***************************************************************** 11/05/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.260 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 dot.comments: Pakistan Danger - 2 csmonitor.com: Why U.S. sticks by Musharraf | NUCLEAR REACTORS 3 US: NRC: NRC Commences Follow-Up Security Inspection at Peach Bottom 4 US: Associated Press: Nuke Plant Worker No Longer a Suspect 5 US: Quad-Cities Online: Going nuclear: Is it the answer to energy wo 6 US: Courant.com: Could Vermont Survive Without Nuclear Plant? -- 7 US: Reuters: Entergy to spin off five nuclear plants 8 Manila Standard Today: Kepco keen on reviving nuclear plant 9 UPI: China State Council expands nuclear 10 icWales: Rising support for dangerous nuclear power - 11 US: KSBY 6: Two new power sources arrive at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Po 12 US: Brisbane Times Blogs: Where's the nukes, Johnny? | Blunt Instrum 13 US: ENS: New York State Wants Full Review of Indian Point Nuclear Pl NUCLEAR SECURITY 14 US: Foreign Policy: The Terrorism Index 15 US: globeandmail.com: Radioactive alarm bells ring at landfill sites NUCLEAR SAFETY 16 US: Albuquerque Tribune: Vets get free testing for uranium 17 TheStar.com: Ontario urged to look into radioactivity alerts NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 18 US: Tucson Citizen: UA in hurry to ship its radioactive waste to S.C 19 Platts: Sellafield Product and Residue Store completed last week 20 US: The Coloradoan: Stop uranium mining across Colorado 21 US: NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials to Me 22 US: Las Vegas Now: National HAZMAT Conference Held in Las Vegas 23 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Nuclear meltdown PEACE 24 US: AFP: Washington to go ahead with missile defence plans - officia 25 US: Daily of the University of Washington: Bush's nuclear daydreamin 26 Cincinnati Post: Congress can stop Iran war 27 AFP: China, US agree to deepen military dialogue, but concerns remai 28 Scotsman.com: Protesters take to city streets against Trident 29 Guardian Unlimited: Talks With China Yield Few Answers 30 UPI: Walker's World: A desperate Musharraf 31 UPI: Missile troops told to improve capability - 32 UPI: Outside View: Rocket revolution -- Part 2 33 Albuquerque Tribune: U.S. must decide future of nuclear policy 34 US: t r u t h o u t | Report: Cheney Pursuing Nuclear Ambitions of H US DEPT. OF ENERGY 35 Daily Nexus: UC To Refute D.O.E. Fine Over Nuclear Lab Violation - 36 Department of Energy: Events 37 Knoxville News Sentinel: ORNL computing guru assumes UT vice preside 38 Knoxville News Sentinel: Bechtel Jacobs names Divjak to head Oak Rid 39 Knoxville News Sentinel: Creek and Y-12's relationship still flows 40 DOE: Secretary of Energy in Massachusetts to Highlight Advanced Ener ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 dot.comments: Pakistan Danger - The Post Two stories are pulling most of the comments this morning -- a crackdown on political opposition in Pakistan and a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that says no Republican candidate for president has established a breakaway advantage for the party nomination, an unusual situation in recent years. Our Readers Who Comment (RWC) are distressed by the situation in Pakistan for obvious reasons, including its role in the terrorism struggle and the fact that the world now faces significant political instability in a nuclear power to which the United States is contributing $150 million a month in assistance. As for the poll, Republicans gave former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani a double-digit lead over his main rivals, but their support seemed lukewarm in response to further questioning. Among Democrats, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a 23-point lead over Sen. Barack Obama. There is also a comment campaign for Ron Paul to be included in the polling. PC World reports that computer spamming programs having been pushing the Paul campaign. Paul is a former Texas congressman who once ran for president as a Libertarian. On the Pakistan story, we'll start with MorganaLeFay, who said that "Republican incompetence seems to be taking a world that previously only existed in Fox News sound bites and making it real. If Bush blows it and loses Pakistan... then we really will have nuclear armed Islamic radicals loose in the world..." arenadina wrote. "...There is no practical solution, either in Pakistan, nor by any US policies. The fact is there is a religious war going on (when will we admit it?), with the populace of Pakistan being sympathetic to Al Quada (if not, why has not the Great One been caught?), while the secular crowd is in our corner. A standoff and dangerous In my view,.." sultana38 wrote: Not only the United States but all civilised nations should stop to aid Pakistan till the present dictatorship exists. Moreover, all overseas Pakistanis should stop or minimise their remittances to Pakistan till a real democracy prevails." jvandeswaluw1 suggested that "Bush must stop all aid to Pakistan at once. Aiding and abetting this dictator is a sign that you support his policies. What can one say about the man who's supporting evil?..." Now to the polling story. Frishoo wrote. "This is healthy. The Republican party is carefully weighing the merits of all the candidates rather than rushing to select a candidate because they like her husband. :)" racam said, "If this is the best that the Republicans can do, heaven help them. If this is the best the Democrats can do, heaven help them. I am a registered voter but I will definitely have trouble voting for any of the candidates from either party. Also, I will not waste my vote trying to make a statement against the two major parties by voting for a third party." Hawke1 wrote, "Wow, this is interesting. It certainly represents the strife that is currently going on with the GOP party. Perhaps its a sign that were going to be seeing a new party soon." But vatownsend said that "We conservatives are very patient. It is still very early and we all know that the polical winds change on a drop of a dime. Go Hillary GO!" And klosskid wrote, "It's difficult to imagine the religious right mustering a sufficient degree of hypocrisy to support Giuliani in either a primary or general election." We'll close with Tirade1, who filed one of the many Ron Paul comments, and said, "Once again, the Washington Post completely ignores Ron Paul in an article about GOP candidates. Why is there a mainstream media blackout on Ron Paul?" By Doug Feaver | November 5, 2007; 9:45 AM ET © 2007 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 2 csmonitor.com: Why U.S. sticks by Musharraf | from the November 6, 2007 edition Reporter Howard LaFranchi recalls a 2002 visit by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to the Boston headquarters of the Monitor. WASHINGTON - America's safety and the demands of the war on terror trump immediate concerns about democracy in Pakistan. That Bush administration perspective explains why the US – as disturbed as it may be by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's declaration of a state of emergency – is expected to refrain from steps that could weaken Pakistan's leader. President Bush has regarded Mr. Musharraf as a major ally in the fight against Islamic extremism. So while US officials talk about reviewing the billions of dollars in mostly military assistance Pakistan receives from the US, a break with Musharraf over his authoritarian turn is seen as improbable. Anything more than intensified diplomacy – calling for a restoration of rights and for holding scheduled elections as soon as possible – is unlikely, at least over the short term. Although most analysts agree that the US options for influencing Musharraf are limited, they also say the time has come for a new Pakistan policy that is less Musharraf-centric. The military ruler, they say, may not last long at the helm of a nuclear power in a volatile region. In addition, it is increasingly clear that US interests in a stable Pakistan, free of Al Qaeda's influence, have not advanced under Musharraf. "We have to start by acknowledging that we don't have that many options in this relationship. And we should take our history with Pakistan into account, which shows that any sticks we've wielded or sanctions we've imposed haven't had direct impact on Pakistan's actions," says Karl Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary for South Asian affairs who is now at George Washington University. "But we need to be engaged with the Pakistanis in this time of crisis. Our action should be nuanced and broad-based, and we should be consulting the international community on this." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated Monday the US view that "the best path for Pakistan is to quickly return to a constitutional path and then to hold elections." That came after earlier comments she made – echoed by the White House – that no US action would be taken to jeopardize the Pakistani military's battle with Al Qaeda insurgents and their supporters in remote tribal territories. "I would be very surprised if anyone wants [President Bush] to ignore or set aside our concerns about terrorism," Secretary Rice said shortly after Musharraf declared a state of emergency Saturday. A White House spokesman had a similar comment: "We're obviously not going to do anything that will undermine the war on terror," said Gordon Johndroe. Rice says Washington will review its aid to Pakistan, which has received about $11 billion in US assistance since it became a close ally in fighting terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As it tries to influence Musharraf, the United States may seek to pressure the Pakistani military – and indeed is already showing signs of doing so. he US Embassy said that a US-Pakistan Defense Consultative Group meeting to be held in Islamabad this week has been postponed - awaiting "conditions [that] are more conducive to achieve the important objectives of the meeting." Such signals to the Pakistani military could indirectly influence Musharraf to step back from actions that he claims are directed at Islamic militants but have come across more as a personal power grab. "The most important actions the US can take are those that will catch the attention of the Pakistani military, which has never liked being at loggerheads with the Americans," says Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani government official now at Boston University's Center for International Relations. The US military may be focused on Pakistan's fight with extremists, he says, but the country's rising political instability does not necessarily mean US military officials will favor a kid-glove approach to Musharraf. "They will see that if Musharraf is going to commit more troops to controlling demonstrators and riots in the streets, that will mean less attention to the war on terror," says Mr. Haqqani. Pentagon officials say that US review of aid to Pakistan includes current funding and what has been proposed under the 2008 budget request from the Department of State. That includes $300 million in foreign military financing, $2 million for international military education and training, and another $32 million for international narcotics and law-enforcement programs. Also, as part of the foreign military-sales program, Congress has approved the sale of 32 F-16 jet fighters, half of which are new. The aid package also includes about $10 million for the nonproliferation antiterrorism and demining and related programs, or NADR. All such funding requests are through the Department of State. "It's fair to say that we are reviewing all of our assistance programs," said Bryan Whitman, a spokesman at the Pentagon Monday. Some observers have drawn attention to the differences in approach of the Bush administration to recent antidemocratic measures by the military junta in Burma (also known as Myanmar) and Musharraf's moves. Bush was quick to publicly condemn Burma's leaders and to push for international sanctions. He was initially silent on Pakistan, but was expected to make a comment Monday afternoon. The responses suggest both the difference in the two country's strategic importance to the US and the opportunity the US may have for influencing Pakistan, Haqqani says. "Of course Pakistan has a central role in the international confrontation with terrorism that was not a factor in addressing Burma," he says. "But it is also true that Burma's military rulers are quite ready to dismiss outside pressures, but that is not the case with Pakistan's rulers or the people in general. Most sectors of Pakistani society wish to avoid isolation from the rest of the world." Still, Mr. Inderfurth says almost any punitive action the US might consider against Musharraf could easily backfire and end up hurting US interests. Pointing to the sale of 32 F-16s that Congress has approved, Inderfurth says, "To cut off that [sale] might seem like a logical place to show our displeasure - until you consider that such a move would do more to jeopardize the broad Pakistani public's estimation of the US than to undermine the Pakistani military." Noting that the long-sought F-16s have become a public symbol of how "the US is not a true friend of Pakistan," Inderfurth says, "It's just another example of how complicated this crucial relationship is, and how much attention it's going to require over the coming months." Staff writer Gordon Lubold in Washington contributed to this report. www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 3 NRC: NRC Commences Follow-Up Security Inspection at Peach Bottom News Release - Region I - 2007-057 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission began a follow-up team inspection into security issues at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant earlier today. A four-member Augmented Inspection Team (AIT) is expected to be at the Exelon-operated facility in Delta (York County), Pa., throughout the week. A separate AIT review by the NRC occurred in late September. That inspection was launched by the agency promptly after video recordings of inattentive security officers at the plant came to light. Through that inspection, the NRC confirmed there had been multiple occasions on which multiple security officers were inattentive. However, the NRC also determined that the plant’s security program was not significantly degraded as a result. Given that the focus of the AIT was fact-finding, the purpose of the AIT follow-up review being conducted this week is to assess Exelon’s root-cause analysis of the inattentiveness issues and to determine if its corrective actions in response are sufficient to prevent a recurrence. The inspection team includes specialists from the NRC’s Region I Office in King of Prussia, Pa., its Region IV Office in Arlington, Texas, and its headquarters in Rockville, Md. Other NRC reviews of the Peach Bottom security issues are continuing. Consideration of appropriate enforcement action will be undertaken upon completion of all of these reviews. “The follow-up inspection activity at Peach Bottom underscores our commitment to thoroughly evaluate any deficiencies that may exist in the plant’s security program and to ensure the issues are being properly addressed,” Region I Administrator Samuel J. Collins said. “Let me emphasize again that we have zero tolerance for inattentiveness on the part of any nuclear power plant security officer.” NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. November 05, 2007 ***************************************************************** 4 Associated Press: Nuke Plant Worker No Longer a Suspect One of the three units of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station shown here Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007 in Wintersburg, Ariz. A contract employee attempting to enter the facility was caught at a security checkpoint with an explosive device causing a lockdown of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station Friday, Nov. 2, 2007 in Wintersburg, Ariz (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) By AMANDA LEE MYERS – 8 hours ago PHOENIX (AP) — Authorities searched Monday for whoever planted a pipe bomb in a truck, triggering a lockdown at the nation's largest nuclear power plant, after concluding the vehicle's owner was no longer a suspect. Authorities shifted their attention away from 61-year-old Roger William Hurd, who returned to work at the plant Monday, to "find out who really made the bomb and put it in his truck," Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said. Investigators are interviewing residents at Hurd's apartment complex in Goodyear, about 24 miles west of Phoenix, the sheriff said. "We want to catch the perpetrators that caused this havoc," Arpaio said. The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station was on lockdown for most of the day Friday after security officers found the pipe bomb in the bed of Hurd's truck. Hurd told authorities that he didn't know how it got there. He said that he normally rides his motorcycle to work, and that his truck had been sitting unused in the apartment complex's parking lot for six days before he drove it to work Friday. Hurd works as a procurement engineer and evaluates equipment purchases for the plant. He was back on the job in an administrative building, and his access to restricted areas was still suspended as the investigation continued, said Jim McDonald, a spokesman for Arizona Public Service Co., which operates Palo Verde. Keeping Hurd away from the restricted areas is a precaution, McDonald said. "At a nuclear plant, you're ever-vigilant, you're ever-careful," he said. "Precaution always comes first." Palo Verde is in Wintersburg, about 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix. The plant supplies electricity to about 4 million customers in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California. On the Net: * Palo Verde: http://www.aps.com/general_info/AboutAPS_18.html * Maricopa County Sheriff's Office: http://www.mcso.org/ Hosted by Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 5 Quad-Cities Online: Going nuclear: Is it the answer to energy woes? Print publication date: 11/05/2007 By Rita Pearson, rpearson@qconline.com Photo: Gary Krambeck Operating instructor supervisor Mark Jensen explains how the Quad Cities Nuclear Power Station control room simulator can help train new operators and work through various emergency and non-emergency simulations for the operators at the station. More photos from this shoot Photo: Gary Krambeck Bill Stoermer, Public Affairs Manager for Exelon Nuclear at the Quad Cities Nuclear Generating Power Plant demonstrates the hand scanners part of the security at the power plant. More photos from this shoot Photo: Gary Krambeck Double-barrier fencing with barbed and razor wire secures the above-ground spent-fuel casks storage facility at the Quad Cities Generating Station in Cordova. The nation needs 20 to 30 new nuclear plants by 2030 to keep up with climate change and ensure future energy security, Exelon Corp. chairman John Rowe said. Exelon Corp. is the parent company of Exelon Nuclear, majority owner and operator of the Quad Cities Nuclear Power Station near Cordova. Mr. Rowe, new chairman of the policy organization Nuclear Energy Institute, spoke on the bright future of the nuclear industry at the NEI's annual conference. The country's 104 existing nuclear reactors are operating reliably, safely, economically and profitably, Mr. Rowe said. One of the great success stories of the last five or six years has been the ability of generating companies to stabilize operating costs even as they've invested heavily in new security, new steam generators and other major components necessary for running power plants safely and reliably for 40 to 60 years, he said. Since 2001, nuclear power plants have achieved lower production costs than coal, natural gas or oil, according to industry information. In 2004, nuclear production averaged $18.26 per megawatt-hour while fossil fuel production cost $23.85 per megawatt-hour, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Information Digest. Achievements in the nuclear industry have not dissuaded the environmental group Greenpeace from its campaign for a massive uptake of renewable energy and adoption of energy efficiency as the most effective ways to combat climate change. "Nuclear power belongs in the dustbin of history; it is a target for terrorists, and a source of nuclear weapons," according to a Greenpeace briefing. "Renewable energy is peaceful energy, and it is available today." By Oct. 11, 21 companies or groups had applied for license applications for up to 32 new nuclear reactors in the United States, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. New plant designs are being certified, and generating companies are ordering forgings and other construction materials that take a long time to produce. Mr. Rowe said the timing couldn't be better, as fossil fuel prices for oil, natural gas and coal are extremely volatile due to worldwide demand. Domestic oil and gas production have plateaued. Although the outlook is bright for the nuclear industry, Mr. Rowe and Exelon Nuclear have decided Exelon won't build any nuclear plants until the nuclear waste disposal issue has been resolved. A temporary above-ground waste storage facility is the newest feature at the Quad Cities Station. It opened in June 2006 and now contains nine concrete cylinders, or casks, each containing 68 spent-fuel assemblies. It has room for 65 casks, each 17 feet tall, 11 feet in circumference and weighing 180 tons. Exelon plans to fill five or six casks a year, as it gradually moves the spent fuel from an in-house radioactive water pool to the temporary storage area. About 3,000 spent-fuel assemblies remain in the indoor pool in the power plant. The storage site is a short distance from the power plant but guarded around the clock with lights, surveillance cameras and armed guards. A permanent solution for nuclear waste is just one of the unresolved issues in the nuclear industry, said Tim Tulon, Quad Cities Station site vice president. Besides long-term storage, the radioactive fuel also could be reprocessed for power reactors, he said. People are looking at that option, he said. It has been done in France, but not in the United States. Start-up costs for new power plants -- $5 billion by some estimates -- are another issue. Mr. Rowe said there is a myth that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 provided the nuclear power industry everything it needed to build new nuclear plants. He said that "just isn't so." The production tax credits in the law marginally improved the financial attractiveness of a project, Mr. Rowe said, adding that additional financial help will be needed to cover other substantial start-up costs. While the federal government is a player for offering initial incentives for new nuclear plants, it cannot be the financier of choice, he said. State regulators and the nuclear industry must step up, he said. The nuclear power industry is getting better, Mr. Rowe said. "I have every confidence that we will build the next generation of nuclear power plants in America ... partly because we are committed to that end, partly because the American people need and want what nuclear plants deliver -- large amounts of clean, reliable, safe electricity, day in and day out, sun or no sun, wind or no wind, and mainly because it has been my long experience that what the American people need and want, the American people generally get." Copyright © Moline Dispatch Publishing Company, LLC, All Rights ***************************************************************** 6 Courant.com: Could Vermont Survive Without Nuclear Plant? -- Facility's Backers, Foes Argue About Impact On Greenhouse Gases, Availability Of Power By DAVID GRAM | Associated Press November 5, 2007 MONTPELIER, Vt. - A cooling tower that collapsed suddenly, leaving a pipe pouring thousands of gallons of water onto a pile of rubble. An unplanned shutdown caused by a stuck valve nine days later. A scheduled retirement looming. Taken together, the recent problems at Vermont Yankee nuclear plant have some wondering: Where would Vermont be without Vermont Yankee? Electricity would get more expensive and consumers would turn to sources that generate more greenhouse gases, but the lights wouldn't go out if - for some reason - the Vernon plant were to shut down or close, experts say. Vermont would simply import power from the New England power grid, which has a surplus of electricity. Vermont Yankee, which opened in 1972, produces about 650 megawatts of electricity with a bit less than 300 megawatts flowing to Vermont. A megawatt can power about 1,000 homes. Christopher Dutton, president and CEO of Green Mountain Power Corp., one of the two major in-state customers for Vermont Yankee power, said Vermonters would miss the state's lone reactor if it shut down. "The fact is that Vermont Yankee has been a very, very reliable source of base-load power for us at a very advantageous price for the last several years," Dutton said. He added that when the power GMP gets from Vermont Yankee and Hydro-Quebec are taken together, the result is one of the smallest "carbon footprints" - the amount of greenhouse gases emitted through power generation - of any electric company in the country. Replacing Vermont Yankee power would require the company to shop for power from mostly gas-fired power plants in southern New England, Dutton said. "If we replaced Vermont Yankee with the mix (of power sources) in New England, our carbon footprint would increase to something like 320,000 tons, more than 10 times greater than what it is now," he said. "For the average Vermonter, little to nothing would change," said James Moore, energy advocate with the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. "It shuts down on a regular basis, both planned and unplanned outages, and our lights don't go out." Moore and other Vermont Yankee critics point to this month's report from the Governor's Commission on Climate Change, which said that aggressive deployment of renewable generation could save almost as much in carbon emissions as Vermont Yankee does. The commission estimated that renewable power could save 15.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions between 2012 and 2028, vs. 16.7 million tons for Vermont Yankee. Moore said that comparison doesn't account for something often left out of the conversation when nuclear power is described as not generating greenhouse gases: Mining and processing the uranium fuel for nuclear plants is energy-intensive, and it depends on carbon-generating fossil fuels. On the economic side, Vermont Yankee officials and plant supporters frequently talk up the savings to the state's ratepayers stemming from the price the plant charges GMP and Central Vermont Public Service for wholesale power - about 4 cents per kilowatt-hour - vs. prices on the New England spot market, which are 7 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour. "If Vermont Yankee were to shut down today, and were to be gone or even off line for, say, a year, it would cost our customers about $50 million on an annul basis," said Robert Young, president and CEO of Rutland-based CVPS. The result would be "about a 20 percent rate increase for our customers." Both Young and Dutton acknowledge, though, that the contract that is delivering relatively cheap power now lasts only through the expiration of the plant's current license in 2012. Future purchases of power from Vermont Yankee would be subject to negotiation. Copyright © 2007, The Associated Press ***************************************************************** 7 Reuters: Entergy to spin off five nuclear plants Mon Nov 5, 2007 8:51pm EST By Lisa Lee and Matt Daily NEW YORK (Reuters) - Entergy Corp (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the second-largest U.S. nuclear power generator, said on Monday it would spin off five nuclear plants into a new company in a bid to capitalize on rising power prices for nuclear generation. The new company, which will be spun off in a tax-free deal, would have nearly 5,000 megawatts of generating capacity, located largely in the U.S. Northeast, which has some of the highest power prices in the country. Entergy also plans to form a 50-50 joint venture with the new company to run and operate the nuclear plants, whose prices are not regulated the way other utility plants' are. After the spin-off of the nuclear plants, planned for the third quarter of 2008, Entergy would consist of five electric utility subsidiaries across four states and the stake in the new unit. The U.S. nuclear industry foresees a resurgence driven largely by expectations that the federal government will create new rules limiting carbon dioxide emissions that are blamed for global warming. Nuclear generating plants do not emit the greenhouse gases that fossil-fuel plants do. Chief Executive Wayne Leonard does not see the new stand-alone nuclear company building any new nuclear plants. "I can't imagine," he told Reuters at an industry conference on Monday in Orlando, Florida. But the new company could be ripe to make purchases or be an acquisition target. If it were to pursue the acquisition path, Leonard could see the new company buying natural gas plants. As for new nuclear building plans for the regulated Entergy, Leonard said the process has been "slow and frustrating," adding that "getting a firm price on what it will cost has been difficult." Entergy had previously said it was considering a spin-off, joint venture or sale of the nuclear plants, and Leonard said he remained open to selling a stake in the new company. "There is no shortage of interest," he said. The new company spun off by Entergy would have debt totaling $4.5 billion, a director at Fitch Ratings said at the conference. That debt would be "not commensurate with investment grade," Fitch's Justin Bowersock said. Leonard told Reuters he did not expect the new company to receive investment grade rating, adding that the nuclear company could have been configured to get one but that "it didn't make economic sense." Entergy said the new company would target earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $2 billion by 2012 based on an average power price of about $95 per megawatt hour. That would leave the business $500 million to $1 billion annually for acquisitions or share repurchases. Leonard said he expected the new company to have double-digit growth, and sooner or later become a business with $20 billion in market capitalization. "In the not too distant future," he said. The plants included in the new company would be the Pilgrim station in Plymouth, Massachusetts; the Fitzpatrick and Indian Point plants in Oswego and Buchanan, New York; the Palisade plant in Covert, Michigan; and the Vermont Yankee plant in Vernon, Vermont. The remaining Entergy company expects to announce a new share buyback plan "right out of the box" after the spin-off is completed, Leonard said. Entergy said it expected 2008 earnings to be between $6.50 and $6.90 per share. Analysts' average forecast is for earnings of $6.87 per share, according to Reuters Estimates. Third-quarter earnings rose 19 percent, helped by higher wholesale power prices and recent rate increases. Net income was $461.2 million, or $2.30 per share, up from $388.9 million, or $1.83 per share, a year earlier. The earnings-per-share gain of nearly 26 percent lagged the 27 percent the company forecast on October 17. Entergy shares rose $5.46, or 4.6 percent, to close at $124.15 on the New York Stock Exchange, outpacing the 0.5 percent gain in the broader Standard & Poor's Utilities index (.GSPU: Quote, Profile, Research). ***************************************************************** 8 Manila Standard Today: Kepco keen on reviving nuclear plant By Alena Mae S. Flores Seoul?Korea Electric Power Co., Korea?s biggest power company, has expressed interest to reactivate the mothballed Bataan nuclear facility, a ranking company official here said. ?We have talked with government officials to reactivate the Bataan power plant into a new nuclear plant. That?s now under discussion, but as you know there are still issues,? Kyong-Goo Hur, Kepco director general for Asia Business Department, told reporters. Hur said Kepco had sent a letter to the Philippine government about the introduction of a nuclear power plant in the Philippines. ?I think they are still considering the possibility of putting up a nuclear power plant but the government has yet to send its response. Probably, the government thinks it will take some time,? he said. Kepco can also offer several options to the Philippine government other than reactivating the nuclear plant, such as converting the Sucat power facility into nuclear, he said. ?The talks with government are unofficial. We have to discuss a lot of work with them,? Hur said. Hur said that Kepco?s offer to reactivate and study the country?s nuclear power options was part of the company?s expansion of its power related activities to various foreign countries. Kepco has 20 units of nuclear power plants in operation and 15 under construction. Nuclear power contributes majority of Kepco?s power generation mix. ?We have developed our own standardized reactor model, which is called OPR1000 and OPR1200, and we plan to export our standardized reactors. Standardization is good in many aspects since you can reduce cost to build a new nuclear power plant as well as save in terms of construction period,? Hur said. Manila Standard Today - Philippine News & Views Online Monday, November 5, 2007 ***************************************************************** 9 UPI: China State Council expands nuclear International Security - Energy - Briefing - UPI.com Published: Nov. 5, 2007 at 2:52 PM BEIJING, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- The Chinese State Council approved a plan to expand nuclear generation by 23 million kilowatts by 2020 from 2005 levels. It’s estimated that the cost of building the 23 million installed kilowatts worth of generating units will be about $60 billion, the official Xinhua news agency reported. After installation is complete in 2020 China should have 40 million kilowatts of nuclear power, according to the plan submitted by the National Development and Reform Commission; nuclear will represent about 4 percent of China's total installed power-generating capacity. Thirteen coastal sites have been selected for new nuclear plants, including four in Zhejiang province, one in Jiangsu province, three in Guangdong province, two in Shandong province and three in Liaoning and Fujian provinces. China signed an agreement with U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Co. in July to build four nuclear power plants in China and transfer core technologies for third-generation AP1000 reactors. China has 11 nuclear power reactors in operation and is the second-largest power consumer in the world after the United States, but it gets most of its power from coal. © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 10 icWales: Rising support for dangerous nuclear power - Wales News - News - Nov 5 2007 by Robin Turner, Western Mail More than a third of Welsh people questioned in a survey are in favour of nuclear energy. The survey by YouGov on behalf of the EDF energy company, found 38% of Welsh people questioned were favourable towards nuclear power – compared with 34% in a similar survey last year. The survey found 55% of those questioned thought protection of landscape was an issue which should be considered when establishing wind farms, an increase of 5% on last year’s figures. Welsh people also thought spoiling the landscape was an issue with coal developments 56% (it was42% in 2006), gas 19% (24%) and nuclear 41% (33%). Vincent de Rivaz, EDF Energy’s chief executive, said, “People are aware that action needs to be taken to keep the lights on, to address climate change and to maintain affordable prices. “This survey supports our view that the UK needs a diverse mix of energy solutions to meet the looming energy gap.” The survey in Wales found 71% were aware of the “looming energy gap” (64% in 2006) and 91% believed Britain should be self sufficient in energy. The survey found 38% said radical measures were needed to address climate change. The survey found generally, people were more positive towards nuclear power. However, only 43% are in favour of building new nuclear power stations to replace old ones, with 50% saying it was important not to build any more. And most of those who responded to the poll have fears over the safety of nuclear power, with 86% citing the disposal of nuclear waste as a concern and 81% worried about terrorist attacks on power stations. Friends of the Earth Cymru director Gordon James said he was not surprised by the apparent rising support for nuclear power, given the Government’s promotion of it as a valid answer to climate change. But he said the Government’s case had been overstated and nuclear power bore inherent and serious risks. “Nuclear power stations’ track record is so bad the only reason people are considering them again is because they emit less carbon dioxide,” he said. “They are dangerous, they produce the most toxic material on earth in plutonium and terrorism is a constant threat. “It’s hugely expensive. The cost of decommissioning nuclear power stations, recently placed at Ł70bn, is likely to rise to Ł100bn.” “We would much prefer to see the money invested in energy efficiency and developing renewable energy schemes, which can be built in the near future to provide electricity.” Copyright and Trade Mark Notice ©owned by or licensed to Media Wales Ltd 2007 icWales™ is a trade mark of Media Wales Ltd. Please read our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Statement before using this site. ***************************************************************** 11 KSBY 6: Two new power sources arrive at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant Monday, November 5, 2007 Reported by: Stacy Daniel SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY Two new gigantic steam generators arrive at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. The steam generators were shipped from Spain on October 6 and arrived Monday morning on the Central Coast. The new machines are part of eight that will be shipped to the facility over the next two years. They will replace older generators that are in need of an upgrade. The project is estimated to cost about $700 million and will employ an additional 1,000 people. But Diablo opponents say it won't make it any safer. Covered in protective bright blue shrink wrap, the first two of four 70-foot long 350 ton steam generators that are being shipped from Spain to the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant this year. These generators will replace the older ones in unit two that have been in service since the plant began functioning more than 20 years ago. "Typically you would see a replacement like this maybe once per the life of the plant. They're replacing generators that have had some tube degradation, so these are improved steam generators. This is a project that many other plants have already completed," said Donna Jacobs, Diablo Canyon Nuclear Services Vice President. The function of these massive machines is to transfer heat from the reactor system to a separate system, which boils water to make the steam that turns the turbines that generates electricity. Diablo opponents say putting in new equipment does not make the plant any safer. "Is the NRC going to impose the kinds of security upgrades, design changes that are in need to make nuclear plants safe in the post 9-11 world. So, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to be investing in major capitol equipment before you've answered those questions," Attorney Diane Curan said. Opponents are afraid this place is a disaster waiting to happen. They fear an accident or a terrorist attack could lead to major meltdown. The new generators will be put in service in unit two February 2008. Four more new generators will be installed in unit one in 2009. ***************************************************************** 12 Brisbane Times Blogs: Where's the nukes, Johnny? | Blunt Instrument | brisbanetimes.com.au Blog Admin | November 06, 2007 Where's the nukes? As I recall, coupla months back, the PM could hardly contain his giddy pleasure at the idea of building a fast-breedin' nuclear reactor in everyone's backyard because he'd finally realised that climate change was a bit of a problem, at least for his poll numbers, and the only way forward was 'clean green' atomic power. Can't tell you how much it brightened my day every time he deployed that 'clean green' schtick. Oh it brought tears of mirth to the eyes it did, Guvnor. But here we are deep in the middle of the election campaign and try as I might, I can't detect any great policy enthusiasm on the Rodent's part for our new best friend, the mighty atom. Oh sure, Deputy Pete gave us a bit of a tickle in the treasurer's debate about how Labor were shutting the door on 'clean coal' and nuclear power. But other than that, the government just doesn't seem all that keen to talk about it at the moment. I wonder why. Anyway, I've been doing some pondering and - steady now, grab something if you feel dizzy - I've come around part way to the Rodent's way of thinking. But not in any sense he's gonna enjoy. I think he might be right that any carbon limiting scheme that doesn't involve the emerging super polluters of India and China isn't worth jack. So too with Russia and Brazil. Collectively known as the BRIC group in wonk circles. But of course that's a cop-out isn't it. Because as a realist the Rodent would know for a stone certainty that those guys are never going to agree to limit their emissions in any significant fashion, not while they still lag so far behind the developed world. And really, who the hell are we to expect them to? We wouldn't. So perhaps the game isn't all about emission caps. Perhaps it actually is about a technological fix. And not just BS and pixie dust sprinkled over the entrenched interests of the coal industry or the happy funsters who brought you Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Perhaps what's needed is real R&D funding. Billions of dollars of the stuff by us. Hundreds of billions world-wide. About the same amount as is spent on military R&D, for instance. Not a gargantuan sum, but not some pissant gesture like a couple of million here and there, most of it getting trousered by Big Coal and Oil. Behaviour change can go some way towards helping curb energy use. But with half the planet's population desperate to live as well and as profligately as those of us in the fabulous first world, turning off the lights when you leave the room, or walking rather than driving down to the corner store, just aren't going to do it. The maths are all wrong. Even without the BRIC nations plugging into the global power grid and sucking more and more juice into their own rapidly expanding economies, our own economic growth would be more than enough to deplete what's left of the world's fossil fuel store. That's what so dispiriting about this current period. There's an obvious problem, and it's not just about the environment. It's about energy. Our entire civilization is built on cheap, instantly available energy. And it's getting scarce. Even hard core climate change deniers would surely have a woody for the idea of decoupling our strategic fortunes from the dark ages theme park of Middle Eastern oil politics. But what is anyone anywhere really doing about it? Squat. Oh, no. Sorry. I forgot. We are getting those dinky little 'I (green heart) Brisbane' stickers. So, crisis averted. Everyone go back to your shopping. Agreement | Copyright © 2007. Brisbane Times. ***************************************************************** 13 ENS: New York State Wants Full Review of Indian Point Nuclear Plant Environment News Service (ENS) ALBANY, New York The question of whether to renew the operating license of the Indian Point Nuclear Generating Facility on the Hudson River for another 20 years merits a full environmental review by federal authorities, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, DEC, said in comments filed Wednesday with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency filed comments jointly with the state Attorney General's office and on behalf of all New York State executive agencies as part of the Indian Point license renewal process established by the commission. The current licenses for Indian Point Unit 2 and Unit 3 expire in 2013 and 2015, respectively. The owner, Entergy Nuclear Operations Inc., submitted a license renewal application in April requesting authorization to operate each 1065 megawatt pressurized water reactor an additional 20 years. A final decision is not likely before 2009. Entergy's Indian Point nuclear power facility on the Hudson River. (Photo courtesy Nuclear Regulatory Commission) The Indian Point facility is located on the east shore of the Hudson River, in Buchanan south of Peekskill, in Westchester County. The nuclear facility generates 2,140 megawatts of electricity for customers in Westchester County and New York City. Situated 24 miles north of the Bronx, 20 million people live within the 50 mile radius where the greatest damage would occur in the event of an accident or deliberate attack. The primary federal environmental law - the National Environmental Policy Act - the facts of this case, and the unique location of Indian Point, in such close proximity to New York City, require a full and comprehensive review of all adverse impacts, the DEC said in its comments. Among the environmental concerns are discharges of up to 2.5 billion gallons of heated water per day into the Hudson River and the impact on aquatic life, effects on endangered species and on groundwater. Drawn in through three intake structures on the shoreline of the Hudson River, this water is used to cool the nuclear reactors. Also, DEC said the assessment must cover accidental releases, possible terrorist attacks and evacuation plans, as well as the long-term storage of spent fuel. Instead, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has stated that it will employ what is known as a Generic Environmental Impact Statement, GEIS, when evaluating Entergy's application. But the state environmental agency contends that option is "insufficient," warning that among other things, "a GEIS would forgo a site-specific review of issues relevant to Indian Point." The state agency says the GEIS "which has not been updated in over 11 years, is legally stale and is therefore void." "A large radioactive release triggered by a terrorist attack on or accident at the facility could have devastating health and economic consequences, rendering much of the Hudson River Valley, including New York City, uninhabitable," according to the local Riverkeeper, a nonprofit organization seeking a shutdown of Indian Point. Riverkeeper filed formal comments with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in October, urging the agency to conduct a comprehensive environmental review of Indian Point that addresses storage of nuclear waste, the continued fish kills caused by Indian Point's use of Hudson River water, and the "potentially catastrophic environmental and public health impacts" that would be caused by a terrorist attack or accident at Indian Point. On April 26, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer formally requested that the commission conduct an Independent Safety Assessment at Indian Point. His call was backed by New York Congressional delegates, including Representatives John Hall, Maurice Hinchey, Eliot Engel, Nita Lowey, and Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, all Democrats. Senator Clinton introduced legislation in February that would require an in-depth review of Indian Point's safety and mechanical systems, spent fuel pools, and radiological emergency evacuation plans. To read the full comments submitted by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, go to: http://www.dec.ny.gov/permits/6061.html. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 14 Foreign Policy: The Terrorism Index September/October 2007 In the third Terrorism Index, more than 100 of America’s most respected foreign-policy experts see a world that is growing more dangerous, a national security strategy in disrepair, and a war in Iraq that is alarmingly off course. Americans are thinking more about the war on terror than ever before. But that doesn’t mean they’ve come to see this issue in the black-and-white terms preferred by many elected leaders. The combination of bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, continued terrorist attacks from Britain to Somalia, and a presidential election in which candidates are defining themselves based on how they would stare down the threats has many seeing shades of gray. Six years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, just 29 percent of Americans believe the United States is winning the war on terror—the lowest percentage at any point since 9/11. But Americans also consider themselves safe. Six in 10 say that they do not believe another terrorist attack is imminent. Likewise, more than 60 percent of Americans now say that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake. Yet around half report that they would support similar military action to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Such seemingly incompatible points of view may stem in part from the fact that we are increasingly asked to reconcile a bewildering array of threats—and a nebulous enemy that defies convention. In Iraq, for instance, the same surge in U.S. forces that is meant to help pacify Baghdad only escalates violence elsewhere in the country. In the broader Middle East and South Asia, some of the same countries that are now the United States’ most crucial allies have also been guilty of cultivating the very terrorists we look to bring to justice. Deciphering priorities from such difficult paradoxes can be hard. So, how can one determine whether the war on terror is making America safer or more dangerous? To find out, FOREIGN POLICY and the Center for American Progress once again turned to the very people who have run the United States’ national security apparatus during the past half century. Surveying more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy experts—Republicans and Democrats alike—the FOREIGN POLICY/Center for American Progress Terrorism Index is the only comprehensive, nonpartisan effort to mine the highest echelons of the nation’s foreign-policy establishment for its assessment of how the United States is fighting the war on terror. First released in July 2006, and again last February, the index attempts to draw definitive conclusions about the war’s priorities, policies, and progress. Its participants include people who have served as secretary of state, national security advisor, senior White House aides, top commanders in the U.S. military, seasoned intelligence professionals, and distinguished academics. Eighty percent of the experts have served in the U.S. government—including more than half in the Executive Branch, 32 percent in the military, and 21 percent in the intelligence community. The world these experts see today is one that continues to grow more threatening. Fully 91 percent say the world is becoming more dangerous for Americans and the United States, up 10 percentage points since February. Eighty-four percent do not believe the United States is winning the war on terror, an increase of 9 percentage points from six months ago. More than 80 percent expect a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade, a result that is more or less unchanged from one year ago. On the positive side, many of the key agencies charged with ensuring the United States’ national security appear to be getting better at their job. Six of nine agencies, including the Departments of State and Defense, scored above average on the experts’ scale of 0 to 10. One year ago, only one agency scored above average. The National Security Agency fared the best, with an average ranking of 6.6. Many of the policies that these agencies pursue, however, did not fare as well. Nearly every foreign policy of the U.S. government—from domestic surveillance activities and the detention of terrorist suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to U.S. energy policies and efforts in the Middle East peace process—was sharply criticized by the experts. More than 6 in 10 experts, for instance, believe U.S. energy policies are negatively affecting the country’s national security. The experts were similarly critical of the CIA’s rendition of terrorist suspects to countries known to torture prisoners and the Pentagon’s policy of trying detainees before military tribunals. No effort of the U.S. government was more harshly criticized, however, than the war in Iraq. In fact, that conflict appears to be the root cause of the experts’ pessimism about the state of national security. Nearly all—92 percent—of the index’s experts said the war in Iraq negatively affects U.S. national security, an increase of 5 percentage points from a year ago. Negative perceptions of the war in Iraq are shared across the political spectrum, with 84 percent of those who describe themselves as conservative taking a dim view of the war’s impact. More than half of the experts now oppose the White House’s decision to “surge” additional troops into Baghdad, a remarkable 22 percentage-point increase from just six months ago. Almost 7 in 10 now support a drawdown and redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq. Chastened by the fighting in Iraq, the U.S national security community also appears eager not to make the same mistakes elsewhere. For instance, though a majority—83 percent—do not believe Tehran when it says its nuclear program is intended for peaceful, civilian purposes, just 8 percent favor military strikes in response. Eight in 10, on the other hand, say the United States should use either sanctions or diplomatic talks to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Similarly, a majority of the experts favor some kind of engagement with groups that may be labeled terrorist organizations but have gained popular support at the ballot box, such as Hamas in the Palestinian Territories or Hezbollah in Lebanon. It’s one indication that, after six years, we may be entering a new chapter in the war on terror. Copyright © 2007, The Center for American Progress and the Carnegie ***************************************************************** 15 globeandmail.com: Radioactive alarm bells ring at landfill sites NUCLEAR WASTE JIM BRONSKILL AND SUE BAILEY The Canadian Press November 5, 2007 -- Alarms are literally ringing at a soaring number of Canadian landfills as radioactive waste is detected in loads of trash. More than 75 per cent of the alarms were triggered by small quantities of short-lived radioactive substances of medical origin "which pose little or no risk," says the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in its annual report. The document offers no details on the remaining cases. But records obtained by The Canadian Press show several radioactive devices have accidentally wound up in landfill sites or in the hands of scrap metal dealers in the past five years. The incidents highlight growing concern about the disposal of potentially harmful nuclear materials, and raise questions about gaps in the patchwork of systems at landfills across the country that monitor and detect such waste from hospitals, laboratories and industrial plants. There's simply no way of knowing how often such materials end up in the trash by accident or otherwise. Some municipal landfills have radiation alarms, others do not. British Columbia, Ontario and New Brunswick, for instance, lack regulations requiring radiation-detection devices at landfills or transfer stations, where loads of solid waste are temporarily stored before being trucked to dumps or recycling depots. Quebec plans to have such requirements fully in place by January, 2009. The gaps are symptomatic of a hit-or-miss regime: Low-level radioactive garbage that can be legally dumped might set off an alarm, while a genuinely dangerous device could go undetected. One Southern Ontario landfill owner suggests it's easy to get around the monitors. "Supposedly, if you have any radiation stuff, what you've been instructed to do - and you never heard this from me - is go somewhere else and dump it," said the owner, who asked not to be identified. "Dump it in another dump that doesn't have those detection devices because they don't want to deal with it." Medical facilities, research labs and construction firms across Canada use thousands of licensed radioactive tools to carry out everyday tasks, from measuring soil density and checking for pipeline cracks to eliminating static and battling cancer. In February, 2004, a gas chromatograph containing radioactive nickel was found to be missing from the University of Saskatchewan's neuropsychiatric research unit. Two years earlier it had been sent to a scrap metal dealer, who in turn dispatched it to a Saskatoon landfill. The radioactive source was considered low-risk, in no danger of leaking, and by that time was covered in layers of debris. Otherwise, university radiation safety officer Debbie Frattinger says, she would have headed to the dump and started looking for it herself. "There were no health consequences so we did not go digging for it," Ms. Frattinger said. "But regardless of how big it is, you should not misplace them. No, definitely." During an April, 2005, inventory check, the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal discovered a measuring device containing radioactive cesium was missing, concluding it "likely went to landfill." A radioactivity monitor sounded at a landfill in Ile des Chenes, Man., in June, 2004. Officials determined the load of trash came from St. Boniface General Hospital, and a subsequent inventory check revealed a device containing radioactive barium was missing. The item was retrieved from the landfill and returned to the hospital. Once radioactive substances are detected, a waste-site operator is supposed to inform the nuclear safety commission. In the event of a high-level radiation alarm, an inspector will visit the site to investigate. The nuclear safety commission says a key reason for last year's increase in waste alarms, the majority of which originated in Southern Ontario, was greater awareness due to a commission poster and pamphlet campaign. In addition, an increased number of municipal waste facilities and transfer stations, especially in the Toronto area, have installed sensitive monitoring systems that detect radioactive substances inside trucks and other vehicles. There has also been an improvement in the quality and detection ability of the systems. It's important to take a leadership role, said Wes Muir, spokesman for Waste Management of Canada, operator of 18 landfills across the country. "We really monitor what's going in our waste," he said. "We've made that investment in that material because it's an issue, and we're very conscientious and rigorous with the way our landfills are operated." Health physicist Stéphane Jean-François said landfills are not able to police everything that comes their way. Mr. Jean-François, president of the Canadian Radiation Protection Association, stressed the importance of regulations intended to control the movement and disposal of radioactive materials that do pose health risks. Once a landfill alarm goes off, the horse has left the barn. © Copyright 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved. globeandmail.com and The Globe and Mail are divisions of CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc., 444 Front St. W., Toronto, ON  Canada M5V 2S9 Phillip Crawley, Publisher ***************************************************************** 16 Albuquerque Tribune: Vets get free testing for uranium Monday, November 5, 2007 SANTA FE ? The state Department of Health is offering to test New Mexico veterans and active duty military personnel who may have been exposed to depleted uranium while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan or during the Persian Gulf War. Health officials will be making testing appointments in each of the state's 33 counties from Nov. 13 to Dec. 10. They will use urine samples to look for high concentrations of natural uranium or depleted uranium. The department said high levels of depleted uranium could cause kidney damage. "We encourage military personnel to take advantage of these free tests," Health Secretary Alfredo Vigil said Friday. If tests reveal a high level of uranium, the department will offer a follow-up test to determine if the uranium is depleted or natural. New Mexico, on average, has a higher concentration of uranium in drinking water than the rest of the country. © 2007 The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 17 TheStar.com: Ontario urged to look into radioactivity alerts Today's Toronto Star Nov 05, 2007 07:32 PM Michael Oliveira THE CANADIAN PRESS Frequent alerts indicating that radioactive waste is turning up in Ontario landfills should spur the provincial government to more closely examine how such material is disposed of, the environmental commissioner and critics said today. An annual report by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says alerts about radioactive waste went off 119 times across the country in the last fiscal year, up from 13 in 2005-06, and the majority of those alarms came from southern Ontario landfills. Although the report says more than 75 per cent of all the alarms were triggered by small quantities of short-lived radioactive substances of medical origin "which pose little or no risk," it does not elaborate on the threat posed by the other alarms. Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller said the ambiguity of the report highlights the fact little is known about the state – and contents – of Ontario's landfills. "We haven't had a comprehensive report on landfills in Ontario – in terms of their size and what waste is going in and environmental problems – since 1991," Miller said. "We don't have close enough control with what's happening in our landfill sites." Miller said he couldn't comment on the significance of the radiation alarms in landfills because so little is known about the material being dumped. "I wouldn't push the government into doing something big and expensive if this really is a small problem, but I think what we have to do is find out how big a problem it is," he said. Environment Ministry spokesman John Steeles said the increase in alarms is simply a reflection of increased monitoring and doesn't signify a growing problem. Depending on the sensitivity of the alarms, they could be triggered by innocuous items with trace amounts of radioactive material like smoke detectors and certain medical equipment, Steeles said. But the ministry is looking into the best practices of other jurisdictions to see if Ontario needs to update its regulations, he said. "I think what we have to do is find out where we stand as far as other jurisdictions are concerned and then regroup after we've got that information, and that's what we're doing right now." New Democrat critic Peter Tabuns said the number of alarms suggests the province may be ill-equipped to deal with radioactive waste if it decides to build more nuclear power. "They're saying they can deal with all this, everything's safe, everything's under control, and yet we aren't even having control of the small-scale stuff," he said. Conservative critic Lisa MacLeod echoed Miller's calls for more study, and said more needs to be learned about how other jurisdictions might be doing a better job of dealing with toxic materials. "The government needs to take a look not only at what they're doing, but at what other provinces are doing to see what works best and what works quickly, because our environment and the health of Ontarians can't be taken lightly anymore." © Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2007 | ***************************************************************** 18 Tucson Citizen: UA in hurry to ship its radioactive waste to S.C. | www.tucsoncitizen.com ® Published: 11.06.2007 RENÉE SCHAFER HORTON For the University of Arizona, a "closed" sign is a terrible thing for waste. UA last week received notice that the Barnwell County dump site in South Carolina is shutting its door in mid-2008 to out-of-state drops of low-level radioactive waste. "We knew it was coming down the line," said Dan Silvain, director of UA's Radiation Control Office. "This prompted us to get rid of (our waste). It was an 'Uh-oh, we better get in under the wire' moment." UA will send "a couple of barrels" to the Barnwell dump, near the South Carolina-Georgia line, he said, adding the 55-gallon drums will contain mostly medical radiation materials used in treating cancer. "These materials have outlived their life for us," Silvain said. "Radiation decays and as it gets older, it is less and less powerful. This is stuff we've had hanging around, but it's not really appropriate to treat cancer patients, so we're taking advantage of the (dump closing) to get this out of here." UA also will send a small amount of radiation materials from its research, Silvain said, primarily from soil moisture gauges. The university, Silvain said, plans to negotiate agreements so unneeded or useless medical and research radiation materials can be returned to its vendors for disposal. UA is sending only "sealed sources" of radioactive waste to the Barnwell site, such as tiny tubes of Cesium 137, which are used to treat cervical cancer. Cesium 137 has a 30-year half-life, Silvain said, and is being replaced by safer treatment methods. "A lot of the stuff we have is remnants from the '60s," he said. "We have switched to using radioactive material with a really short half-life. Modern therapies are taking over." The material UA is shipping away has been kept in "secured storage areas on campus and in the hospital," Silvain said. July 1, the Barnwell site will no longer receive waste except from South Carolina, New Jersey and Connecticut, according to The Associated Press. The equivalent of more than 40 tractor-trailers full of low-level radioactive trash from 39 states, including Arizona, was buried at the South Carolina Barnwell dump each year since 1971. www.tucsoncitizen.com | Copyright © 2007 Tucson Citizen ***************************************************************** 19 Platts: Sellafield Product and Residue Store completed last week 007-5N London (Platts)--5Nov2007 The concrete roof of the largest of Sellafield's new buildings, the 200 million pound (US$416 million) Sellafield Product and Residue Store, or SPRS, was completed last week, site manager Sellafield Ltd. said November 2. The SPRS, which has a 100-year design life, will store some of the more difficult-to-handle products emerging from the UK site's reprocessing operations. It will enable the Thorp oxide reprocessing plant, the B205 magnox reprocessing plant and the Sellafield mixed-oxide facility to meet their operational requirements, according to sources close to the project. Construction on the SPRS started in September 2005 under main contractor Carillion. Mechanical and electrical equipment is being installed. The Sellafield site owner, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, says in its site plans that regulatory permission to start up the facility could be given late in 2008 or 2009. NDA has been boosting new construction to aid Sellafield's operations. Other key projects being started or under construction include Evaporator D, an evaporator planned downstream of Thorp to help ease an evaporative bottleneck, and a third encapsulation storage facility for intermediate-level wastes. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/index.xml?story or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=22_41&products_id=67 Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 20 The Coloradoan: Stop uranium mining across Colorado www.coloradoan.com - Ft. Collins, CO. Monday, November 5, 2007 With all the progress and momentum being made in our state regarding renewable energy, I have been stunned by the plan to mine for uranium right here in Weld County, 11 miles outside of Fort Collins. The value of uranium has skyrocketed due to the renewed interest in producing nuclear energy throughout the world. It seems we just don't learn from our mistakes. After living through the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, how can we possibly support the growth of nuclear power facilities once again? We, not the companies who profit from these plants, bear the cost of their recklessness. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent cleaning up accidents, spills and waste from these facilities; not to mention the price we've paid with human lives and health care for thousands of people who have suffered from radioactive contamination. Does anyone believe that mining uranium at this site will be a benefit to our community? Of course the people with a financial interest in this project do. They want us to believe they are trustworthy, and this is no different than any other mining project. I find this unconscionable! Nuclear energy is neither cost-efficient nor clean. To get a real picture and the facts, just pull up Web sites on Chernobyl or on nuclear power. It is extremely disturbing. Every site I saw disputed the notion of nuclear power being cost effective, while noting the catastrophic risks to our health, our environment as well as our security. We have other energy options that don't pose these risks. Here are some of the basic things we know: > Exposure to radioactive waste poses severe health risks to humans. > There is no way anyone can guarantee there will not be accidents, spills, leaks or groundwater contamination when mining for uranium. > There is no safe or inexpensive way to dispose of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. > Once uranium is unearthed, nuclear weapons can be made and nuclear power plants can become targets for terrorist attacks. > All living things on Earth are connected to one another. Thinking we are separate from nature is what causes damage to the earth and to mankind. This is not something to take lightly. Fortunately, our U.S. and state representatives, both Republicans and Democrats, are voicing their concerns about the safety of this proposed mining. I would like to challenge them to take it one step further. I would ask them to write legislation that would ban uranium mining throughout the entire state of Colorado. And although it is comforting to know our elected officials care deeply about this topic, I hope our community will also choose to speak out against uranium mining. If we care enough to take a stand about whether or not a new roundabout or Wal-Mart is built or which grade our kids will start high school, let's care enough about each other and our community to stop this before it is too late. Powertech is applying for permits next year. Please call or write our U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, (970) 663-3536; the Weld County commissioners, (970) 336-7204; Gov. Bill Ritter, (800) 970-3468; and/or any of our Larimer County or state representatives. Let them know uranium mining is a danger to our health and our environment and it has no place in Weld County or anywhere in Colorado. Marge Dugan lives in Fort Collins Copyright ©2007 The Fort Collins Coloradoan. ***************************************************************** 21 NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials to Meet in Rockville, Md., Nov. 13-15 News Release - 2007-147 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov www.nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials (ACNWM) will meet Nov. 13-15 in Rockville, Md., to discuss, among other items, a briefing to the Commission about the committee’s recent and planned activities, and the issue of post-emplacement drift degradation for the proposed high-level radioactive waste geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. In addition, the committee will be briefed by Department of Energy officials on the final design (surface and subsurface facilities) proposed for the forthcoming Yucca Mountain geologic repository license application. The ACNWM reports to and advises the Commission on all aspects of nuclear waste and materials management. The meeting is open to the public; however, portions may be closed to protect information that is pre-decisional and are identified in the agenda. The meeting will be held in Room T-2B3 of the agency's Two White Flint North building, at 11545 Rockville Pike. Tuesday’s session will run from 1 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday’s session will run from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. and Thursday’s session will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Anyone requiring the use of video teleconferencing to observe the meeting should contact Theron Brown at (301) 415-8066 to ensure availability. A complete agenda is available on the NRC's Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acnw/agenda/2007/ NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. November 05, 2007 ***************************************************************** 22 Las Vegas Now: National HAZMAT Conference Held in Las Vegas Edward Lawrence, Reporter The people around the nation who deal with the most dangerous substances are here in Clark County. First responders, fire fighters, local homeland security, and government representatives converged at the Tuscany Hotel for a national HAZMAT conference. Clark County commissioned a study to see the impact of adding nuclear shipments to Yucca Mountain in the valley. The study tracked what kind of hazardous materials and how much travel here in Las Vegas by rail and by truck. Everyone who has seen the study was surprised at the sheer volume of dangerous material on the roads. The stuff inside one truck could kill if the driver crashed, breaking open the tanker. It's just as deadly as the gas in a rail car. Recent near disasters opened some eyes in Las Vegas. On Aug. 29, a runaway tank car full of deadly chlorine raced within a quarter of a mile of the Las Vegas Strip. Clark County HAZMAT experts say a crash, cracking the tank, releasing the gas could kill everyone outside within a half-mile radius. On Nov. 1, a truck full of diesel fuel hit debris on Interstate 15, near the Spaghetti Bowl, cracking the tank. Two miles later, the driver realized it had been ruptured. The spill caused six accidents and seriously injured one person. Both incidents could have been worse. The new HAZMAT flow study shows how lucky we have been. Sheila Conway, Urban and Rural Research Managing Partner said, "Some of the nastiest materials known to man are coming through here every day now." Sheila Conway actually did the study for the county. She found that Clark County has just 19-percent of the highways in the state, but 64-percent of the hazardous material in Nevada travels though here -- mostly on Interstate 15. We are talking about 753 truck loads carrying about 8,000 tons a day of potentially deadly materials on our roads each year. "That congestion, coupled with the growth we are experiencing, is a potential prescription for disaster," said Conway. Conway says rail schedules are predictable raising another concern, especially since nuclear waste the government wants to store at a Yucca Mountain repository would take the track next to the Strip. "To add this type of material, when you know the schedule which makes it more vulnerable to a terrorist attack," said Conway. Las Vegas lawmakers cannot ban HAZMAT shipments by federal law, so we are stuck with this growing issue. What's worse is the trucks carry poisonous gasses, military bombs, other explosives, even infectious substances -- and 42 other types of material which could kill a lot of people very quickly. Clark County Nuclear Planning Manager Irene Navis says an accident on Interstate 15 behind the mega-hotels where a container breaks could cripple the Las Vegas tourism. "When I am next to a tanker, I usually move. I know that if I see certain placards on a vehicle, I usually move out of the way," said Navis. As dangerous as that may be, Navis says what's on the railroads may be worse. "The quantity is higher on rail because you can ship more, but the frequency, because of smaller quantities at a time, is going to be truck," said Navis. The chance of an accident on the highways may be greater. But an incident on the railroad could cause more deaths because amount being hauled. Rail safety records have been improving over the past 10 years. Accidents are down. Still, all it would take is one time to cause a major problem. Each shipment is supposed to be labeled. Sometimes the driver forgets. Regardless, 71-percent of the dangerous stuff just travels through Las Vegas. Twice a week, Kelley Kirk drives his 18-wheeler between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. "I have hauled everything from cattle to explosives." He sees the accidents congestion can cause. It just takes one crash with a truck carrying something needing a warning to change our luck in Las Vegas. This kind of study has not been done in the past decade. Meanwhile, the conference started Monday morning and will go until Thursday. It's called the HAZMAT Explo. It highlights the importance of knowing how to handle what materials come through a community. It also deals with weapons of mass destruction and homeland security issues. All of the people at the conference from Virginia to Missouri to Nevada need to plan for the worst, because HAZMAT accidents can be some of the deadliest. "A lot of folks come back with tools they can use right in the workplace, with tools they can use Monday morning," said Carolyn Levering, Clark County Emergency Management Planning Manager. Eight hundred people attended the conference. Email your comments to Reporter Edward Lawrence. All content © Copyright 2000 - 2007 WorldNow and KLAS. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Nuclear meltdown November 05, 2007 Governor's actions show an unacceptable softening of state's resolve on Yucca Mountain By his actions, Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons is threatening to undercut the state's fight against the Energy Department's dangerous plan to make Nevada a nuclear waste dump. For two decades the state's top political leadership has been unified in opposition to the department's proposal to send tens of thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste across country to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Gibbons has professed to be a strong opponent of the plan, but his actions, as witnessed last week, concern us. On Wednesday Gibbons skipped a U.S. Senate committee hearing on Yucca Mountain, despite having begged to get on the witness list. His spokeswoman said Gibbons couldn't "accommodate" both the hearing and meetings in Nevada, thinking it "prudent" to stay in the state. On Thursday, as Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston reported last week in his daily e-mail Flash newsletter, Gibbons apparently found it "prudent" to be in Las Vegas to attend a meeting co-hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The U.S. Chamber is one of the biggest cheerleaders for Yucca Mountain in Washington. It has pledged to lobby for the Energy Department's irresponsible push to build the site and says it will "oppose efforts to undercut the repository licensing process." In other words, the U.S. Chamber opposes Nevada and all the state's efforts over the past two decades - from lawsuits to the work of the state's leaders - to derail the Energy Department's ill-conceived proposal that has failed to pass scientific muster. Gibbons' choice of the chamber over a chance to stand strong for Nevada is, sadly, not surprising. Earlier this year he appointed a dump supporter to the state commission that has led the fight against Yucca Mountain, only to watch her withdraw in the ensuing public outcry. Because Gibbons likes to pose as a populist, he should realize that the overwhelming majority of Nevadans oppose a Yucca waste dump and schmoozing with dump advocates betrays their trust. That is unacceptable. ***************************************************************** 24 AFP: Washington to go ahead with missile defence plans - official - Mon Nov 5, 6:49 PM ET BAKU (AFP) - Washington is planning to go ahead with its missile defence system plans despite Moscow's objections and its costs are already included in next year's military budget, the US assistant secretary of state said during a visit to Azerbaijan. "The defence budget does include missile defence, and I am happy to report there is growing support by partners supporting the American Congress for missile defence and there is growing support in the NATO" military bloc, Daniel Fried said late Monday. Fried added however that Washington was planning to join forces with Moscow to boost "our security capabilities" and suggested that Azerbaijan could be part of those negotiations. Russia sees the US missile defence plans as a military encroachment in its former sphere of influence that could be turned against Russia's own nuclear deterrence. But Washington insists it poses no threat to Russia, only to a possible missile threat from Iran. The US plans call for installing a powerful targeting radar in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland by 2012. During a visit to Moscow last month, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presented Russian President Vladimir Putin with ideas for integrating Russia into a broad European missile defense system. Russian Defence Minister Viktor Serdyukov has said that the US proposals were not enough to satisfy Russian concerns. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 25 Daily of the University of Washington: Bush's nuclear daydreaming - Monday, November 05, 2007 By Chris Kaasa I spy with my little eye a scientific pipe dream, a budgetary nightmare and a strategic fiasco, all rolled into one. The project is called the European missile defense shield, and President Bush is determined to jam it through Congress any way he can. But Europe doesn’t want it, we can’t afford it and even after 24 years of handing out billions in lucrative defense contracts, we can’t make it work. Bush’s renewed push to build missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic is the legacy of Ronald Reagan’s vaunted “Star Wars” nuclear defense scheme, and it coincides with several announcements that researchers have made a couple of major strides in the last month. In late September, the Missile Defense Agency announced that a rocket launched from an Air Force base in California had successfully intercepted a single dummy “nuke” launched from southern Alaska. Another single intercept — this one launched from a seaborne platform off the Hawaiian coast — was recorded Oct. 27, prompting a delightfully boastful press release: “This was the fourth successful intercept for the current [missile intercept] program. … Interaction with the complete … system provided valuable test and operations experience for the soldiers and contributed to the operational realism of the tests.” “Operational realism”? Please. Knowing precisely where the enemy missile is going to be launched from is an advantage defense technicians obviously won’t enjoy in the event of a real attack. The American Physical Society, in fact, estimates that nearly 1,000 orbital satellites would be necessary to track and destroy a single ballistic missile in a war scenario. Even if the system was able to track a single missile, as in the recent tests, it wouldn’t do us much good. Modern nuclear missiles contain up to a dozen warheads. Had this month’s dummy missiles been real nukes launched by Russia or China, they would have been raining apocalypse from Seattle to San Diego with impunity. This has never worked. But nevertheless, we’ll be spending more than $13 billion a year on this phantom technology for decades to come, according to Government Executive magazine. This isn’t just stupid and wasteful. Missile defense is stealing money and attention from real security risks. The Bush administration insists that the European missile defense shield is necessary to protect our allies from a nuclear Iran. Clear majorities in both Poland and the Czech Republic disagree, and for good reason. Even as it has charged ahead with its nuclear program, the Iranian government has stopped developing long-range missiles. If ever the Iranian mullahs should use the bomb, they won’t bother with advanced missiles — they’ll either lob it at nearby Israel or give it to a terrorist ally. And while the European shield plan hasn’t deterred Iran, it has poisoned our crucial relationship with Russia. In 2002, President Bush withdrew the United States from the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow, for the sole purpose of developing missile shield technology. In the years since, relations between Russia and the United States have soured. The European shield plan proposes to make things worse by introducing American nuclear technology into former Soviet territory. Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose despotic regime profits by stoking anti-Western paranoia, has derided this move as threatening. As a result, President Bush has had to dispatch his secretaries of state and defense on several humiliating “goodwill” trips. The political capital now being used to mollify Putin might instead have been used to lobby for democratic reform in Russia or to persuade him to loosen his grip on energy resources desperately needed in Eastern Europe. And that annual $13 billion spent on “Star Wars” technology? That might have been used to secure the loose Russian nuclear material that global terrorists have had their eyes on for years. Reagan’s vision of a “Star Wars” missile shield just isn’t worth it. The Republican Party’s obsession with missile defense reveals a naĂŻve faith in the ability of human ingenuity to overcome the human proclivity for war. Suppose that a missile shield could somehow be perfected: Just how long would it be before someone else developed a stealth missile? There’s no technological solution to the danger posed by nuclear weapons. Indeed, the nuclear age has illustrated that the slow, hard work of diplomacy and cooperation is the only thing that can really rescue us from our own war lust. [Reach columnist Chris Kaasa at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.] ***************************************************************** 26 Cincinnati Post: Congress can stop Iran war Column by George Will WASHINGTON - Americans are wondering, with the lassitude of uninvolved spectators, whether the president will initiate a war with Iran. Some Democratic presidential candidates worry, or purport to, that he might claim an authorization for war in a Senate resolution labeling an Iranian Revolutionary Guard unit a terrorist organization. Some Democrats oppose the president's request for $88 million to equip B-2 stealth bombers to carry huge "bunker-buster" bombs, hoping to thereby impede a presidential decision to attack Iran's hardened nuclear facilities. While legislators try to leash a president by tinkering with a weapon, a sufficient leash - the Constitution - is being ignored by them. They are derelict in their sworn duty to uphold it. Regarding the most momentous thing government does, make war, the constitutional system of checks and balances is broken. Congress can, however, put the Constitution's bridle back on the presidency. Congress can end unfettered executive warmaking by deciding to. That might not require, but would be facilitated by, enacting the Constitutional War Powers Resolution. Introduced last week by Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, it technically amends, but essentially would supplant, the existing War Powers Resolution, which has been a nullity ever since it was passed in 1973 over President Nixon's veto. Jones' measure is designed to ensure that deciding to go to war is, as the Founders insisted it be, a "collective judgment." It would prohibit presidents from initiating military actions except to repel or retaliate for sudden attacks on America or American troops abroad, or to protect and evacuate U.S. citizens abroad. It would provide for expedited judicial review to enforce compliance with the resolution, and permit use of federal funds only for military actions taken in compliance with the resolution. It reflects conclusions reached by the War Powers Initiative of the Constitution Project. That nonpartisan organization's 2005 study notes that Congress' appropriation power augments the requirement of advance authorization by Congress before the nation goes to war. It enables Congress to stop the use of force by cutting off its funding. That check is augmented by the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits any expenditure or obligation of funds not appropriated by Congress, and by legislation that criminalizes violations of the act. Besides, American history is replete with examples of Congress restraining executive warmaking. Congress has forbidden: Sending draftees outside this hemisphere (1940-41); introduction of combat troops into Laos or Thailand (1969); reintroduction of troops into Cambodia (1970); combat operations in Southeast Asia (1973); military operations in Angola (1976); use of force in Lebanon other than for self-defense (1983); military activities in Nicaragua (1980s). In 1993 and 1994, Congress mandated the withdrawal of troops from Somalia, and forbade military actions in Rwanda. Congress' powers were most dramatically abandoned and ignored regarding Korea. Although President Truman came from a Congress controlled by his party and friends, he never sought congressional authorization to send troops into massive and sustained conflict. Instead, he asserted broad authority to "execute" treaties such as the U.N. Charter. For today's Democrats, resistance to unilateral presidential warmaking reflects not principled constitutionalism but petulance about the current president. Democrats were supine when President Clinton launched a sustained air war against Serbia without congressional authorization. Instead, he cited NATO's authorization - as though that were an adequate substitute for the collective judgment that the Constitution mandates. Republicans, supposed defenders of limited government, actually are enablers of an unlimited presidency. Their belief in strict construction of the Constitution evaporates and they become, in behavior if not in thought, adherents of the woolly idea of a "living Constitution." They endorse, by their passivity, the idea that new threats justify ignoring the Framers' text and logic about shared responsibility for warmaking. Unless and until Congress stops prattling about presidential "usurpation" of power and asserts its own, it will remain derelict regarding its duty of mutual participation in warmaking. And it will merit its current marginalization. George Will is a nationally syndicated columnist. His e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com. Publication date: 11-05-2007 Copyright © 2007 The Enquirer. All rights reserved. Users of this ***************************************************************** 27 AFP: China, US agree to deepen military dialogue, but concerns remain - by Jim Mannion Mon Nov 5, 4:57 PM ET BEIJING (AFP) - China and the United States agreed Monday to open a defence "hotline," deepen dialogue on nuclear issues, and increase military exchanges, but US concerns over the rapid Chinese military build-up remain. In talks with Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan to kick off his two-day China trip, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates also sought to persuade Beijing to back tougher economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. Both said they had agreed to expand educational exchanges and military cooperation, including plans for a joint naval exercise "at a proper time" and a direct telephone link between the US and Chinese defence establishments. Cao described the talks as "pragmatic and productive." Gates also pointed to constructive dialogue but emphasised the need for greater clarity on the part of the Chinese about a rapid military build-up that US officials believe is altering the balance of power in the region. "I raised with Minister Cao the uncertainty over China's military modernisation, and the need for greater transparency to allay international concerns," Gates said at a joint news conference. "China's increasing political and economic stature calls for this country to take on a greater share of responsibility for the health and success of the international system." Nevertheless, Gates said there was common ground on how the two nations' militaries could work more closely. "We discussed the value of deeper dialogue on our respective strategic modernisation programmes, and the importance of discussing in greater depth and greater detail nuclear policy, strategy and programmes on both sides," he said. "This is part of the agreement to deepen the dialogue we've had. I believe that this will provide the opportunity at least for us to address the issues of transparency that we've discussed in the past." The underlying US aim in seeking such a dialogue is to avoid a miscalculation between the two nuclear powers, a senior US defence official said. China has stated that its annual military budget rose 17.8 percent this year to 45 billion dollars. But the Pentagon believes China's military spending is as high as 125 billion dollars a year. Among the other concerns, Gates said, was a Chinese anti-satellite test in January that sounded alarm bells about Beijing's intentions. "With respect to the anti-satellite test, I raised our concerns about it and there was no further discussion," Gates said. Senior US defence officials travelling with Gates had said they were hoping to learn more from China about its reasons for the shooting down of one of its own weather satellites with a ballistic missile. Cao confirmed the agreement with Gates on the telephone "hotline", which he said state leaders also had agreed to "in principle." It would be China's first such direct telephone link with another country. Cao also said the two sides had agreed to give young Chinese and US officers and cadets more opportunities to have contact with each other through educational exchanges. In another positive development, China agreed to increase access to its military archives for US teams seeking to account for US soldiers missing in action and prisoners of war from the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Gates said his talks with Cao had created "significant opportunities to expand our military-to-military contacts and relationships in a spirit of candour and honest discussion of the issues on which we are agreed as well as those on which we have disagreement." On the thorny issue of Iran, Gates said he and Cao had discussed the importance of ensuring Tehran did not develop nuclear weapons. "We agreed it was important to pursue efforts to persuade the Iranian government to change their behaviour and their policy peacefully through diplomatic means," Gates said. But while Gates said he had emphasised the importance of "increased economic pressure," there was no indication from China that it would reconsider its opposition to tougher sanctions. "No positions were changed," said a senior US defence official. "But the quality of the discussions on Iran, which were a significant part of every meeting... and the increased understanding, I thought was quite good." "They said, 'We prefer dialogue,'" the official said. Gates is scheduled to meet with President Hu Jintao on Tuesday before heading to South Korea and Japan on his week-long Asia tour. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 28 Scotsman.com: Protesters take to city streets against Trident Mon 5 Nov 2007 THOUSANDS of anti-Trident campaigners took to the city's streets at the weekend in a protest against the nuclear missile system. Demonstrators had gathered outside the Scottish Parliament at noon before marching up the Royal Mile. They then attended a rally in Princes Street Gardens where SNP MSP Shirley-Anne Somerville read out a message of support from First Minister Alex Salmond. It said: "The position of the Scottish Government is clear - we are opposed to the replacement of the Trident system and the deployment of weapons of mass destruction on Scottish soil." The Lothians MSP added: "We want Scotland to be a force for peace, not a storage depot for weapons of mass destruction." Isobel Lindsay, convener of Scotland's for Peace, the group which organised the protest, said: "Scotland has a real opportunity to make a decisive contribution to disarmament by stopping the replacement of Trident." Related topic * Nuclear defence http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=373 This article: http://news.scotsman.com/edinburgh.cfm?id=1760672007 Last updated: 05-Nov-07 10:36 GMT ©2007 Scotsman.com | contact | terms & conditions ***************************************************************** 29 Guardian Unlimited: Talks With China Yield Few Answers Monday November 5, 2007 7:16 PM By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press Writer BEIJING (AP) - The United States and China agreed to work together to steer Iran away from its nuclear ambitions, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates expects to discuss the U.S. push for new sanctions against Tehran when he sees Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday. Gates, after a 90-minute meeting Monday with Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan, said the two ``agreed that is it important to pursue efforts to persuade the Iranian government to change their behavior and their policies peacefully, through diplomatic means.'' And, with a nod to China's reluctance to support greater economic sanctions against Iran, Gates said he stressed to Cao the importance of using such pressure to convince the Iranian government ``to make different choices.'' Tehran is suspected of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, something it denies. U.S. defense officials, describing Gates' meeting with Cao on condition of anonymity because it was private, said the U.S. delegation was pleased with the quality of the discussion about Iran. The Chinese, they said, were ``very strong'' in saying that they are united in opposing a nuclear-armed Iran. Looking ahead to Gates' meeting with Hu, the defense officials said they're hoping for a stronger statement from the Chinese leader on the use of sanctions and other pressure against Iran. The U.S. has repeatedly raised concerns that the Chinese are providing conventional weapons and other dual-use technologies that can have nuclear applications to countries like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. Some weapons sold to Iran have surfaced in Afghanistan and Iraq, prompting the Pentagon to call for the Chinese to better control their sales to Iran. This is Gates' first trip to China since taking over as Pentagon chief nearly one year ago, and it is the fourth visit by a U.S. defense secretary in the past decade. Carefully worded statements by both Gates and Cao signaled greater dialogue between the United States and the communist giant - a significant improvement over the past decade. But they also hinted at little tangible progress in the Pentagon's press for greater transparency in China's military expansion, and better explanations about its burgeoning defense budget. Asked if Cao had provided any more information about the anti-satellite test the Chinese conducted in January, Gates wryly responded, ``I raised our concerns about it and there was no further discussion.'' There have been lingering questions about the test, in which a Chinese missile shattered a defunct Chinese weather satellite. The test drew immediate criticism from the U.S. and other countries, who questioned China's commitment to peaceful development in space. Gates said he ``raised with Minister Cao the uncertainty over China's military modernization, and the need for greater transparency to allay international concerns.'' ``China's increasing political and economic stature calls for this country to take on a greater share of responsibility for the health and success of the international system,'' said Gates, standing next to Cao at a press briefing after their meeting. Cao, speaking through an interpreter, described the session as pragmatic, candid and productive. Asked to detail specific results from the meeting, Cao said China agreed to participate in a joint Navy exercise with the U.S. ``at a proper time.'' And he said China will cooperate more in accounting for U.S. prisoners of war from the Korean War. China's military budget increased by about 17.8 percent to about $45 billion this year, the largest annual increase in more than a decade. And Pentagon officials have suggested the spending may be somewhat higher than that. Gates said the meeting is part of a move to deepen the dialogue between the two nations. And he added, ``Progress in our defense exchanges will largely depend on the choices we make.'' Cao indicated there was a bit of movement toward the long-discussed establishment of a military hot line between Beijing and Washington. He said he is supporting efforts to make the technical changes needed so the direct telephone link can be finalized. Pentagon officials have said the phone line would be an important symbolic move as well as an important connection between the nations when an incident or crisis occurs. They add, however, that despite positive statements from the Chinese, details continue to bog down the actual establishment of the phone line. Gates and his senior policy staff met with the Chinese officials at the defense ministry's headquarters, in the midst of a city undergoing massive construction in preparation for next year's Olympic Games. ^--- On the Net: Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 30 UPI: Walker's World: A desperate Musharraf International Security - Emerging Threats - Analysis - UPI.com Published: Nov. 5, 2007 at 10:23 AM By MARTIN WALKER UPI Editor Emeritus WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- The declaration of emergency rule in Pakistan has not resolved the country’s deep political and constitutional crisis. It may not even long delay the inevitable climax. There are now two choices to be made. In the first, Pakistanis must decide whether to accept military rule or instead take to the streets to demand a return to the constitution. In the second, Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s key outside supporter, the United States, must decide whether his usefulness as an ally in President Bush’s global war on terror still outweighs the deepening embarrassment of his rule. Musharraf, Pakistan’s leader since the military coup that brought him to power eight years ago, claimed in his TV address to the nuclear-armed South Asian country of 165 million people Saturday, “I cannot allow this nation to commit suicide.” As he spoke, the chief justice and a majority of the Supreme Court declared emergency rule to be unconstitutional and were told they were dismissed. Other civilian political leaders were being arrested. A new chief justice loyal to Musharraf was appointed. Rumors had swept the capital of Islamabad in recent days that the court was prepared to rule that Musharraf’s election as president last month while retaining his military rank was against the constitution and therefore void. This would unpick the political deal that had been urged by the United States, for former Premier Benazir Bhutto to return as prime minister to Musharraf’s president and hold new elections. Bhutto returned from a brief visit to Dubai Saturday to denounce the state of emergency and the new media controls that Musharraf had announced. Deplored by the United States and Britain, Musharraf’s key international allies, the state of emergency looked like a sign of weakness on Musharraf’s part, and even of desperation. Certainly it ripped away the veil of democratic legitimacy that he had been trying to construct. His rule now depends on the army, whose morale has been badly battered by a series of setbacks, including the humiliating surrender of hundreds of troops as a time in their attempt to impose Pakistani rule in the lawless frontier districts with Afghanistan. The army, which has ruled Pakistan for 32 of the 60 years of the country’s independence, has lost prestige. Its self-image as the custodian of national sovereignty and identity has suffered from reports of corruption through land grants and lucrative jobs for retired officers, who now run most of the nationalized industries and state boards and institutions. “It is usual for a country to have an army,” runs the wry national joke. “But in Pakistan, the army has a country.” Without the support of leading civilian politicians like Bhutto and important national institutions like the Supreme Court, military rule looks like a stop-gap and short-term solution that cannot tackle the much deeper and longer-term problems. The first problem is that Pakistan has never really coalesced into nation. The Pashtun tribes of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border speak a different language from the Urdu of the dominant, richer and better educated Punjab and Sind regions, and have never accepted federal rule. The Baloch of Baluchistan, along the Iranian border, are similarly disaffected, though unlike the FATA regions they have not given refuge to the Taliban and al-Qaida. The second problem is that the United States and its NATO allies are unable to stabilize Afghanistan so long as the Taliban have refuge in northern Pakistan. The U.S. military is resisting the urgings of Vice President Dick Cheney that they should strike at the Taliban bases inside Pakistan, fearing that would ignite even more opposition inside Pakistan. But senior officers have told this reporter that they must weigh that danger against the prospect of a new terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland being plotted and launched from inside those Taliban sanctuaries in the FATA region. The third problem is that Pakistan is a nuclear power. It is no secret that three other nuclear powers -- the United States, India and Israel -- have each had to prepare detailed contingency plans about neutralizing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal if Musharraf looks like being overthrown by Islamist militants. Perhaps the only reassuring news out of Pakistan is that the Islamist political parties, who have yet to get more than 11 percent of the vote, do not yet look capable of seizing power. But in the event of a U.S. military strike against Taliban bases inside Pakistan, or in the event of a U.S. military strike against the nuclear facilities of neighboring Iran, the Islamists may well gain new support, and even make political headway inside the deeply patriotic military. Against this grim context, Musharraf can at least claim to have delivered the best period of economic growth the country has ever known, with gross domestic product growth at 7 percent for each of the past three years. This has been fueled partly by some $10 billion in U.S. aid sine 2002, partly by the $5 billion a year in remittances sent back by the million Pakistani workers in the Gulf states, and partly by a modest export boom. But the economic success has not been evenly spread in what is still a poor country with more than a third of the people illiterate, and one of the world’s highest birthrates. The landholding system in many rural areas is quasi-feudal, in which the peasantry had better vote in a block as the landlord wishes or face eviction. This is the power base of Bhutto, herself from a wealthy family of vast landholdings, and her Pakistan People’s Party. There are two key decisions to be taken now. The first is whether Bhutto herself goes along with Musharraf’s rule, which would damage her credibility as a democrat, or risks prison by leading her supporters against it. She will probably steer a middle course, opposing military rule verbally and in principle, at least until she can assess the public mood. The second is whether Musharraf agrees to hold the parliamentary elections in January as planned. One of his ministers said Sunday they could be delayed for a year. The United States will probably press him to hold the elections on time. Musharraf is unlikely to comply, since the sullen voters are likely to punish him and his party at the polls unless the elections are completely rigged by the notorious Inter Services Intelligence organization. The U.S. Congress would then almost certainly cut back on military and civilian aid. This would mean even less Pakistani cooperation against the Taliban, and even more anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. However bad the situation in Pakistan now appears, it is likely to get worse. In the words of Sunday’s editorial in Dawn, Pakistan’s leading newspaper: “All the gains over the years have gone down the drain. All this talk about the forward thrust towards democracy, about the impending 'third phase' of the political process and the lip service to the sanctity of judiciary turned out to be one great deception. The people have been cheated. In a nutshell, one-man rule has been reinforced, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel -- a tunnel that is dark and winding with an end that is perhaps blocked.” © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 31 UPI: Missile troops told to improve capability - UPI.com Published: Nov. 5, 2007 at 1:48 AM BEIJING, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao has asked the country’s strategic missile troops to improve their capability as soon as possible. Hu praised the troops for their modernization process and for fulfilling the tasks assigned to them by the Communist Party, but asked for further improvement in capability called for at the recently concluded 17th party congress, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Called the Second Artillery Force, the missile troops are part of China’s 2.3 million member People's Liberation Army. Xinhua said the force has formed its own series of weaponry and equipment, including both nuclear and conventional missiles of various types and ranges. The SAF has a number of missile specialists who are recognized as special personnel of the PLA. Last year’s white paper on China's national defense said “high-tech means” have been widely adopted to “reform military training" and accelerating the process of “new weaponry becoming combat-ready ones," the report said. © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 32 UPI: Outside View: Rocket revolution -- Part 2 International Security - Industry - Analysis - UPI.com Published: Nov. 5, 2007 at 12:21 PM By YURY ZAITSEV UPI Outside View Commentator MOSCOW, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- Nuclear rocket engines for manned missions to Mars were actively developed both in the Soviet Union and the United States back in 1960-1970, but the work was stopped before the projects got off the ground. Plasma and ionic electric jet engines are even more economical and "swift." In them a stream of charged particles is whisked to high velocities by means of an electromagnetic field, almost as in a charged particle accelerator. Another factor increasing their thrust is the capacity of the equipment creating the field and speeding up the particles. Russia's experience in developing and operating power reactors in space is unique. From 1970-1988, Russia launched a total of 32 spacecraft with nuclear propulsion units and thermo-electric converters of 3 kilowatts and 5 kilowatts capacity. Most of these vehicles performed reconnaissance operations and remained in orbit in an activated state for several months at a time. By comparison, America had only one such craft, with a SNAP 10A nuclear reactor and a 0.5 kW thermo-electric power converter, which was launched in 1965. It did not survive long, lasting a mere 43 days and is now part of the space junk orbiting Earth. Then the efforts became pure research and did not resume until 2002. Russia is also an expert at making the so-called stationary plasma engines, which have a thrust one order of magnitude greater than the traditional chemical ones. Their first space tests were carried out in 1972 on the Russian Meteor weather satellite, and the regular operation of serially made vehicles began in 1982 on geostationary satellites to correct their orbits. At present, practically all countries, including the leading space powers, are making active use of various types of Russian-designed electric jet engines. The power of these engines is such that they can adjust the orbit both in longitude and inclination. Additionally, they can make inter-orbital jumps along energetically optimal multi-revolution trajectories. For example, they can move from a low orbit to a geostationary one and they also serve as a vehicle for interplanetary travel. In preparing the manned expedition to Mars, the developers considered many options: liquid rocket engines burning oxygen and hydrogen; nuclear rocket engines with liquid hydrogen as a working agent; and a nuclear and a solar installation to power electric jet engines. For the core equipment they selected the solar-powered unit with thin-film elements based on amorphous silicon. As a prospective alternative, consideration is also being given to a nuclear power unit as it is developed to reach an operating stage. The main problem in using such units is nuclear and radiation safety during every stage of operation, including emergencies, which requires further research. Preoccupied with the nuts and bolts of the interplanetary ship and its propulsion, people tend to forget about many other problems, including physiological and psychological ones. These and other problems must be addressed before humans set out on an interplanetary journey, but that is the subject for a separate discussion. -- (Yury Zaitsev is an academic adviser at the Academy of Engineering Sciences. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.) -- (United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.) © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 33 Albuquerque Tribune: U.S. must decide future of nuclear policy : Editorial : The hand-wringing in New Mexico has begun in earnest, as the national pendulum appears to be swinging back toward reducing the costs - and perhaps the importance - of nuclear weapons. The state, everyone knows, is home to two of the nation's three nuclear weapons laboratories - Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and Los Alamos National Laboratory west of Santa Fe. The contest between Congress and the White House for public approval of their plans to reduce federal spending has budget, staff and program cuts at the billion-dollar labs once again on the chopping block. For many reasons, the nation's nuclear weapons complex - including Sandia and Los Alamos - could be easy targets. But if history is a judge, any inertia for real change could be overwhelmed by the fear that national security will suffer, if the nation significantly reduces its commitment to and funding for nuclear weaponry. Still, the many lumbering freight trains that are the nuclear weapons complex and its largely hidden programs appear headed for a collision: Since February there have been reports - reaching a crescendo in recent days - that the Bush administration is prepared to sacrifice over the next two decades as much as a third of the complex, 25-to-30 percent of its work force and perhaps much of the expensive stockpile stewardship program that was based on maintaining the nuclear arsenal without bomb-testing. Plutonium pit production, long expected to be located at Los Alamos, remains up in the air, with the Pantex nuclear weapon factory in Amarillo considered the major competitor. The pits form the cores or triggers of modern nuclear warheads. In the latest in a series of negative reports on Los Alamos lab security, funding and safety, a major lab contractor was found to have routinely underestimated work costs, recovering the additional costs through an "other costs" budget category that totaled more than $41 million last year. Los Alamos in September lost its stockpile of bomb-making plutonium to a cost-saving consolidation plan that will move it to a South Carolina plant. Increasingly visible opposition is arising to expensive proposals to build new nuclear warheads or even remanufacture existing warheads already in the stockpile in favor of comparatively more simple tune-ups of existing warheads. It all adds up to confusion and uncertainty - and not just for federal investment in New Mexico and other states that host nuclear weapons facilities. These states - with New Mexico at the top of the list - have benefited economically from the facilities but also have at times had their environment and safety compromised by the chemical and radioactive work done at them. In the nation's security interests and in the interests of states such as New Mexico that have had vital interests in the nuclear weapons complex, it's time for the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration to vet their future plans for the complex, in as comprehensive and public a fashion as possible. The process should begin with an honest, open and nonideological discussion about what U.S. nuclear weapons policy should be and how best to reflect it in our nuclear arsenal, from the ground up. In the context of this administration's obsession with other nation's weapons of mass destruction, particularly in Iraq and Iran, it is obligatory that we have our own nuclear house in order. Scripps Newspaper Group — Online © 2007 The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 34 t r u t h o u t | Report: Cheney Pursuing Nuclear Ambitions of His Own By Jason Leopold Monday 05 November 2007 While Dick Cheney has been talking tough over the years about Iran's alleged nuclear activities, the vice president has been quietly pursuing nuclear ambitions of his own. For more than two years, Cheney and a relatively unknown administration official, Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell, have been regularly visiting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to ensure agency officials rewrite regulatory policies and bypass public hearings in order to streamline the licensing process for energy companies that have filed applications to build new nuclear power reactors, as well as applications for new nuclear facilities that are expected to be filed by other companies in the months ahead, longtime NRC officials said. Before being sworn in as deputy energy secretary in March 2005, Sell, a lawyer whose roots extend to Bush's home state of Texas, was a White House lobbyist working on energy issues. He had also participated in secret meetings with Cheney's Energy Task Force. In April, Sell and Cheney had both met with NRC officials to sign off on the final regulatory policies related to new nuclear reactors. Following the meeting, Sell had alerted a group of energy companies they could begin to take advantage of the faster application process, NRC officials said. NRC officials said that Cheney has expressed a desire to see applications for nuclear reactor projects approved by the NRC when he and Bush leave the White House in January 2009. The energy corporations Cheney and Sell have been personally lobbying the NRC on behalf of this year have advised the vice president and his staff on energy policy in a way that would boost their companies' profit margins. These corporations have also donated millions of dollars to President Bush's and Cheney's past presidential campaigns. One of the cornerstones of President Bush's National Energy Policy, released in May 2001, but never wholly adopted, was "the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States as a major component of our national energy policy." Cheney said that reviving the nuclear power industry would be long-term solution to the country's increasing thirst for electricity. At a time when public awareness surrounding renewable energy resources, the devastating effects of global warming and the importance of conservation is at an all-time high, the Bush administration has steered tens of billions in taxpayer dollars toward revamping the dormant nuclear power industry, touting it as the only proven technology to combat climate change. Behind the scenes, Cheney and Sell have worked in tandem with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a powerful industry organization whose members include some of the country's largest energy corporations, to get the NRC to rewrite long-standing environmental review policies and limit oversight of new nuclear projects, thereby simplifying the application process, and significantly cutting down the time it takes to get new nuclear projects off the ground, an NRC official said. The Nuclear Energy Institute spent $680,000 during the first half of 2007 lobbying the White House, Congress, the Department of Energy, and other federal agencies, according to a disclosure form posted online August 13 by the Senate's public records office. Cheney's longtime friend, Tom Loeffler, a former lobbyist and Republican congressman, represented the NEI. Loeffler's former aide, Nancy Dorn, worked as a Congressional liaison for Cheney, and later became a lobbyist for General Electric. Cheney and Sell's behind-the-scenes efforts have been a boon for the nuclear energy industry - and to Westinghouse Electric, a nuclear reactor designer whose AP1000 reactor unit was certified by the Department of Energy. The company stands to earn tens of billions of dollars in profit through the sale of just a few of its nuclear reactor units. Cheney has said publicly he wants to see dozens scattered across the US. In September, Princeton-based NRG Energy Inc., having emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, became the first company in 30 years to submit an application to build two new General Electric-designed nuclear reactors at its Bay City, Texas, nuclear power plant facility, a move that came as a direct result of several private meetings NRG lobbyists and executives held with Cheney and Sell, according to company officials. NRG's former president, David Peterson, traveled to Washington on two occasions in 2001 to help Cheney's Energy Task Force shape the country's energy policy, according to government records. Prior to NRG's application, there had not been a filing for a new nuclear power plant in the United States since before the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown three decades ago. NRG Chief Executive David Crane told investors recently that massive federal tax incentives and federal loan guarantees included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was the deciding factor in steering the company toward the $6 billion nuclear project. "The whole reason we started down this path was the benefits written into the [Energy Policy Act] of 2005," Crane said. That legislation calls for upwards of $125 million in annual tax credits for a nuclear plant, in addition to loan guarantees that would cover about 80 percent of construction costs. Furthermore, the federal government provided $2 billion in risk insurance for application costs, thereby protecting energy companies in the event they would not be able to finance a nuclear project due to regulatory obstacles. The federal loan program automatically requires taxpayers to cover any defaults on the loans. In a February report to Congress, the Government Accountability Office said failure to properly account for default risks in the loan program was one factor that "could result in substantial financial costs to the taxpayer." A 2003 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report said the risk of utilities defaulting on loans for new nuclear plants is "very high - well above 50 percent." In October, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power provider, also filed an application with the NRC for a license to construct and operate two new nuclear power reactors in northern Alabama using General Electric's Westinghouse AP1000 reactor units. The application was filed under the banner of NuStart Energy, LLC, a consortium of electric utilities that joined together in 2004 to test the NRC's streamlined nuclear reactor licensing program. The licensing costs were paid for by the federal government under an Energy Department program called Nuclear Power 2010 (NP2010), to promote construction of new nuclear power plants. According to the Department of Energy's web site, NP2010 was launched in 2002, and "is a joint government/industry cost-shared effort that can help provide solutions to meet future base load energy demand and address climate change. Specifically, NP2010 seeks to: demonstrate new, untested processes for licensing reactors in the United States; identify sites for new nuclear power plants, complete first-of-a-kind engineering of new reactor designs; develop and bring to market advanced nuclear plant technologies, and evaluate the business case for building new nuclear power plants." Sell said TVA's application was a "a monumental step toward the rebirth of nuclear power in the United States." He also touted General Electric and Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor units as cutting edge, which subsequently helped boost the stocks of both companies. Sell said TVA's application lays the groundwork for dozens of Westinghouse AP1000 reactors to be built in the United States. General Electric had been one of the company's that advised Cheney on the National Energy Policy. Members of the NuStart consortium include: Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, EDF International North America, the US subsidiary of the French electric utility, Entergy Nuclear, Exelon Generation, Florida Power & Light Company, Progress Energy, South Carolina Electric & Gas, Southern Company and Tennessee Valley Authority, Knoxville, Tennessee. With the exception of Progress Energy, South Carolina Electric Gas & Light and EDF International, all of these companies participated in meetings with Cheney's Energy Task Force and advised the vice president on energy policy. Additionally, these corporations have said publicly they intend to file applications for nuclear reactor licenses before the end of 2008, the deadline to receive billions of dollars in federal subsidies and tax credits. The NRC says it expects to receive as many as 21 applications to build 32 new reactors before the end of 2008, with most, if not all, expected to go online in 2015. Since 2005, Sell has met with the corporate executives of the consortium at least half-a-dozen times. He has relayed to top NRC officials the group's concerns over the agency's decade-old regulatory policy related to the lengthy review process of licensing nuclear power plants, and, with Cheney's backing, urged the NRC to draft new rules that calls for granting a combined construction and operating license, which will essentially result in a decrease in oversight and public scrutiny, according to three senior officials at the Energy Department. In an October 30 news release, the DOE said it "selected NuStart to demonstrate the NRC's untested process for licensing new reactors in the United States, and for obtaining regulatory approval of new reactor designs." Meanwhile, the Energy Department has undertaken a massive public relations effort, expected to continue until the end of 2008, to promote nuclear energy as the new "green" energy. In early October, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, in a speech at a nuclear power conference held at the Howard Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee, described nuclear energy as "safe, clean and reliable. And, for the foreseeable future, it is the only mature, emissions-free technology that can supply the power America will need to meet the projected increase in demand for electricity over the next 25 years. This is one of the reasons we have put so much emphasis on bringing about a nuclear renaissance here in the United States." In 2003, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a study, "The Future of Nuclear Power," that said even with volatile natural gas prices and a wildly fluctuating market, the cost of producing electricity from nuclear power plants is still 20 percent more expensive than electricity produced from gas-fired power plants, and 60 percent more expensive than electricity produced from a coal-fired power plant. Earlier this year, Bodman, while promoting nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels, said the Bush administration would continue to oppose mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases in the form of CO2 caps, following a report released in January by the world's leading climate scientists that said the emissions of greenhouse gases were to blame for severe heat waves, floods and an increase in more intense hurricanes and tropical storms. Bodman said mandatory caps could financially ruin some of the energy companies responsible for polluting the air. "There is a concern within this administration, which I support, that the imposition of a carbon cap in this country would - may - lead to the transfer of jobs and industry abroad (to nations) that do not have such a carbon cap," Bodman said in February. "You would then have the US economy damaged, on the one hand, and the same emissions ... potentially even worse emissions." Before being tapped as Energy Secretary, Bodman ran a chemical company, Cabot Corporation that spent years on the top five lists of the country's worst polluters. In 1997 alone, Cabot was responsible for the 54,000 tons of toxic emissions his company's refineries released into the atmosphere. Cabot was identified as the fourth-largest source of toxic emissions in Texas. Cabot is the world's largest producer of industrial carbon black, a byproduct of the oil refinery process. Bodman is the wealthiest official in the Bush administration. His net worth is estimated to be between $42 million and $164 million, the bulk of it in Cabot stock, deferred compensation, and other benefits. Perhaps the thorniest issue neither Cheney, Sell, Bodman nor the nuclear energy industry has yet to address is how it plans to dispose of nuclear waste. The Department of Energy, the agency largely responsible for monitoring nuclear waste, plans on submitting an application to the NRC next year to build a repository at Yucca Mountain, the site of a former nuclear testing ground in Nevada, where the agency has proposed burying the waste deep underground. The review process is expected to take at least three years. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Democrat from Nevada, is opposed to the DOE's plan, and has vowed to continue to cut funding for the Yucca Mountain project. "In over 50 years of operating experience, the nuclear industry still has not managed to solve the problems of safety, security, and disposal of highly dangerous radioactive waste," said Jon Block, nuclear energy and climate change project manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). "Until that happens, we're much better off investing in safer, cleaner energy sources such as renewable wind, geothermal, tidal, and solar projects." Jason Leopold is senior editor and reporter for Truthout. He received a Project Censored award in 2007 for his story on Halliburton's work in Iran. ***************************************************************** 35 Daily Nexus: UC To Refute D.O.E. Fine Over Nuclear Lab Violation - By Mckenzie Weinger Published Monday, November 5, 2007 Issue 30 / Volume 88 Facing charges regarding the mismanagement of a federal laboratory, the University of California has opted to contest a $3 million fine from the Dept. of Energy. The proposed fine stems from an October 2006 incident in which police discovered over 1,000 pages of unauthorized documents on a former Los Alamos National Laboratory subcontracted employee’s computer. LANL, which conducts nuclear weapons research and other studies, is managed by the Los Alamos National Security, LLC -a joint venture between the UC, Bechtel National Inc., BWX Technologies Inc. and the Washington Group International Inc. The UC solely managed and operated the laboratories from 1943 to May 2006. According to a D.O.E. letter, the UC could either pay the $3 million fine or contest the violations by providing refutations of the accusations including evidence of extenuating circumstances or any relevant court rulings supporting the UC’s arguments. In an e-mail, UC spokesman Chris Harrington said the University has chosen to pursue judicial review. “Consistent with federal law and regulations the University has filed a protective notice of its intent to obtain judicial review which preserves the University’s right to continue ongoing discussions with the department regarding the notice of violation,” Harrington wrote. The D.O.E.’s National Nuclear Security Administration alleges that it found security deficiencies during its investigations of the UC’s original term as the sole manager of the labs. In particular, D.O.E. alleges that the UC was not quick in complying with its request to remove portable media such as USB thumb drives from the labs prior to the incident. Jessica Quintana, the former subcontracted employee, claimed she had removed the documents with a portable drive to catch up with work, which included scanning classified materials. She pled guilty to a misdemeanor. The D.O.E. detailed five violations of classified material protection requirements. The alleged negligence leading to the breach included a failure to protect vulnerable data ports, deficiencies in establishing the roles and responsibilities of the oversight of the project, not instituting security requirements for the scanning project and providing poor oversight of subcontracted employees such as Quintana. The U.S. Dept. of Energy officially served the charge on Sept. 28 after the UC received a preliminary notice of the alleged violation in July 2007. The University had 30 days to submit a written response of appeal or pay the D.O.E. fine, which is the largest the department has ever assessed. The UC receives $512 million for its contract with LANL. All content, photographs, graphics and design Copyright 2000-2006 Daily Nexus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. All ***************************************************************** 36 Department of Energy: Events DOE-Sponsored Public Meetings and Workshops DATE TITLE LOCATION 11.06.07 NTS/EM Community Advisory Board Mtg. Town of Amargosa Valley, NV 11.06.07 - 11.07.07 INL/EM Citizens Advisory Board Mtg. Idaho Falls, ID 11.08.07 Brookhaven National Laboratory Community Advisory Council Mtg. Upton, Long Island, NY 11.13.07 Public Mtg.: Draft Yucca Mt. Repository SEIS and Draft NV Rail Alignment EIS Hawthorne, NV 11.14.07 Oak Ridge Site Advisory Board Mtg. Oak Ridge, TN 11.15.07 Public Mtg.: Draft Yucca Mt. Repository SEIS and Draft NV Rail Alignment EIS Caliente, NV 11.15.07 Paducah Site Citizens Advisory Board Mtg. Paducah, KY 11.17.07 Yucca Mt. Project Public Open House Las Vegas, NV 11.19.07 Public Mtg.: Draft Yucca Mt. Repository SEIS and Draft NV Rail Alignment EIS Reno/Sparks, NV 11.26.07 Public Mtg.: Draft Yucca Mt. Repository SEIS and Draft NV Rail Alignment EIS Town of Amargosa Valley, NV 11.26.07 - 11.27.07 SRS Citizens Advisory Board Mtg. Augusta, GA 11.27.07 Public Mtg.: Draft Yucca Mt. Repository SEIS and Draft NV Rail Alignment EIS Goldfield, NV 11.28.07 Northern NM Citizens Advisory Board Mtg. Santa Fe, NM 11.29.07 - 11.30.07 SC/High Energy Physics Advisory Panel Mtg. Washing ton, DC 11.29.07 Public Mtg.: Draft Yucca Mt. Repository SEIS and Draft NV Rail Alignment EIS Lone Pine, CA 12.03.07 Public Mtg.: Draft Yucca Mt. Repository SEIS and Draft NV Rail Alignment EIS Las Vegas, NV 12.05.07 Public Mtg.: Draft Yucca Mt. Repository SEIS and Draft NV Rail Alignment EIS Washington, DC 12.12.07 Oak Ridge Site Advisory Board Mtg. Oak Ridge, TN 12.13.07 Brookhaven National Laboratory Community Advisory Council Mtg. Upton, Long Island, NY U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 ***************************************************************** 37 Knoxville News Sentinel: ORNL computing guru assumes UT vice presidency By Frank Munger (Contact) Updated 01:07 p.m., November 5, 2007 Thomas Zacharia Thomas Zacharia, the driving force behind Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s rise to international leadership in scientific computing, has been named vice president for science and technology at the University of Tennessee. He will assume his new role at UT while maintaining his current position as associate lab director at ORNL. Zacharia already had a faculty appointment as a professor in UT’s electrical engineering department, but university spokeswoman Gina Stafford said he wasn’t financially compensated by UT in that role. As UT’s vice president for science and technology, he will receive an annual salary of $108,680 from the university, Stafford said. That’s in addition to his ORNL salary, which wasn’t immediately available. The university and the Oak Ridge lab have a long history of working together, and UT has been a co-manager of ORNL since 2000. UT-Battelle, a partnership with Battelle Memorial Institute, manages ORNL under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy. In a telephone interview today, Zacharia said he will use to his job at UT to broaden the UT-ORNL relationship and help forge more scientific partnerships, using the computational capabilities to strengthen the research in all areas of science. “It’s a really great opportunity,” Zacharia said. “There aren’t many universities that have such a close relationship with another institution.” He said he wants the ORNL partnerships to include not only UT’s flagship campus in Knoxville, but also the other campuses across the state. Zacharia said the timing is perfect for stronger teaming arrangements between UT and ORNL. He pointed to the America Competes Act, which Congress passed earlier this year — establishing a legislative platform for U.S. science budgets to double in years to come. “I think we are more competitive when we partner together,” he said. A couple of months ago, Zacharia led a UT team that won a $65 million grant from the National Science Foundation for a new supercomputer that will be capable of 1,000 trillion calculations per second. The grant was reported to be the largest research award in UT’s history. The new computer will be housed at ORNL in a UT-owned facility, and the Oak Ridge contribution was seen as a major factor in the competition with other universities. UT President John Petersen, in a prepared statement, said Zacharia’s joint appointment “provides a unique for maximizing the extraordinary assets generated through this partnership.” UT Executive Vice President David Milhorn added: “Having Dr. Zacharia join UT’s senior leadership will strengthen the university’s goal of becoming a leader in high-performance computing.” Zacharia said his associate lab directorship at ORNL will continue to his principal appointment. He said nominally would spend three days a week at ORNL and two at UT, although he indicated that two roles overlap in many ways and can’t really be separated. More details as they develop online and in Tuesday’s News Sentinel. © 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 38 Knoxville News Sentinel: Bechtel Jacobs names Divjak to head Oak Ridge cleanup By Frank Munger (Contact) Updated 03:05 p.m., November 5, 2007 OAK RIDGE - Bechtel Jacobs Co., the Department of Energy's cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, is changing leadership. Mike Hughes, the president and general manager for the past four years, is leaving to work on unspecific projects for Bechtel National, and he is being replaced by Paul Divjak - another veteran Bechtel executive. The transition of leadership is expected to take about two months, Bechtel Jacobs said in a statement released today to the news media. Neither Hughes nor Divjak was available for an interview. Divjak is a principal vice president in Bechtel and currently is president and general manager of the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project in Idaho. Before that, he held a number of project management roles. He has worked for Bechtel for 37 years. Bechtel Jacobs, a partnership of Bechtel National and Jacobs Engineering, has been the federal agency's cleanup contractor in Oak Ridge since 1998. The current contract was established in 2003 to complete a long list of cleanup actions, including the demolition of the former K-25 uranium-enrichment facilities, by the end of 2008. The work, however, is running significantly behind schedule, and DOE and Bechtel Jacobs are reportedly in negotiations regarding the contract. John Shewairy, DOE's public affairs chief in Oak Ridge, said federal officials did not dictate a leadership change at the contractor. "Absolutely not," Shewairy said. "That is something corporations do all the time. Certainly, we were consulted, as (Bechtel Jacobs is) our major environmental management contractor. Mike (Hughes) has done a bang-up job." Gerald Boyd, DOE's Oak Ridge manager, said in a prepared statement, "The environmental cleanup work in Oak Ridge presents challenges at every turn, and Mike has earned our respect and admiration for what he has accomplished. We wish him the best and look to his successor, Paul Divjak, to raise the bar even higher." More details as they develop online and in Tuesday's News Sentinel. © 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 39 Knoxville News Sentinel: Creek and Y-12's relationship still flows Now it's more help than hurt for creek that starts in middle of nuclear plant By Frank Munger (Contact) Monday, November 5, 2007 Michael Patrick Environmental technician Marie Collier performs one of the five weekly checks recently of East Fork Poplar Creek, which originates in the middle of the Y-12 National Security Complex through the city of Oak Ridge. Michael Patrick East Fork Poplar Creek water shows a pH of 8.26 and a temperature of 17.5 degrees Celsius during a recent check by environmental technician Marie Collier. Michael Patrick Environmental technician Marie Collier walks down to a testing platform recently for one of the five weekly checks of East Fork Poplar Creek. Y-12 officials say the creek is the most heavily monitored section of water in Tennessee. OAK RIDGE - Mother Nature and Uncle Sam have a strangely close relationship in Oak Ridge. For more than 60 years, beginning with the World War II Manhattan Project, East Fork Poplar Creek has coexisted with the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. It hasn't always been pretty. Throughout much of the Cold War, the government plant discharged a barrage of ugly pollutants into the creek's headwaters. That included tons of toxic mercury, which was used in vast quantities here during the 1950s development of the hydrogen bomb. East Fork was posted as a health hazard in 1982. Since then, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent monitoring the creek, reducing the discharges and removing tainted sediments from the floodplain. There has been a marked recovery of the creek's water quality and aquatic life, including a larger and more diverse fish population. Ironically, the health of the creek now depends on Y-12's contributions. Since 1995, federal contractors have been required by permit to maintain the water flow at about 7 million gallons per day in order to help sustain the improved environment. That isn't an easy task. The creek originates from a series of natural springs in the middle of the Oak Ridge plant, but that's not nearly enough to maintain the present flow rate. In fact, without Y-12's assistance, the East Fork surely would have dried up in places during this year's drought conditions. At the peak of the Cold War, water flow wasn't a concern. Y-12 discharged about 10 million gallons a day from cooling and process waters associated with the warhead-production activities. Nowadays, however, with a reduced manufacturing mission and new conservation and efficiency measures, the plant's operational outfall is just a fraction of its former self. In order to keep the creek going as required by environmental regulators, Y-12 has to import about 4 million gallons of raw water from the Clinch River each day to augment the East Fork's flow. The river water is pumped to Y-12 via a pipeline that branches off from the main feed that goes to the city's water-treatment plant on Pine Ridge, adjacent to the federal complex. The river water enters the East Fork in the middle of the Y-12 complex and the flow rate is measured downstream at a monitoring station not far from where the creek exits federal property - near the intersection of Bear Creek and Scarboro Roads. "We manage the flow of the creek," said Lenny Vaughan, the water compliance manager for BWXT Y-12, the contractor that operates the plant for the National Nuclear Security Administration. During this year's drought, Y-12 had to maximize the input from the Clinch River, Vaughan said. "When it rains and that sort of thing, it's a lot smaller percentage," he said. Maintaining the creek flow at an average of 7 million gallons a day helps provide a consistent habitat needed for fish and other aquatic life, said Owen Stevens, Y-12's environmental compliance chief. The flow rate helps control things such as water temperature and oxygen levels, he said. After the East Fork leaves federal property, the creek winds through the west side of Oak Ridge and eventually joins up with Poplar Creek and empties into the Clinch River. Mark Peterson, an environmental scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory who heads the biological monitoring program, said the creek's health has improved significantly since the 1980s. Some darters and other fish species have returned to the area. Of particular interest to scientists is the diversity of benthic macroinvertebrates - tiny, yet visible organisms that are closely associated with ecological conditions. "We're looking at the critters in the sediments," Peterson said. "That's a key metric for evaluating the health of the stream." The ecological recovery of East Fork is most apparent in the lower reaches of the creek, where the biological communities are similar to other healthy creeks in the area, the ORNL scientist said. The upper section closest to Y-12 has recovered, too, but not as much, and pollution is still evident, he said. "It's improved certainly over 20 years, but it's still impacted - clearly," Peterson said. That means the monitoring program will continue for the foreseeable future. So will the help-and-hurt relationship that exists between Y-12 and the environment. Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. © 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 40 DOE: Secretary of Energy in Massachusetts to Highlight Advanced Energy Initiatives November 2, 2007 WASHINGTON, DC – On Monday, November 5, 2007, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman will tour the A123 Systems Research and Development Labs in Watertown, MA. Secretary Bodman is touring the facility to highlight the importance of increasing the supply of energy through advanced technologies using clean, alternative power sources like those designed by A123 Systems. At the conclusion of the tour Secretary Bodman will be available for questions from the media. WHO: Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman WHAT: Tour and Media Availability at A123 Systems Research and Development Labs WHEN: Monday, November 5, 2007 1:05 PM EDT WHERE: A123 Systems Arsenal on the Charles 1 Kingsbury Ave. Watertown, MA Media contact(s): Andy Beck, (202) 586-4940 ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************