and disrupting Parliament, 
as they have done nearly every day since.

  The opponents run the gamut from right-wing Hindu nationalists 
to the communists, who are key to Singh's parliamentary majority. 
The nuclear agreement does not need parliamentary approval, but 
Singh's government could collapse if his communist allies pull 
their support because of the deal.

 Most of their criticism stems from the Hyde Act, passed last 
year by American lawmakers to allow nuclear trade with India.

   It contains a nonbinding clause directing the U.S. president 
to determine whether India is cooperating with American efforts 
to confront Iran about its nuclear program. That has been seized 
on by Indian critics as proof that Washington intends to direct 
New Delhi's foreign policy.

   The nuclear deal does not address what happens if India tests 
an atomic weapon - a sign, American critics say, that New Delhi 
got too much out of the pact.

 Indian critics, meanwhile, argue that the lack of an explicit 
right to test is a sign the U.S. aims to shut down the country's 
weapons program.

  But for the communists, their ultimate objection appears simply 
to be the United States.

   ``We must stand against a strategic partnership with the 
United States of America,'' said Basudeb Acharya, a top official 
of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

 He called the invasion of Iraq and Washington's efforts to stop 
Iran from producing nuclear weapons ``foreign policy 
adventures,'' and said: ``We want no part of this.''

   The standoff has the communists warning Singh not to press 
ahead with the next steps in the deal - negotiating agreements 
with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear 
Suppliers Group, a group of nations that export nuclear material 
- and the prime minister daring them to stop him.

   But with talk of early elections growing louder, both sides 
have started to back down. They are expected to announce this 
week the creation of a committee to examine the deal before 
pushing ahead with it.

   That, Indian and American officials privately say, could end 
up scuttling the pact, which still has to be approved by U.S. 
lawmakers, delaying it to the point where it is no longer viable.

 ``We will talk and talk and talk and nothing will be done,'' 
said a senior member of India's scientific establishment with 
knowledge of the nuclear deliberations.

  ``The Americans will not wait forever,'' he said, speaking on 
the condition of anonymity because of the political 
sensitivities. ``And we will never get an agreement like this 
again.''

    American officials, who have publicly stayed out of the fray, 
privately confirmed that view, saying that with U.S. presidential 
elections coming up next year, they could only wait so long.

 Washington acceded to most of New Delhi's demands, giving India 
the right to stockpile nuclear fuel and reprocess it, a key step 
in making weapons.

     Abandoning such a deal would ``be a major setback to India's 
international ambitions,'' said retired Gen. Ashok Mehta, a 
strategic analyst in New Delhi.

 ``Long-term, India, without the help of the United States and or 
any other big power, will take much longer to be counted 
globally,'' he said.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
*****************************************************************
 39 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear Board Mulling Opening Records 

August 25, 2007 6:31 AM

By DUNCAN MANSFIELD Associated Press Writer

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is 
considering the reversal of a three-year secrecy policy that 
could make public thousands of documents involving the troubled 
operations of a Tennessee nuclear fuel processing plant.

   But even if the four-member commission approves the change, 
the commission staff says it will be a long and costly task. The 
staff estimates it will take eight months and $523,000 to review 
and censor, if necessary, all the documents that have been sealed 
before release.

   More documents apparently were withheld than initially 
reported involving privately owned Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. in 
Erwin and a similar BWX Technologies Inc. plant in Lynchburg, 
Va., both longtime suppliers of fuel to the U.S. Navy's nuclear 
fleet.

    Some 1,700 regulatory documents about the plants were stamped 
``official use only'' in the name of national security under a 
policy that took effect in 2004 at the behest of the separate 
Department of Energy Office of Naval Reactors.

  However, commission executive Luis Reyes said that another 
10,000 older documents about the facilities also were removed 
from the NRC's ``public legacy library.''

 Reyes' staff recommendation is to release all of the documents - 
old and new - rather than less expensive approaches that would 
only review or release redacted versions of new documents.

  Commission spokesman David McIntyre said Friday that balloting 
of individual commissioners has begun and a decision will be 
announced when all four have submitted ballots. ``It could be 
fairly soon for them to decide on something,'' he said.

 The policy came to light earlier this year when the commission 
said in its annual report to Congress that a potentially deadly 
leak of highly enriched uranium solution occurred at the Nuclear 
Fuel Services plant in 2006. The commission noted it was skirting 
the secrecy policy so it could identify the Tennessee plant as 
the site of what it considered a very serious accident.

 In an order released in July, the commission revealed several 
other less-severe safety and security violations at the Tennessee 
plant since 2005. It concluded the facility must take steps to 
improve its ``safety culture,'' but assessed no fine.

  Members of Congress were outraged at the secrecy policy, and 
some residents were upset to learn of mishandled uranium and 
security lapses years after they happened.

  The commission has received petitions from the Sierra Club and 
two individuals demanding a hearing on the regulatory agency's 
``confirmatory order'' against Nuclear Fuel Services.

   The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, an independent body, 
will decide if the petitioners have standing and their issues 
have merit. ``They will decide in the coming months whether or 
not to grant a hearing,'' McIntyre said.

   Linda Modica, a Jonesborough resident and chairman of the 
Sierra Club's radiation committee, wrote that the commission 
failed to consider the public's health and safety. She said the 
plant has been in ``serial non-compliance with NRC regulations'' 
and the order ``merely nibbles around the edges of effective 
regulation.''

  Nuclear Fuel Services officials say the processing area where 
the leak occurred was shut down for seven months after the leak 
to make corrections and that progress is being made now on safety 
concerns.

                                 ---

      Nuclear Fuel Services: http://www.nuclearfuelservices.com

          Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov/


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
*****************************************************************
 40 long over due Piketon Ohio
 
Judge: A' Plant neighbors can sue<BR><SPAN 

Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:44 PM EDT

The Associated Press

PIKETON - A federal judge has ruled that neighbors of a former 
uranium-processing plant suing because of health problems can 
proceed with their case, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said 
Saturday.

The suit was first filed against Divested Atomic Corporation in 
1990 by residents who lived near the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion 
Plant, which once enriched uranium for weapons and nuclear fuel, 
but closed in 20 01.

Plaintiffs can go forward on their claim that the plant 
contaminated their neighborhood with hazardous products, 
including carcinogenic materials, from its site, said Stanley 
Chesley, a Cincinnati lawyer who represents plaintiffs in the 
case.

Though the suit can claim hazardous materials were left in the 
neighborhood, U.S District Judge Walter Herbert Rice said there 
was not enough evidence for residents to claim that any of the 
contamination was from radioactive material.

A telephone conference call was scheduled for Sept. 4 to set a 
trial date, Chesley said.

The plaintiffs are seeking $600 million in compensatory and 
punitive damages, as well as money for medical monitoring and 
cleanup costs.

?This case has taken a very, very long time,? Chesley said. 
?We're going to treat this as a brand new case. We're going to 
get to the bottom of this, to the truth, just like we did with 
Fernald, which was covered up for years.?

Another plant in Fernald, about 20 miles northwest of Cincinna 
ti, processed uranium metal used to produce plutonium for nuclear 
weapons beginning in 1951. It was the subject of a $78 million 
settlement between the federal government and local residents in 
1989.

The settlement included funding for monitoring and medical 
testing through 2008 for residents. Fernald workers also sued and 
reached a $20 million settlement with the government in 1994 that 
included lifetime medical monitoring.

The plant at Piketon was created in 1952, when the federal 
government selected Goodyear Tire &amp; Rubber Corp. to be the 
plant's operator. Divested Atomic Corporation became the plant's 
operator in 1986.

The plant now is owned by a private company, USEC Inc.

Copyright © 2007 The Portsmouth Dail y Times

***************************************************************** 
41 Arizona Daily Star: Cancer in Iraq vets raises possibility of 
toxic exposure |

www.azstarnet.com ®

Sun, August 26, 2007

By Carla McClain

After serving in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago — and receiving the
Bronze Star for it — the Tucson soldier was called back to active
duty in Iraq.

While there, he awoke one morning with a sore throat. Eighteen
months later, Army Sgt. James Lauderdale was dead, of a bizarrely
aggressive cancer rarely seen by the doctors who tried to treat it.

As a result, his stunned and heartbroken family has joined growing
ranks of sickened and dying Iraq war vets and their families who
believe exposures to toxic poisons in the war zone are behind their
illnesses — mostly cancers, striking the young, taking them down
with alarming speed.

The number of these cancers remains undisclosed, with military
officials citing patient privacy issues, as well as lack of evidence
the cases are linked to conditions in the war zone. The U.S.
Congress has ordered a probe of suspect toxins and may soon begin
widespread testing of our armed forces.

"He got so sick, so fast"

Jim Lauderdale was 58 when his National Guard unit was deployed to
the Iraq-Kuwait border, where he helped transport arriving soldiers
and Marines into combat areas.

He was a strong man, say relatives, who can't remember him ever
missing a day of work for illness. And he developed a cancer of the
mouth, which overwhelmingly strikes smokers, drinkers and tobacco
chewers. He was none of those.

"Jim's doctors didn't know why he would get this kind of cancer —
they had no answers for us," said his wife, Dixie.

"He got so sick, so fast. We really think it had to be something he
was exposed to over there. So many of the soldiers we met with
cancer at Walter Reed (Army Medical Center) complained about the
polluted air they lived in, the brown water they had to use, the
dust they breathed from exploded munitions. It was very toxic."

As a mining engineer, Lauderdale knew exactly what it meant when he
saw the thick black smoke pouring nonstop out of the smokestacks
that line the Iraq/Kuwait border area where he was stationed for
three months in 2005.

"He wrote to me that everyone was complaining about their stinging
eyes and sore throats and headaches," Dixie said. "For Jim to say
something like that, to complain, was very unusual.

"One of the mothers on the cancer ward had pictures of her son
bathing in the brown water," she said. "He died of kidney cancer."

Stationed in roughly the same area as Lauderdale, yet another
soldier — now fighting terminal colon cancer — described the
scene there, of oil refineries, a cement factory, a chlorine factory
and a sulfuric acid factory, all spewing unfiltered and uncontrolled
substances into the air.

"One day, we were walking toward the port and they had sulfuric acid
exploding out of the stacks. We were covered with it, everything was
burning on us, and we had to turn around and get to the medics,"
said Army Staff Sgt. Frank Valentin, 35.

Not long after, he developed intense rectal pain, which doctors told
him for months was hemorrhoids. Finally diagnosed with aggressive
colorectal cancer — requiring extensive surgery, resulting in a
colostomy bag — he was given fewer than two years to live by his
Walter Reed physicians.

He is now a couple of months past that death sentence, but his chemo
drugs are starting to fail, and the cancer is eating into his liver
and lungs. He spends his days with his wife and three children at
their Florida home.

"I don't know how much time I have," he said.

Suspect: depleted uranium

None of these soldiers know for sure what's killing them. But they
suspect it's a cascade of multiple toxic exposures, coupled with the
intense stress of daily life in a war zone weakening their immune
systems.

"There's so much pollution from so many sources, your body can't
fight what's coming at it," Valentin said. "And you don't eat well
or sleep well, ever. That weakens you, too. There's no chance to
gather your strength. These are kids 19, 20 and 21 getting all kinds
of cancers. The Walter Reed cancer ward is packed full with them."

The prime suspect in all this, in the minds of many victims — and
some scientists — is what's known as depleted uranium — the
radioactive chemical prized by the military for its ability to
penetrate armored vehicles. When munitions explode, the substance
hits the air as fine dust, easily inhaled.

Last month, the Iraqi environment minister blamed the tons of the
chemical dropped during the war's "shock and awe" campaign for a
surge of cancer cases across the country.

However, the Pentagon and U.S. State Department strongly deny this,
citing four studies, including one by the World Health Organization,
that found levels in war zones not harmful to civilians or soldiers.
A U.N. Environmental Program study concurs, but only if spent
munitions are cleared away.

Returning solders have said that isn't happening.

"When tanks exploded, I would handle those tanks, and there was DU
everywhere," said Valentin. "This is a big issue."

The fierce Iraq winds carry desert sand and dust for miles, said
Dixie Lauderdale, who suspects her husband was exposed to at least
some depleted uranium. Many vets from the Gulf War blame the
chemical used in that conflict for their Gulf War syndrome illnesses.

Congress orders study

As the controversy rages, Congress has ordered a comprehensive
independent study, due in October, of the health effects of depleted
uranium exposure on U.S. soldiers and their children. And a "DU
bill" — ordering all members of the U.S. military exposed to it be
identified and tested — is working its way through Congress.

"Basically, we want to get ahead of this curve, and not go through
the years of painful denial we went through with Agent Orange that
was the legacy of Vietnam," said Rep. RaĂşl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a
co-sponsor of the bill.

"We want an independent agency to do independent testing of our
soldiers, and find out what's really going on. These incidents of
cancer and illness that all of us are hearing about back in our
districts are not just anecdotal — there is a pattern here. And
yes, I do suspect DU may be at the bottom of it."

What's happening today — growing numbers of sickened soldiers who
say they were exposed to it amid firm denials of harm from military
brass — almost mirrors the early stages of the Agent Orange
aftermath. It took the U.S. military almost two decades to admit the
powerful chemical defoliant killed and disabled U.S. troops in the
jungles of Vietnam, and to begin compensating them for it.

Doctors flabbergasted

Whatever it was that struck Jim Lauderdale did a terrifying job of
it.

Sent to Walter Reed with oral cancer in April 2005, he underwent his
first extensive and disfiguring surgery, removing half his tongue to
get to tumors in the mouth and throat. A second surgery followed a
month later to clear out more of those areas.

Five months later, another surgery removed a new neck tumor. Then
came heavy chemotherapy and radiation.

Shortly after, he had a massive heart attack, undergoing another
surgery to place stents in his arteries. Two weeks later, the cancer
was back and growing rapidly, forcing a fourth surgery in January
2006.

By this time, much of his neck and shoulder tissue was gone, and
doctors tried to reconstruct a tongue, using tissue from his wrist.
He couldn't swallow, so was fed through a tube into his stomach.

Just weeks later, four external tumors appeared on his neck —
"literally overnight," his wife said.

Suffering severe complications from the chemo drugs, Lauderdale
endured 39 radiation treatments, waking up one night bleeding
profusely through his burned skin. The day after his radiation
ended, new external tumors erupted at the edge of the radiation
field, flabbergasting his doctors.

"As this aggressive disease grew though chemoradiation, it was
determined at this point there was no chance for cure," his
oncologist wrote then.

By then, the cancer had spread to his lungs and spine and, most
frightening of all, "hundreds and thousands" of tumors were erupting
all over his upper body, his wife said.

"The doctors said they'd never seen anything like it — that this
happens in only 1 percent of cases," she said.

Efforts to contact his doctors at Walter Reed were unsuccessful, but
a leading head-and-neck cancer specialist at the Arizona Cancer
Center reviewed the course of Lauderdale's disease.

"This a a very wrenching case," said Dr. Harinder Garewal. "This is
unusually aggressive behavior for an oral cancer. I would agree it
happens in only 1 percent of cases."

When oral cancer occurs in nonsmokers and non-drinkers, it tends to
be more aggressive, he said.

"My feeling is the immune system for some reason can't handle the
cancer," he said.

Jim Lauderdale died on July 14, 2006, and was buried in Arlington
National Cemetery.

Dixie and their two grown children still feel the raw grief of loss,
but not anger, she said.

"But I am convinced something very wrong is happening over there. Is
anyone paying attention to this? Is the cancer ward still full?" she
asked. "I would hate to see another whole generation affected like
this, but I'm very afraid it will be."

Find more resources about cancer and other diseases in our
searchable database at azstarnet.com/health

â—Ź Contact reporter Carla McClain at 806-7754 or at
cmcclain@azstarnet.com.
*****************************************************************
 42 Tri-City Herald: 7 Hanford workers reported symptoms after spill

(about) Sunday, August 26th, 2007 08:48 PDT

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer

Seven Hanford workers have reported symptoms they believe are
related to exposure to hazardous chemical and radioactive waste that
spilled from a waste tank July 27.

They described symptoms similar to those reported by some workers in
2003 and 2004 who feared that breathing tank vapors was causing
long-term health effects.

Since then CH2M Hill Hanford Group, the Department of Energy
contractor at the tank farms, has done extensive characterization of
the 1,500 chemicals in the head space of the tanks and set
occupational exposure limits for the chemicals.

Based on its knowledge of the spill and the chemicals involved, it
would not have expected workers to be exposed to enough chemicals to
be harmed.

However, "we're keeping an open mind on this," said Thomas Anderson,
CH2M Hill director of environmental health.

About 50 people have been identified who were within about 220 yards
of the spill at some point between when it was believed to have
occurred until the spill was secured with a fixative to prevent if
from becoming airborne. They included CH2M Hill workers, Fluor
Hanford and subcontractor employees.

Those and about 10 other workers who were somewhat farther from the
spill have been offered help from AdvanceMed Hanford, the
occupational health provider for the Hanford nuclear reservation. So
far, AdvanceMed has seen 22 workers.

The six workers who reported symptoms complained of upper
respiratory problems such as scratchy throats and raspy voices;
upset stomachs; headaches or dizziness; or, in a couple of cases,
eye irritation or blurred vision.

"Right now I can't find a connection, but that doesn't mean there
isn't one," said Dr. John Calcagni, acting medical director for
AdvanceMed Hanford. "I'm not going on the assumption they are not
related. I'm going on the assumption they might be because of the
time and proximity (to the spill)."

In an eighth case -- in which a worker was hospitalized with
bacterial pneumonia eight days after the spill -- Calcagni believes
the incubation period for the illness makes it unlikely that it was
related, he said.

Some of the workers also have opted to be seen by doctors at
Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

The spill occurred after a new pump installed in Tank S-102 clogged.
The tank is one of 142 underground tanks holding high-level
radioactive waste from the past production of plutonium at Hanford.

Workers briefly operated the pump in reverse, which may have pushed
waste up a water line not designed to contain the waste. If that
theory proves correct, the incident bears similarities to an event
in September 2005 when workers were contaminated by a pressurized
air hose, according to a weekly staff report of the Defense Nuclear
Facilities Safety Board.

CH2M Hill believes that 115 gallons spilled from the water line, up
from early estimates of 50 to 100 gallons. The waste in the tanks
has a constituency that's been compared to peanut butter and some of
it is solid, but the waste that spilled would have been diluted
enough to have moved through piping.

CH2M Hill earlier determined that at the exhaust ports nondiluted
waste has vapors that include nitrous oxide, ammonia and
nitrosodimethylamine, or NDMA. They are the only three gases that
have been measured at Tank S-102 with more than 10 percent of the
occupational exposure limits, which are set for people who breath
vapors throughout each work day over 40 years, Anderson said.

CH2M Hill has brought in outside experts in toxicology and health
physicians to review the data and work with employees, said Joy
Shoemake, spokeswoman for CH2M Hill.

The company also has formed several investigation teams to study the
incident. Among their tasks is looking at potential health effects
and identifying all the nearby workers and any health conditions
they have experienced. In addition, they are constructing a timeline
of what happened, looking at the company's response to the spill and
how to recover from the spill.

The spill has been sealed with a fixative applied to the soil, but a
plan must be developed to clean it up and eventually the equipment
will be removed from the tank to determine exactly what went wrong.
Crews are preparing by working on a mockup of the site to practice
doing the cleanup work in a nonradioactive environment.

Among questions to be answered is whether a take-cover order was
handled appropriately. Radiation from the spill was detected at
about 2:10 a.m. during a routine inspection to make sure all of the
waste had been cleared from a transfer line after pumping concluded
for the shift. Troubleshooting included a visual inspection later
that morning at 9:45 a.m. when the spill was first seen. The
take-cover order was issued at 10:55 a.m.

No workers were contaminated with waste from the spill.

Fluor Hanford, which employs three of the workers who reported
symptoms, also has formed a team to support its workers and evaluate
any health affects.

In addition, DOE has initiated a Type A investigation to be
conducted with a team from DOE headquarters and other DOE sites.
Workers with information regarding the spill or similar events have
been told to call a hotline at 373-2825 and leave a message for the
accident investigation team.

  &copy 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 43 Minor radioactive leakage at LAX

Updated Sunday, August 26, 2007

From news service reports

A forklift punctured one of three cargo boxes containing 
low-grade radioactive material at Los Angeles International 
Airport on Saturday night, according to an airport spokeswoman.

The spill happened in the Lufthansa cargo building at Imperial 
Highway and Aviation Boulevard about 8:10p.m., said Nancy Castles 
of the Los Angeles World Airports, which operates LAX. The spill 
was cleaned up and about 31 workers were evaluated for exposure 
to radioactive material and released. The incident was being 
investigated as an accident and not an act of terrorism.
The spill happened in the Lufthansa cargo building at Imperial 
Highway and Aviation Boulevard about 8:10p.m., said Nancy Castles 
of the Los Angeles World Airports, which operates LAX. The spill 
was cleaned up and about 31 workers were evaluated for exposure 
to radioactive material and released. The incident was being 
investigated as an accident and not an act of terrorism.


Copyright © 2007 Los Angeles Newspaper Group

*****************************************************************
 44 Chillicothe Gazette: Judge says Piketon plant suit can move forward

www.chillicothegazette.com - Chillicothe, OH

Sunday, August 26, 2007   

PIKETON (AP) - A federal judge has ruled neighbors of a former
uranium-processing plant suing because of health problems can
proceed with their case, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said Saturday.

The suit was first filed against Divested Atomic Corporation in 1990
by residents who lived near the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant,
which once enriched uranium for weapons and nuclear fuel, but closed
in 2001.

Plaintiffs can go forward on their claim the plant contaminated
their neighborhood with hazardous products, including carcinogenic
materials, from its site, said Stanley Chesley, a Cincinnati lawyer
who represents plaintiffs in the case. Though the suit can claim
hazardous materials were left in the neighborhood, U.S District
Judge Walter Herbert Rice said there was not enough evidence for
residents to claim that any of the contamination was from
radioactive material.

A telephone conference call was scheduled for Sept. 4 to set a trial
date, Chesley said.

The plaintiffs are seeking $600 million in compensatory and punitive
damages, as well as money for medical monitoring and cleanup costs.

"This case has taken a very, very long time," Chesley said. "We're
going to treat this as a brand new case. We're going to get to the
bottom of this, to the truth, just like we did with Fernald, which
was covered up for years."

Piketon is about 65 miles south of Columbus.

Another plant in Fernald, about 20 miles northwest of Cincinnati,
processed uranium metal used to produce plutonium for nuclear
weapons beginning in 1951. It was the subject of a $78 million
settlement between the federal government and local residents in
1989.

The settlement included funding for monitoring and medical testing
through 2008 for residents. Fernald workers also sued and reached a
$20 million settlement with the government in 1994 that included
lifetime medical monitoring.

The plant at Piketon was created in 1952, when the federal
government selected Goodyear Tire & Rubber Corp. to be the plant's
operator. Divested Atomic Corporation became the plant's operator in
1986.

The plant is now owned by a private company, USEC Inc.

Copyright ©2007 Chillicothe Gazette
*****************************************************************
 45 Salt Lake Tribune: Nuke plants in Utah would pose public health risks

By Joseph Mangano

Article Last Updated: 08/25/2007 12:14:12 PM MDT

Some state legislators are making great efforts to change state law
so that nuclear reactors can be built in Utah. They believe that
nuclear power is "clean" because it doesn't emit greenhouse gases.
But is it clean, or is it a threat to public health?

    Utah is no stranger to the health hazards of radiation. Fallout
from Nevada atomic bomb tests and occupational exposure of uranium
miners, millers and transporters have affected many. For years, even
as evidence grew, officials denied that anyone was harmed.

    Only in 1990 did Congress finally acknowledge these risks when
it enacted a program to compensate bomb-test downwinders and uranium
workers from the Cold War era.

    A more recent threat was/is the plan of nuclear utilities to
build a temporary nuclear waste storage facility at the Skull Valley
Goshute reservation 45 miles from Salt Lake City. Again, industry
and government give assurances that the waste will be safely
transferred to and stored at the site. But with massive amounts of
waste planned for Skull Valley, a new threat (worse than bomb
fallout and uranium mining) would be posed.

    Now there is a push for nuclear power reactors to produce
electricity to meet the state's growing demand. Although they
produce no greenhouse gases, reactors routinely do produce over 100
radioactive chemicals - the same cocktail found in bomb-test 
fallout. These chemicals, which include Cesium-137, Iodine-131 
and Strontium-90, all cause cancer. Some decay quickly; others 
last for hundreds and thousands of years.

    The equivalent of several hundred Hiroshima bombs exists in a
typical reactor. A large-scale release from mechanical failure or
act of sabotage would be the worst environmental disaster in
American history, exposing thousands to radioactivity, causing
widespread suffering from acute radiation poisoning and cancer.

    But another Chernobyl or 9/11 is not necessary for reactors to
cause harm, as they routinely release a small portion of the
100-plus radioactive chemicals into the air and water. These
products enter human bodies through breathing and the food chain,
and attack healthy cells. They are especially toxic to the fetus,
infant and child.

    When reactors were first built, low-dose exposures to
radioactivity were presumed to be too small to harm humans. But
considerable evidence indicates otherwise. Pelvic X-rays of pregnant
women were stopped after studies showed a doubling in the risk of
the child dying of cancer. A 2005 study by experts at the National
Academy of Sciences examined many scientific studies and concluded
that there was no safe level of exposure.

    Utah is a state with low poverty and unemployment, and high
income and educational levels. There is no obvious reason why state
disease rates should exceed the U.S rate as a whole. For most types
of cancer, rates are in fact lower. But cancer mortality in Utah
children is slightly above the national rate - even though the death
rate for all other causes is below it.

    Incidence of thyroid cancer, which is especially sensitive to
radioactive iodine in fallout, is 26 percent above the national
rate. Although many factors may account for these types of cancers,
none is obvious, and previous exposures to radioactivity must be
considered.

    The experience of the past half century suggests that caution
should be taken before any nuclear reactor operates in Utah.
Potential health hazards of nuclear reactors are serious and would
persist for generations. Other options for generating electricity
that pose no threat to public health, such as solar and wind power,
should be taken seriously.
    ---

    * JOSEPH MANGANO is executive director of the Radiation and
Public Health Project, a research organization based in New York.
   
*****************************************************************
 46 UPI: Study: Nuclear test vets depressed

United Press International - NewsTrack - Top News - 

Published: Aug. 25, 2007 at 1:55 AM

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Veterans who participated
in nuclear tests in the 1950s have depression rates four times as
high as other veterans, a New Zealand study found.

A team at Massey University examined 50 veterans who participated in
Operation Grapple, a British nuclear testing program carried out in
the Pacific in 1957 and 1958, The Wellington Dominion Post reported.

The psychologists suggested that the men suffered from chronic
stress brought on in part by physical problems and the strain of
trying to prove that the problems were linked to their exposure to
radiation.

"It is not possible for the exposed person to adapt to the
situation,” the report said. “There are constant nagging doubts and
concerns, resulting in frustration and chronic stress."

Another study released this year found that the genetic mutation
rate in veterans of Operation Grapple was three times the normal
rate.

The New Zealand vets have joined with British and Fiji veterans in a
class action lawsuit against the British government.


© Copyright United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 47 The Sydney Morning Herald: US wants Australia in nuclear group - 

www.smh.com.au

Anne Davies Herald Correspondent in Washington

August 27, 2007

PRESIDENT George Bush will invite Australia to be part of two plans
aimed at guaranteeing future energy supplies: to produce ethanol
from wild grasses, and a global nuclear partnership, which includes
many of the main nuclear players.

Mr Bush will raise the two issues during bilateral talks with the
Prime Minister, John Howard, before the Asia-Pacific Economic
Co-operation forum meeting next week, senior officials said.

The US, through the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, is driving a
research effort to develop a new generation of fast-cycle reactors
that would produce far less hazardous waste than conventional
nuclear reactors.

The group includes many of the main countries involved in the
nuclear fuel cycle, including Russia, China and France. Its broader
aim is to eventually secure the entire fuel cycle and confine
production and reprocessing to the group, with smaller countries
effectively leasing nuclear fuel from the partnership and returning
waste to it for reprocessing.

Australia and Canada, both uranium-producing countries, have so far
stalled on joining because of domestic concerns about obligations to
take back nuclear waste and store it.

This is a hot-button issue in Australia.

But a senior official said last week that the US would not be
pressuring Australia to take back nuclear waste if it joined.

"We want Australia to be part of the research effort. It doesn't
mean Australia would have to take back nuclear waste," the official
said.

Documents obtained by the Herald two months ago revealed the
Department of Foreign Affairs and the US Department of Energy were
working on a bilateral nuclear partnership, which would see closer
research ties and more involvement by Australia.

Ethanol will also be a major area of discussion. The US has
announced a program to boost ethanol production to 35 billion
gallons by 2017 in an attempt to reduce by 20 per cent the US's
dependence on foreign oil.

But the scheme has been heavily criticised because corn is already
the most subsidised crop in the US - more than $35 billion was spent
between 1999 and 2005 to subsidise farmers, and critics say that
even if the entire crop was devoted to ethanol production, it would
not make sufficient quantities to meet the targets.

The other potential source of ethanol is cellulose, which can be
derived from sugarcane waste or grasses.

Mr Bush has taken a big interest in the potential for wild grasses
to be harvested and turned into ethanol and is expected to brief Mr
Howard on the research effort so far.

The two leaders are also expected to discuss clean-coal technologies
and future research in this area.

Copyright © 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald.
*****************************************************************
 48 Buffalo News: 27 workers lose jobs as N-cleanup winds down

Updated: 08/25/07 6:25 AM

West Valley Nuclear Services Co. announced it dismissed 27 
employees Friday as it winds up its contract with the Energy 
Department and transitions to new management.

The workers will receive 30 days’ pay, as well as full separation 
benefits that include severance pay based on years of service, 
extended health care coverage, retraining support and 
outplacement services.

Fourteen of the dismissed workers will have a chance to interview 
for positions with another businesses that specialize in 
providing full-service radiological assessment and remediation 
services.

Matching work force size and employee skill has been a key 
consideration during the transition from West Valley Nuclear 
Services Co. to West Valley Environmental Services, which will 
assume management and operations next Saturday.

Copyright 1999 - 2007 - The Buffalo News copyright-protected
*****************************************************************
 49 Seattle Times: Hanford eyed for additional nuclear storage 

Saturday, August 25, 2007 - Page updated at 02:07 AM

By Scott Learn Newhouse News Service

The Hanford nuclear reservation is on the federal government's short
list of sites for storing radioactive waste that could include
contaminated metal from more than 100 U.S. nuclear plants.

The waste, classified as low-level, also includes radioactive
detritus from medical procedures and research projects. But by far
the most radioactive components would be waste from decommissioned
nuclear plants and from the West Valley Demonstration Project near
Buffalo, N.Y., where the government is cleaning up a former nuclear
fuel-reprocessing center.

The amount of radiation in the inventory of current and projected
waste is 140 million curies, equal to the contamination estimated
from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown, or about three-quarters
of the radiation already contained in 177 leak-prone tanks at
Hanford.

Regulators and environmental groups are sounding alarms in advance
of a public meeting on the proposal Monday in Troutdale, Ore.

Ken Niles, assistant director of the Oregon Department of Energy,
calls Hanford's inclusion "ludicrous" given widespread contamination
at Hanford, its proximity to the Columbia River and a cleanup at the
former plutonium production site that is expected to cost $50
billion or more.

Under orders from Congress, the U.S. Department of Energy is trying
to find a place for a projected 200,000 cubic feet of waste to fill
a hole in the nation's controversy-ridden disposal system.

The waste is the most radioactive in the low-level category. Federal
officials concede that some of it is as radioactive as high-level
waste, which includes spent nuclear fuel. The inventory also
contains "transuranic waste," often contaminated with plutonium and
likely to remain radioactive for thousands of years.

Seven other sites are in the running, including the Yucca Mountain
Repository in Nevada, not yet open, and the Idaho National Lab, a
research site undergoing its own cleanup.

Christine Gelles, the DOE's leader on the project, said the waste
could be split among several sites. The department is gathering
information for an environmental-impact statement and is not leaning
toward one site or another, she said. Public comments are due by
Sept. 21. Congress will have to approve a final plan.

The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the
top-secret Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb. The
reservation ultimately housed nine reactors to produce plutonium for
nuclear weapons.

Hanford and five other sites are candidates for burying the waste in
trenches, vaults or boreholes, according to the DOE proposal. Two
sites, including Yucca Mountain, are candidates for deep burial.

Oregon Energy Department officials say shipping to Hanford would be
a big mistake. In 2005, the agency urged the feds not to consider
near-surface burial or disposing waste at sites undergoing cleanup.

"Both of those recommendations were ignored," Niles said. The
federal government isn't safely managing the waste already on the
site, Niles said in an e-mail alert this week.

New waste coming into Hanford, including reactor compartments from
nuclear submarines, is a relative trickle now, he said. "Adding more
waste — especially waste that is highly radioactive and long-lived —
is contradictory to the cleanup effort that we all support."

Washington's Department of Ecology, which successfully fought to
prevent the import of another category of low-level waste three
years ago, is studying the latest proposal, spokeswoman Sharon
Braswell said. But the state is "concerned about any activity that
would distract from or delay the cleanup at Hanford."

Watchdog groups, including Heart of America Northwest and Columbia
Riverkeeper, issued warnings about the plan.

Greg deBruler, Riverkeeper's Hanford technical consultant, called
the proposal "the most ill-conceived I have seen in 20 years working
on Hanford cleanup issues."

Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, said
it appears the government is targeting Hanford or the Nevada Test
Site north of Las Vegas for the disposal, given obstacles at other
sites on DOE's list.

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
 50 TheStar.com: Reviving Uranium City's nuclear past

Ontario - | Today's Toronto Star | Star P.M.

Uranium City boomed in the 1950s, when Al Scarfe took this photo. 
But the ensuing bust has brought widespread decay.

Boom, bust and . . .

Mining has produced some of the most dramatic booms and busts in
history. The life of a mine is finite; once all the ore has been
extracted, the mine, and the town servicing it, no longer serve a
purpose.

As a result, the pursuit of precious ore has littered North America
with ghost towns, or near-ghost towns. Uranium City is just one. In
Wyoming, Jeffrey City suffered a similar fate, expanding quickly to
thousands of people through the '70s, only to be wiped almost
entirely away in 1980 when uranium prices fell through the floor. It
now counts less than 100 people.

The Klondike gold rush littered the north with ghost towns, but
perhaps none so dramatic as Phoenix, B.C., a copper mining centre
high in the province's south. It grew to 4,000 people in 1911. Its
hockey team won the provincial championship that year, and applied
to compete for the Stanley Cup – too late, it turned out, to be
considered for the tournament.

When the mine closed in 1919, thousands of people moved out, leaving
behind most of their belongings. Through the 1940s, a lone caretaker
watched over the empty town until his death in 1951. Occasionally,
when the price of copper has spiked – as it did in the late 1970s
– Phoenix has seen new exploration. But the remains of the town
still sit neglected in its high valley, engulfed by the surrounding
wilderness.

Gord Struthers, a spokesman for Cameco Inc., the world's largest
uranium producer, says building towns to service mines is a thing of
the past. These days, workers fly in and out of remote mine sites on
two-week rotations. Quaint notions of building communities are
eschewed. "There will be no more boomtowns," he says.

But the bones of boomtowns remain scattered across the country,
reminders of a different ethos in a country that, despite
protestations to the contrary, is dependent on natural resources and
their extraction, by whatever means.

-Murray Whyte

How Ontario's energy future may depend on bringing scattered ghost
towns back to life

Aug 26, 2007 04:30 AM
Murray Whyte
toronto star


Uranium City, Sask. – Spindly alders strain and crack underfoot as
Don Hovdebo trudges through the thick bush. Then he finds it, on a
soaring ridge above the Cracklingstone River valley: a rusted steel
slab, roughly the width and length of a car, covering a rough pit in
the ground.

Hovdebo, burly and soft-spoken, with a thick brown moustache flecked
with grey, seizes a fist-sized rock and rolls it through an ominous
gap between the steel and solid ground. "Wait for it," says the
48-year-old, smiling. One one thousand, two one thousand ... At six
there's a distant splash, echoing up from below.

Hovdebo taps the slab with the toe of his boot, and there's a hollow
echo. "Kind of an emergency patch job," he says, grinning. "That's a
long way to fall."

Here at the site of the long abandoned Cinch Lake uranium mine,
across the river from Uranium City in Saskatchewan's far north, the
task is industrial archaeology – with, at long last, a mind to
more than a quick fix.

Hovdebo, a consultant with SRK, an engineering consulting firm, has
two scientists from the Saskatchewan Research Council in tow.
Together, they're assessing 37 such sites here officially slated for
cleanup and reclamation, left for dead in the wake of nuclear
disarmament and a subsequent uranium industry collapse through the
1970s. All told, with federal and provincial money, the cleanup will
cost $24.5 million.

But reports of the industry's death have been, as the saying goes,
greatly exaggerated. In January 2002, the price of uranium, nuclear
energy's radioactive fuel, was set at $9.60 (U.S.) per pound. A year
ago, it surged to $48.60. This month, it's $120, and some
projections have it hitting $200 next year.

And in a deliciously ironic twist, the forces driving the new-era
uranium boom mean to save the planet, not destroy it: the quest for
clean – and more – energy is slowly shaping an international
governmental consensus that nuclear power, finally, is the solution.

According to the World Nuclear Association, 250 new nuclear reactors
are either in the planning or proposal process worldwide (435 are
currently in operation). In 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush
signed an energy bill that provides loan incentives, tax credits and
federal risk insurance for companies willing to build new nuclear
plants – none of which have been built since the Three Mile Island
accident in 1979.

In Ontario, where more than half of our electricity already comes
from nuclear power, coal-fired plants are scheduled to be phased out
by 2014. Environmental groups are livid at the nuclear surge, but
despite their urgings, the provincial liberals have committed about
$5.2 billion to refurbishing nuclear reactors, which will add about
2,000 megawatts of nuclear power capacity.

The growing fascination with nuclear power – China alone will
build 50 reactors over the next few years, increasing its nuclear
load fivefold – is dramatically bumping up demand for uranium,
which is already in short supply. Only 55 per cent of the global
uranium supply comes from mines; the rest is culled from dismantled
warheads, government stockpiles and reprocessing.

And so the hunt is back on, in forgotten corners of the country and
around the world, where long-silenced drills are boring into bedrock
in search of new or abandoned veins – in Elliot Lake, Ont., which
gave up hope as a mining centre decades ago and reinvented itself as
a retirement community; in the parched high plains of Mongolia,
where Canadian-based Khan Resources is reinvigorating an old
Soviet-era claim; in the thick boreal forests of Frontenac County,
north of Kingston; in the rich, river-veined Gatineau region of
Quebec; in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Labrador, Nunavut, the
Northwest Territories and, of course, here in Uranium City, where it
all began.

"The best place to go looking for new ore is in an old mine," says
Zbiegniew Wytrwal, 61. He moved to Uranium City when he was nine
years old, and became a geologist at Eldorado, the biggest mine
there, through the boom. He left in 1980, just before uranium began
its freefall into economic oblivion. Twenty-seven years later, much
to his own shock, he's come full circle. "It was a dead industry,"
he says. "I never thought it would come back."

Uranium City, in the far northeast corner of Saskatchewan and
connected by road in winter across frozen lakes, began as a tented
outpost in 1950. Just a few years later, bathed in uranium's glow,
it was a thriving hub of 5,000, complete with hotels, department
stores, a dance hall, a curling rink and a movie theatre. In 1959,
even Prince Philip dropped by. Just a few kilometres away from the
Uranium City hub, the mine towns of Eldorado and Gunnar counted
another 2,000 and 1,200 people, respectively. By the early '80s,
though, anti-nuclear sentiment was gaining momentum. Even with
détente looming, a near-disaster at Three Mile Island in 1979
coupled with a public weary of their cold war anxieties was cooling
the prospects of a nuclear-powered future.

"There was a time when people from Uranium City were real pariahs,"
says Jim Kermeen, a geologist at Eldorado in the '60s. "You'd tell
them you were from here, and they'd take a step back."

Even though the meltdown disaster at Chernobyl was still 3 1/2 years
away, economically the uranium business was all but dead. Eldorado,
operated by the Canadian government, was the biggest mine in the
area, and the last to operate. It announced its closure in late
1982, and proceeded to quickly erase itself – buildings razed,
shafts capped and filled – taking most of Uranium City with it. At
77, Kermeen is back in the North for the first time in almost 40
years. On a recent morning near the Eldorado site, he pointed to an
expanse of blue sky where the Eldorado mine headframe once stood.

"Costs were rising, prices were low," he says. "Usually, when that
happens, you close the mine on care and maintenance and wait for
things to cycle back. Here, they demolished the whole thing and
buried it. My opinion, and that's all it is: it was political. The
stigma against anything nuclear was so strong."

Now, fewer than 100 people call Uranium City home. "Eighty-nine,
last I counted," says Carolyn Lenko, the official Uranium City
clerk, postmaster and lone administrative civic employee.

Uranium City is a weathered outpost now, the remains of a town
slowly being swallowed by the wilderness. What's left lingers amid
thick pines and brush and endless crystal blue lakes that dot the
heavy bedrock like droplets on a freshly waxed car hood.

On the outskirts of town, suburban bungalows flayed by the elements
and decades of neglect squat in the overgrowth, roofs caved in,
windows blown out. Fractured sidewalks lead to weed-choked
cul-de-sacs where no one has lived for years.

But the 89 people who remain are seeing more activity here than they
have in years. A surfeit of junior exploration companies, with names
like CanAlaska Uranium, Red Rock Energy and Uranium City Resources,
are drilling on their claim sites, hunting down the increasingly
precious metal.

The grade of uranium here is low compared with that of newer mines
to the south and east of Lake Athabasca, where the uranium
concentration, or grade, in the rock extracted can be as high as 20
per cent. Here, it's closer to 0.2 per cent – a fraction that,
until recently, made mining it cost-prohibitive.

But times have changed, says Serge Nadeau, the chief geologist with
Uranium City Resources here. "We were estimating that something like
0.02 per cent was economically viable. With the prices the way they
are now, even if we get one pound per ton, we're happy."

He has been even happier to find that some of his core samples are
suggesting a grade as high as 1.3 per cent. Nadeau was sniffing out
gold here when uranium prices shot up last year. He switched gears,
and has seen a host of new explorers rush in.

Uranium City Resources has almost completed a $1-million renovation
of a government building, abandoned in 1982, that will now include
living quarters, offices, a restaurant and a geology field office.
"We're hiring pretty much everyone in town," Nadeau says.

With the spike in uranium prices since last summer, "the past year
has been pretty crazy," says Dean Classen, 44. Classen runs the
town's only gas station, Uranium City Bulk Fuel, a truck rental
business, a construction company and the town's lone bed and
breakfast.

Exploration has been so busy, he says, that seats on TransWest Air
from the south, which flies in eight-seater planes three times a
week, are hard to come by. So in July, a second airline, Pronto,
started running the route as well. Classen's fuel station serves as
the flight check-in desk, too.

It's a far cry from the 737s that used fly in and out daily back in
the heyday. But it's something, he says.

Classen grew up here. His father was the high school teacher. When
the town collapsed with the closure of Eldorado, in 1982 –
"December 13, just before Christmas" – he stayed on despite it all.

"By the end of that summer, I'd say about 3,000 people were gone,"
Classen recalls. "It was a real exodus. That's why I like seeing new
people in town. It means we have a chance at better services, better
schooling. It means we have hope."

Out at Cinch Lake, Hovdebo and the scientists are searching for the
mine's stockpile – where rock containing the precious,
gamma-emitting metal would be piled for hauling to the mill. Bill
Olsen, one of the scientists, clutches a radiometer, which gauges
gamma radiation emissions from the rock underfoot.

Hovdebo first came north in 1994, as a mine inspector for the
Saskatchewan government. He has been pushing the federal and
provincial governments for a comprehensive cleanup ever since.

Radiation is the least of his concerns. "If I compare the radiation
I'm measuring in Uranium City, it's lower than in downtown
Saskatoon," he shrugs. "You can't see it, you can't feel it, and
most people just don't understand it."

The bigger problem: tailings, the waste product from refining the
ore from the mills. Once the rock was extracted, it was hauled to
the handful of mills that were active in the region – Gunnar,
Eldorado and Lorado. Once there, it was ground to a fine sand,
called slurry, from which a series of chemical processes dissolved
and concentrated the pure uranium ore from the silty muck that
contained it.

The by-product – called tailings – was let loose in nearby
lakes. "Arsenic trioxide, sulphuric acid leaching into the water
table – that's the issue," he says. "Human beings are very good at
creating molecules nature has never seen before. We've got to make
sure these things don't stick around."

But as the uranium boom and its nuclear application gather momentum
worldwide, so too do its detractors.

Frontenac Ventures, an Ontario company, has been exploring for
uranium deposits at Sharbot Lake north of Kingston, but last month
the local Algonquin First Nation occupied its exploration camp in
protest and refused to leave. The company is suing the first nation
for $100 million.

In New Brunswick, where a government ban on uranium mining was
enacted in 1982, CVRD-Inco is exploring for uranium near Moncton to
a chorus of public outcry. There have been demonstrations in Quebec,
protests in British Columbia. And controversy abounds near Baker
Lake in Nunavut, where skyrocketing uranium prices prompted an Inuit
land claims organization to reverse a uranium-mining ban on its
lands last year.

For environmental groups, all the talk of nuclear energy as a green
power panacea rings hollow. "It's basically wishful thinking that
nuclear power will do anything to reduce greenhouse gases," says
Emilie Moorhouse, of the Sierra Club.

Carbon emissions from mining, transporting and milling uranium
offset any benefits, she says. Then there's the issue of nuclear
waste – spent uranium from the reactors, for which there's no
long-term storage solution.

Fears of nuclear power were bluntly reinforced last month after an
earthquake in Japan caused a radioactive leak at a nuclear plant
there. Immediately after, the price of uranium, peaking at $136 per
pound, suffered its first fall in four years, to $120.

"The industry promises `This time around, things will be
different,'" Moorhouse says. "But it's not clean, it's not reliable
and it's not safe."

To make the point, the Sierra Club is touring a photo exhibit called
"Chernobyl: 20 years – 20 lives." The images of the continuing
devastation left behind by the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown disaster are
grotesque and disturbing.

In the Uranium City municipal office, Carolyn Lenko sits alone at a
computer, minding the town's scant affairs. Things are busier these
days, she allows. But, she continues, "There's been so many ups and
downs over the years, you don't want to get your hopes up."

As far as she's concerned, Uranium City's most precious resource is
tranquility. But in the past year, it has become less quiet. "When
you bring in the mining industry, you get a whole bunch of single
guys, and you know what comes with that," she says. "You get the
drinking, the fighting. And I have kids I'm raising here. And you
look at these mines, and you think, `Do we really want it?'"

At Uranium City Bulk Fuel, the de facto town centre these days, Andy
Schultz pulls up in a weather-beaten pickup, a truck axle thrown
over his shoulder. He drops it in Classen's garage and settles in
for a coffee. After years working in Fort McMurray, the country's
no-holds-barred oil sands boomtown, Schultz, 41, has come back to
where he started.

"I'm retired," he says. Schultz came back to spread his father's
ashes here. "I forgot how beautiful it was. They'll spread my ashes
here someday, too."

With uranium rising, Classen suggests what he thinks might be a
realistic goal for the town: about 2,500 people, servicing the
industry.

"Holy crap, don't even say that," says Schultz with a dose of
playful anxiety. "I came here to get away from the rat race."

Classen shrugs. "I'd love to see it," he says. "We could actually do
things again."

Toronto Star    |     |     |     |     |     |  
© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2007     |  
*****************************************************************
 51 Daily News Journal: Commissioner wishes county had control of landfill

Murfreesboro and Rutherford County, Tennessee 

By SAM STOCKARD stockard@dnj.com

When Jack Black won election to the Rutherford County Commission 
District 2 post in 2002 representing Walter Hill and Lascassas, 
he hoped the Middle Point Landfill was nearing the end of its 
life span.

He was disappointed last year when the state Department of 
Environment and Conservation allowed Allied Waste to expand along 
East Jefferson Pike in his community, despite opposition from 
county residents.

Black, a lifelong resident of Rutherford County who grew up in the
Walter Hill community, was even more exasperated when he and other
county commissioners found out this spring the landfill has been
accepting waste with low levels of radiation under Tennessee's Bulk
Survey for Release program since 1995. Black has called for
comprehensive testing on the Stones River and other water sources
around the landfill as well and wants extensive study on special
waste being disposed of there.

Q: What impact has Middle Point Landfill had on the community?

A: It's been huge, a large impact as far as all the trucks, garbage
trucks coming from everywhere.

Q: Has it been a burden on the community?

A: Burden, definitely. I think (there) should have been, before BFI
was permitted, I think (there) should have been long-range planning
on Jefferson Pike, how it was going to be affected.

Q: Since news broke this spring about the disposal of low-level
radiation dumping at the landfill, you've been a little more vocal
on the commission level. Why is that?

A: As far as when initially I found out about it, I don't think no
commissioner up there knew it was being accepted. Being where I work
at ... and knowing the effects of radioactive material, I think that
it was really a big surprise to me that that would be accepted,
something like that.

Q: Have you gotten a lot of calls from constituents?

A: Numerous, numerous. When you get to thinking about it as far the
effect it'll have on, maybe ... the water supply in the future. I
think all the tests that that's been run right now, CUD's run tests,
the city of Murfreesboro's run tests, they've all come back pretty
much negative. The county, we hired an environmentalist to look ...
into the situation, not just radioactive but also hazardous material
that's maybe seeping into the water supply.

Q: How do you feel about the county water testing showing arsenic in
the river whereas Murfreesboro and CUD testing did not show any of
the arsenic levels?

A: I'm just amazed by it. They did the same test that the county did
on it. It's amazing ... that they overlooked that chemical there
that was detected by our representative. I'm a little bit astonished
by that.

Q: Do you feel like that's something caused by the landfill or just
some naturally-occurring chemical?

A: To tell you the truth, I wouldn't really know. But I'd like to go
back to whenever the landfill was initially put there and see if it
was there then when they started doing the testing in '88.

Q: Do you think Middle Point is a better operated landfill than the
old county landfill, based on new requirements? (Black's father,
Ellis Black, was supervisor of the old county landfill.)

A: I'd say they've got more resources than the old landfill had to
work with, as far as operators. I mean it's very costly for the
county to have a landfill like that. I'd say it's, as far as a big
operation, they've got the resources to run a good Class A landfill.

Q: A DNJ interview with one of the top officials with the Department
of Environment and Conservation revealed that Middle Point's the
largest landfill in the state. How do you explain that to
constituents when they call you?

A: It's not really much you can say, other than it's the largest
landfill in the state of Tennessee. (Residents), I guess they think:
How could it be, how could Rutherford County have the largest
landfill in the state of Tennessee? Maybe they figure Memphis,
Nashville — which Nashville doesn't accept garbage no more — maybe
some higher populated (cities) would have it. Which we're growing, I
think right now 250,000 folks live here, you know. It's a big
operation. ... It's not something you want to be recognized as being
the No. 1 largest landfill in the state of Tennessee. I can't even
fathom it myself sometimes.

Q: It also doesn't appear Middle Point is going to be closing any
time in the foreseeable future. What do you think the county should
do in the meantime?

A: Recycling. We've got to look at more ways to recycle. We need to
be looking at other ways when this landfill does come to an end what
we're going to do. We've talked about the (waste processing) plant
in McMinnville, going up and looking at it. It was estimated that it
was somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million just to open that
kind of facility. It all comes down to what the taxpayers want to
pay. It's going to be costly whenever it does come to an end.

Q: Can the county afford not to have Middle Point right now from a
financial standpoint?

A: Can we? I'd say probably, but go back again. It'd be costly. It
would cost us to haul it to another facility. ... We've got a
demolition (landfill) that takes all the wood and brush and things
like that. It still would cost ... it would be very costly.

Q: With Allied Waste's decision to voluntarily stop taking the
low-level radioactive waste, how do you feel about that and what
will you ask the County Commission to do in wake of that decision?

A: With Allied Waste voluntarily saying they would no longer accept
the radioactive (waste), I'm very happy they made that decision. I
know the people of Walter Hill and also of Rutherford County are
equally happy about it. As far as what I'll ask the commission and
Public Works, I'd like to see it in writing. ... I've got to do a
little more research on exactly how we'll be asking the state ... to
make it so they would not be accepting any more radioactive
material. I'd like to see it in handwriting.

Q: How do you feel about the other types of special wastes that are
being accepted at the landfill? Do you think other consideration
needs to be made on those as well?

A: Sure, I would suggest to the state representatives that they
would go over that list with a fine-tooth comb and maybe present
some bills toward (restricting) some of the other waste that's going
in there, I guess either under the special waste or the Bulk Survey
for Release program. I'm a little bit confused now ... I hear one
thing as far as something being under the Bulk Survey for Release
program and then under special waste. I guess that they would have
someone to go over it and pick and choose what we don't want out
here in our landfill.

Q: Can you sum up your opinion of Middle Point Landfill and the
impact it's had on Walter Hill and north Murfreesboro and how you
think the county should deal with that in the coming years?

A: It started out as a little thing and grew into a whole lot bigger
thing than what anybody out there estimated that it would. I think
that you go back to when the agreement was initially signed as far
as getting permitted; I think the county should have had more
authorization over it. Instead of giving every bit of it to the
state. Going back to ... how it's going to affect the water in the
community later on, it's always going to be there. Even if it shuts
down in the next seven or eight years, it's going to be there and
we're more than likely going to have to deal with it. I just think
it's more or less been tragic to the community, a tragic thing.

Q: Is there anything else you want to add?

A: Hindsight's 20/20. I just wish I had been representative when
this contract was initially signed. I believe I would have done
everything I could have as a commissioner not to give the farm away.
We're at the mercy of the state. When we give them all the
authority, all we can do is just ask, and it's a shame that the
community out there has got to deal with this now.

Q: You're talking about that 1995 landfill agreement?

A: The 1995 and the 1988 when it was originally permitted. It should
not ever been, in my opinion, took out of the (county's control)
where we could have no authority over it, what would be coming in,
when, whatever.

 Post a Comment   View All Comments

 Thank you, Jack Black! You have been the FIRST to give an in-depth
interview, and the public thanks you in a HUGE way. Not one elected
official has been willing to give ANY ANSWERS, other than a
'partial, meaningless quote.'

Mr. Black, can you step one pace further and initiate a cancer study
within a 20 mile radius of the dump?

Can you initiate discussions with Bredesen's regime to reconfigure
the current 20 year, 70 acre expansion of Middle Point to accomodate
every piece of Nashville's debris?

Can you ask our police dept to STOP these speeding dump trucks? A
dump truck passed me on Sam Ridley on Thursday (11am) travelling
over 70 mph. The policeman (with radar) stationed at the Golf Course
parking lot never went after this vehicle.

Can you continue to work with DNJ and keep us informed of the 167
hazardsous, special wastes still being dumped?

DNJ: CAN YOU INTERVIEW ONE ELECTED OFFICIAL PER WEEK THROUGH END OF
YEAR in your paper and give us full account of what they are DOING
to make this sitaution BETTER? Kent Coleman? Donna Rowland? John
Hood? Mayor Tommy Bragg? What are there thoughts? What are they
DOING? Is this subject closed for action?

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 2:09 pm

======================================================================

 Which local pols have accepted campaign money from this company?

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 12:08 pm

======================================================================

 Even though most of the studies are coming back negative (meaning
little to no problem) and that is good for all of us as citizens of
the area, it's good this all has happened to focus everybody's
attention on the landfill. Ever since I've lived here people have
talked about the problem of the landfill, most often the smell. And
it's so big and ugly. It was just a matter of time for something
like this to happen. But hey folks, the garbage has to be put
somewhere. Not to realize that is putting your head in the sand. We
need solutions. Recycling is one of them but won't solve the
problem. I hope this whole issue leads to the county's (and the
cities) getting behind a very strong recycling effort. We also know
that recycling is the right thing to do. Let's make it easier for
people to do it. Let's lead the state in that category. We also need
to look at other ways to handle our trash. I think our local and
state reps are well aware now this is a big problem that isn't going
to go away. Let's finish the studies but start looking at solutions.

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 9:32 am

======================================================================

 Who were the signers of the original contracts in 1995 and 1998?
Let's go back and revisit that. If we can determine who it was we
need to put their pictures on the front page of the DNJ {just like
those of the fired jail employees}. Let the public know who created
this problem. Let us know where they live. Everyone could stop by
and thank them.

As for Mr. Black. Words are great but actions are even better. If
you truly want to change things then start by exposing who and why
this is even a problem. Name names, provide details. Let's make an
example of those who cared less about the public and now hide from
their decisions. One rat leads to a colony.

The only thing positive I see is the suggestion of recycling. Yet I
don't see anyone doing anything constructive. Providing recycling
bins {thanks Kroger} is not a solution. Being serious about the
problem takes leadership. It seems that quality is lacking from top
to bottom. Actions speak louder than words. Yet all I hear are words.

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 8:07 am

DNJ photo by Aaron Thompson

County Commissioner Jack Black represents the Walter Hill area 
that contains the Middle Point Landfill.

County Commissioner Jack Black
Rutherford County Commissioner, District 2,
3388 E. Jefferson Pike
Age: 44
Job: Murfreesboro Fire Department 23 years, engineer, driver
Education: 1981 Oakland High School graduate
Wife: Katy Lynn, technician at Nissan
Children: Kelsey Lynn, Dalton, Hailey, Taylor
Church: Hebron Church of Christ
Organizations: Murfreesboro Firefighters Association


8.26.07 Company asked state to withhold waste request 8.22.07
'Special waste' still accepted at landfill 8.22.07 Tests show most
materials below allowable levels 8.21.07 Allied Waste to end
radioactive dumping 8.19.07 Landfill meeting in Nashville Monday


Radioactive waste dumped at Middle Point Landfill

Copyright ©2007 The Daily News Journal. All rights reserved. Users
*****************************************************************
 52 Tennessean: Firm sought secrecy on dumping - 

Nashville, Tennessee - Sunday, 08/26/07 - Tennessean.com

'90s bid regarded radioactive waste bound for landfill

By TURNER HUTCHENS Gannett Tennessee

MURFREESBORO — A company wanting to dispose of tons of low-level 
radioactive materials in Middle Point Landfill in the 1990s asked 
state officials to withhold its request from the public, 
according to documents released last week.

After a legal challenge, the Tennessee Department of Environment 
and Conservation released the documents regarding the 1995 bid by 
American Ecology Recycle Center to dispose of the materials from 
the Port of New Orleans at Middle Point on Jefferson Pike.

In two letters to Michael Mobley, then director of the department's
Division of Radiological Health, the waste company requested "that
this proposal be withheld from public disclosure in its entirety."
The materials consisted of soil excavated during construction
activities at the city of New Orleans' port facilities, and the
department issued a permit for its disposal, according to the
documents.

The Oak Ridge operations of American Ecology have since been sold to
TOXCO, one of four companies licensed to dispose of materials under
the Bulk Survey for Release program.

Under the program, low-level radioactive materials have been dumped
at five Tennessee landfills, including Middle Point in the Walter
Hill community, since the 1990s. The other landfills are in Shelby,
Anderson and Hawkins counties.

Withholding info is legal

Withholding some information is in accordance with rules set up by
the Division of Radiological Health. Companies can declare some
types of information used in obtaining licenses — including raw
materials — is proprietary, so the state cannot release the
information.

Environment and Conservation spokeswoman Tisha Calabrese-Benton said
questions of how that rule might change would have to wait until the
department's response to the Solid Waste Advisory Committee's
recommendation that "the Division of Radiological Health more
aggressively challenge claims of confidentiality."

"After TDEC decides how to implement that recommendation, we will
report back to the committee," Calabrese-Benton said.

The committee had been charged by the General Assembly to review the
program.

The committee found the program was safe, but gave Environment and
Conservation officials until Jan. 31 to report back on some minor
improvements to the program, including more openness and public
involvement in the decision-making process.

State Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, said he is considering
legislation requiring more openness and communication with the
public regarding what's dumped in the landfills.

"It's something that's not just concerning Rutherford County. It's
across the state," Tracy said.

State Rep. John Hood, D-Murfreesboro, believes that the public
should have access to the information, but that the state should be
allowed to come up with its plan to address the issues before any
legislation moves forward.

"I think we ought to release every bit of information that is
possible to release," he said.

County wasn't informed

Rutherford County officials have said they were never informed of
the program by the state or the companies involved. Division of
Solid Waste Management Director Mike Apple has said the law does not
require that county officials be notified.

Pat Sanders, a member of the Rutherford County-based group Citizens
to End Nuclear Dumping in Tennessee, said everything about what's
going into Tennessee's landfills should be public knowledge.

"You shouldn't have to take legal action to get that information,"
Sanders said.

The program was established by an agreement between the Division of
Radiological Health and Division of Solid Waste Management.
Environment and Conservation officials said the program was designed
to streamline an otherwise cumbersome bureaucratic process of
disposing of very low-level radioactive waste.

The dumping of radioactive materials at the landfill was brought to
public attention in May when the nuclear-watchdog organization
Nuclear Information and Resource Service published a report critical
of Tennessee's standards for the disposal of such waste.

Allied Waste, which owns Middle Point, announced Monday it will no
longer accept waste under the program at the landfill.

======================================================================

 Not one Rutherford County elected official has been willing to give
ANY ANSWERS, other than a 'partial, meaningless quote.'

Can you step one pace further and initiate a cancer study within a
20 mile radius of the Middle Point dump?

Can you initiate discussions with Bredesen's regime to reconfigure
the current 20 year, 70 acre expansion of Middle Point to accomodate
every piece of Nashville's debris?

Can you ask our Rutherford police dept to STOP these speeding dump
trucks? A dump truck passed me on Sam Ridley on Thursday (11am)
travelling over 70 mph. The policeman (with radar) stationed at the
Golf Course parking lot never went after this vehicle.

Can you keep us informed of the 167 hazardsous, special wastes still
being dumped?

Tennessean: CAN YOU INTERVIEW ONE ELECTED OFFICIAL PER WEEK THROUGH
END OF YEAR in your paper and give us full account of what they are
DOING to make this situation BETTER? Kent Coleman? Donna Rowland?
John Hood? Mayor Tommy Bragg? Phil Bredesen? What are there
thoughts? What are they DOING? Is this subject closed for action?

Nancy Allen and Ernest Burgess state they never knew that thorium
was being dumped at Middle Point for a decade! How could this happen?

Arsenic was tested in Stones River last week at TWICE the hazardous
level it normally streams.

Instead of expanding Middle Point to 70 more acres and 20 more years
of taking Nashville's debris, can Ruth County send their trash to
Nashville?

Rutherford County needs huge assistance from the Tennessean to get
to the BOTTOM of this matter?

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 1:17 pm

======================================================================

 It is outragous for a state employee in a manager role to say that
just because the law doesn't "require" that we notify the County, we
didn't! Why must the law REQUIRE an action before state of Tennessee
act in a human fashion. To allow secret dumping of radioactive waste
in a county without ever disclosing that to even the county mayor,
the county government, not to mention the citizens, is just
OUTRAGOUS conduct by a public employee!! And there is no excuse that
"oh, it is only low-level rad waste"

The Department of Environment and Conservation IS the watchdog,
given power by the General Assembly to protect the state's
environment for the good of people. But NO! Oh No, it makes secret
deals, and agreements with polluting industry. One wonders what
other secrets this Dept has made to protect waste generating
companies to the exclusion of the public. We won't know until
something happens, will we. Water polluted, air polluted, sickness
and maybe even death.

Maybe it's time for some house cleaning!

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 12:12 pm

Copyright © 2007, tennessean.com. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 53 Salt Lake Tribune: Green River's ups and downs featured uranium, watermelons

Living History

By Eileen Hallet Stone The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 08/26/2007 12:57:38 AM MDT

Long before Green River incorporated in 1906, it was little more
than a postal station, a river crossing, a point of exploration by
John Wesley Powell and an agrarian slice of life sought by pioneers
like Thomas Farrer who savored living "as far away from civilization
as possible."

    Sparsely populated in 1880, Green River's populace surged from
three families to 400 residents in 1882 when the Denver and Rio
Grande Railroad started putting down roadbed through town and on to
Colorado. Laborers lived in dugouts and tents. The Palmer House, a
new three-story, French 2nd Empire Revival-style hotel noted for
fine food, incandescent lighting and steam heat received travelers.
Farrer's mercantile and ferry business prospered, his saloon
frequented by ranchers and railroad men alike.

    It was a wild Western town in a boom-and-bust decade. By 1892,
it was over. The D&RG railroad moved its operations. The district's
population fell asunder. Not until the 1900s did river travel,
uranium booms and watermelon harvests revive its history.

    Uranium was the "gold rush" of post-World War II. Within 
seven years, more than 50,000 claims were filed in Emery County. 
According to Utah historian Edward Geary, Green River was a 
"staging and supply point for prospectors and for the Temple 
Mountain, Muddy Creek and Tidwell Draw mines." From the Temple 
Mountain district alone, nearly 1.3 million pounds of uranium 
oxide were produced.

    "It was the uranium fever that got us here," Nancy Dunham, 76,
told me recently. An upstate New Yorker wed to her Colorado cowboy,
in 1952 Nancy and Gene Dunham opened S&M Sales on the corner of
Hastings Road and Highway 50.

    "Green River had a mill and railroad, and was central to the
Colorado Plateau and Hanksville mines," Dunham said. "Hanksville had
one telephone line, a dirt road and a lot of activity."

    The amiable Gene traveled countywide, delivering compressors and
mine supplies. At the shop they made repairs and sold equipment and
dynamite. "It was a good business for us," Dunham said, "but a
scandalous industry. Plenty of promoters made money. Few prospectors
benefited."

    By 1964, the uranium market was flooded. The mill closed. Those
in business saw no reason to stay. Again, Green River was quiet, and
the Dunhams turned to ranching.

    Twenty miles south of Green River, at the crossing before the
tributary passes into deep canyons, they bought historic Ruby Ranch.
They rebuilt the farm "piece by piece, from the bottom up," raised
six children, ran cattle, acquired more land toward town and were
enamored with Green River watermelons.

    "We had a sweetheart of a neighbor who always left a couple by
our door," Dunham said. "The more he shared his produce, the more we
got hooked into growing them."

    In the 1890s, John "Melon" Brown's Eden musk melons were so
sought after he exported seeds to France. In early 1900, fruit trees
grew in abundance, but because they were perishable and difficult to
transport, they couldn't find a market. During the 1930s, the
country was devastated by drought, heat and deluge. Crops failed.
The economy faltered. Fields lay fallow. Yet, in Green River, where
temperatures ranged from 106 degrees in summer and dipped below 40
degrees in winter, watermelons proved hardy and marketable.

    "It's those climate variations, the cool night and hot days,
that produce the sweetest of melons," Dunham said, describing her
Crimson Sweet and Minilees.

    In 1934, 151 carloads of melons were shipped for distribution;
four years later, production doubled.

    Hundreds of workers were hired. Geary noted, "Intense
cultivation kept everyone busy and Green River was . . . the best
town of its size for employment."

    Calling the watermelon "an amazing machine," Dunham marvels
"that a little seed planted in sandy soil and watered maybe four
times a season not only grows into a 20- to 30-pound melon but
produces vines that bear fruit from mid-July until frost - and I ask
you, what other crop can do that?"

    ---
    * EILEEN HALLET STONEYou may reach her at ehswriter@aol.com.
Additional Sources: Edward Geary's "History of Emery County," a Utah
Centennial County History Series.
*****************************************************************
 54 Albuquerque Tribune: Speedy approvals of uranium leaching can harm land, lives

V.B. Price: Murky waters : Columnists : 

By V.B. Price

Friday, August 24, 2007

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the uranium-mining lobby
are trying to fast-track approvals for a potentially hazardous form
of uranium mining called "in-situ leaching."

At issue are questions of environmental justice and the nature of
what safe drinking water is, especially after pristine aquifers have
been contaminated and attempts have been made to clean them up.

In-situ leaching involves injecting highly alkaline chemicals into
groundwater, dissolving uranium that coats subterranean sediment.
The chemicals loosen the uranium, which is pumped out and processed,
leaving large amounts of wastewater.

Typically, in-situ leaching sites in New Mexico would be close to
Navajo Nation and Laguna and Acoma Pueblo lands and aquifers.

Uranium companies say that in-situ leaching will not only bring jobs
into the area but also save miners the risks of digging for uranium.
Others point out that miners are "saved" from those risks, because
in-situ leaching doesn't use miners, and the jobs it generates are
technical and scarce.

What irks New Mexicans, including Gov. Bill Richardson, is the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's efforts to use "generic
environmental impact statements" when approving in-situ leaching
mining permits.

While the plan does allow informal local reviews, it's unlikely a
generic environmental impact statement would make room for public
comment. Opposition to the plan contends there is no such thing as a
"generic environment" and that a generic environmental impact
statement would be a useless sham, designed to speed up uranium
extraction for the benefit of uranium-mining companies.

Although depicted as a benign process with virtually no risk to
drinking water, in-situ leaching has a reputation outside the
uranium and nuclear industries as a dirty process with potentially
great public hazards.

Major problems involve: leaching chemicals that invade freshwater;
high accumulations of radium and radon; the dissolving not only of
uranium but also of other radioactive materials and heavy metals,
such as radium, lead and cadmium; disposing of wastewater and
guarding for leaks; and the practice of diluting wastewater with
clean water and injecting it into the aquifer.

Would anyone in his or her right mind drink that?

The most troubling situation involves what the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission considers restored in-situ leaching water. An in-situ
leaching project in Wyoming ended up with restored water that had
700 times as much uranium in it as before leaching began.

The restoration process took nine years. Before leaching, the
natural groundwater there had 50 micrograms of uranium per liter in
it. The EPA safe-drinking standard is 30 micrograms.

When leaching ended, the groundwater had 40,000 micrograms per
liter, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Restoration reduced
it to 3,500 micrograms.

The uranium industry has an unhealthy history. The Radiation
Exposure Compensation Act has already paid $1.2 billion, mostly to
uranium workers and downwinders.

We don't need fast-track, generic regulations. We need to watch
uranium mining on site like hawks.

© 2007 The E.W. Scripps Co.
*****************************************************************
 55 KCBS: Hunter's Point Air Harmful to Your Health

Posted: Saturday, 25 August 2007 3:35PM

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)  -- Gusty winds have whipped up dust from a
construction project and the Hunter&rsquo;s Point shipyard into a
toxic mess.

As crews tear down the Hunter&rsquo;s Point power plant, residents
are concerned about breathing the contaminated air.

Tess Esther lives across the street from the plant-dismantling
project.

&ldquo;We&rsquo;re surrounded by it,&rdquo; said Esther.

The air contains naturally occurring asbestos, and Marie Harrison of
Green Action said residents are suffering from headaches, rashes and
respiratory problems. She said the city is obligated to act
immediately to fix the problem.

&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not going to clean this community, tear it down,
and rebuild it for a whole brand-new group of folks and we&rsquo;re
going to sit here and die over it,&rdquo; said Harrison.

The group is asking that all the work be stopped for the health of
the community until a more responsible plan can be put into place.

 
Copyright 2007, KCBS. All Rights Reserved.
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 56 Tennessean: Nuclear monitoring problems cited at Oak Ridge facilities -

Nashville, Tennessee - Friday, 08/24/07 - Tennessean.com

Associated Press

OAK RIDGE — Federal auditors cited the Oak Ridge National 
Laboratory and a former uranium enrichment plant in Oak Ridge for 
failing to adequately monitor workers for radiation exposure.

The Department of Energy's inspector general found problems with 
more than 65 percent of radiological workers sampled at the Oak 
Ridge National Lab.

The audit released Wednesday said ORNL workers either didn't receive
all of their scheduled bioassay tests, weren't tested often enough
or weren't tested for all radioactive materials they might have been
exposed to.

This biological sampling is used to evaluate whether workers have
absorbed radioactive materials. It supports other types of radiation
monitoring for workers most likely to be exposed.

The University of Tennessee-Battelle Memorial Institute partnership
that manages the lab for the government disputed the finding.

"In this case, the report apparently confused a voluntary testing
program with a much more stringent monitoring program that ORNL has
had in place for years," lab spokesman Billy Stair said.

Tests at K-25 lacking

At the East Tennessee Technology Park, the former K-25 uranium
enrichment plant being cleaned up by Becthel Jacobs Co., about 20
percent of nuclear workers were not tested often enough for all the
radioisotopes at their work sites, the report said.

DOE spokesman John Shewairy said a "number of mechanisms including
air monitoring, radiation screening and the use of dosimetry
monitors" are in place at the Oak Ridge facilities and provide
"radiation detection and protection capability for our workers."

Copyright © 2007, tennessean.com. All rights reserved.
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 57 Chillicothe Gazette: USEC inks deal to produce rotor tubes to be used in Piketon

www.chillicothegazette.com - Chillicothe, OH

Sunday, August 26, 2007   

USEC Inc. announced last week it has entered into a three-way 
manufacturing supply agreement with Hexcel Corp. and Alliant 
Techsystems (ATK) to produce carbon fiber for rotor tubes that 
will be used in USEC's American Centrifuge uranium enrichment 
plant in Piketon.

Hexcel will produce carbon fiber at its Salt Lake City, Utah, 
facilities, then will deliver it to ATK. ATK will then 
manufacture composite rotor tubes in West Virginia that will be 
used by the American Centrifuge plant in Piketon.
 
The agreement calls for ATK to prepare more than 11,500 rotor tubes
for gas centrifuge machines. The $100 million agreement runs through
the end of 2011 and gives USEC the option of buying additional
carbon fiber that could double the value of the contract.

Hexcel will be adding manufacturing capacity to make sure it can
fulfill the terms of the contract.

"This agreement with Hexcel and ATK is a key step in our efforts to
establish the manufacturing infrastructure necessary to build
thousands of centrifuge machines for our American Centrifuge Plant.
It is a great example of our dedication to reinvigorating America's
nuclear industrial manufacturing base," said Philip G. Sewell, USEC
senior vice president for American Centrifuge and Russian HEU. "The
multi-million dollar agreement also demonstrates USEC's commitment
to deploying the American Centrifuge Plant."

USEC is looking toward commercial plant operations beginning in late
2009.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a construction and
operating license for the American Centrifuge Plant in April and
construction got under way in May.

Last week, during a meeting with representatives of the energy
department, the idea of a citizens advisory committee to provide
input involving the new plant was discussed and met with favorable
response.

The enrichment process involves increasing the concentration of the
fissionable uranium isotope U-235 to make fuel for nuclear power
plants.

Copyright ©2007 Chillicothe Gazette
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 58 lamonitor.com: Labs power up packs of intellectual property

The Online News Source for Los Alamos

ROGER SNODGRASS Monitor Assistant Editor

Four nuclear weapons laboratories agreed Friday to pool intellectual
properties created by their scientists and engineers. The
Intellectual Property Bundling Agreement (IPBA) is intended to speed
up commercialization of lab technologies.

Technology Ventures Corporation of Albuquerque developed the IPBA
under a cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy. TVC
mentors startups and helps commercial ideas at the laboratories find
investors. TVC chairman Sherman McCorkle hosted the signing in
Albuquerque.

Clay Sell, Deputy Secretary of Energy, and Sen. Pete Domenici,
R-N.M., attended the event, along with the representatives of the
four weapons laboratories managed by the National Nuclear Security
Administration: LANL, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia
National Laboratories and the Nevada Test Site.

In a press release Friday, Domenici said the new agreement should
significantly increase the success rate for transferring technology.

"Bundling intellectual property rights for ideas generated by
multiple labs will make them more readily available for development
into the products and services," he said. "That will ultimately
create jobs and strengthen our economic base."

Intellectual property refers specifically to patents and inventions,
but also includes other kinds of creations and discoveries, like
software, drawings and know-how.

Duncan McBranch, who heads the Tech Transfer Division of Los Alamos
National Laboratory, said the bundling idea is a theme that has been
going around universities and industries for a while now.

"There is more value in intellectual overlap than in any one thing
alone," he said

McBranch said progress has been made in identifying what the
clusters are.

"Ken Freese, in the intellectual property management office within
my divisions, has developed a strong set of tools to analyze the
patent portfolios and characterize them by what they are similar
to," he said.

Among technology clusters that seemed promising, McBranch mentioned
biosecurity, new materials, and data and image analysis.

In the biosecurity area, he said, there were a number of patents at
LANL related to DNA detection and rapid analysis, and that Lawrence
Livermore has also been working in that area.

"Each of us has 10-20 patents," he said, some of which could be
available as a bundle.

Intellectual property management has become an increasingly
important strategic concern for companies working in the
technological arena.

© 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.
    
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