***************************************************************** 11/11/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.265 ***************************************************************** 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 IHT: Iran warns Israel against military threats over nuclear program 2 US: BlueRidgeNow.com: Nuclear power vital to Carolinas NUCLEAR REACTORS 3 [NYTr] N Korea Offers Evidence to Rebut Bush's Uranium Lies 4 The Hindu: India, Russia to sign deal on building nuke reactors: off 5 Guardian Unlimited: Albania in nuclear export scheme 6 albawaba.com Report: Israel fears Syrian attack on its nuclear react 7 AFP: Japanese nuclear reactor shut after incident - 8 US: The Enquirer: Our growing need for nuclear power 9 US: Burlington Free Press: Vermont Yankee part of 6-plant Entergy sp 10 US: toledoblade.com: Emerging energy plan could carry high costs 11 US: APP.COM: Stonewalling opponents is NRC goal 12 US: APP.COM - MORE NUKES FOR N.J.? | 13 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Next tipping point 14 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Poll: State divided on the prospect of homegr 15 Reuters: Japan's Tohoku Electric shuts down nuclear reactor 16 Antiwar: Nukes, Nuclear Power and Global Warming - 17 US: Daily Herald: Legislator works to bring nuclear power to Utah 18 US: Knoxville News Sentinel: Nuclear plant is focus of scrutiny 19 Herald Sun: Coalition MPs opposing nuclear power | 20 The Wild Frontier at The Times: Attack on nuke facility a tad worryi 21 Greenpeace International: World Energy Congress and nuclear madness NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY 22 US: Gallup Independent: Veterans to be tested for uranium 23 US: Gallup Independent: Something in the wind; Former Hopi chairman 24 Daily Yomiuri: Government to tighten law on radioactive isotopes 25 US: El Defensor Chieftain: Health Department to test for uranium in 26 NEW EUROPE: Depleted uranium weapons still a threat - 27 US: Rocky Mountain News: Flats revelation irks lawmakers 28 US: The Spectrum: Are we creating a second generation of Downwinders 29 London Tims: The fight goes on for veterans broken by the horrors of 30 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Call to arms 31 US: Cherry Creek News: Colorado Delegation Defend Rocky Flats Worker 32 Daily Mail: Fury at MoD ploy to delay compensation bid by nuclear te 33 Financial Post: Battle Not Over For Atomic Vets NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 34 US: Gallup Independent: Talks focus on impact of uranium on Navajo 35 ReviewJournal.com: Cortez Masto seeks to block Yucca license 36 The Canadian Press: Waste-disposal problem forces Japan power firm 37 US: Dallas Morning News: Radioactive waste surfaces at Texas gas sit 38 Thailand Nation: 'Nuclear power worth the waste' - PEACE 39 Blair `knew Iraq had no WMD' 40 albawaba.com Iran: Israel is too weak to attack 41 TheStar.com: Is it bigger than a (nuke) suitcase? 42 AFP: US has secret plans to safeguard Pakistan's nukes - 43 Haaretz: Saudis tout Mideast consortium to solve Iran nuke issue - 44 Alalam News: Moussa: Israel Nukes Threaten Mideast 45 Huffington Post: Gareth Porter: How Cheney Cooked the Intelligence o 46 US: UPI: Poll finds support for nuclear-free world - 47 UPI: Egyptian minister urges nuke-free Mideast - 48 UPI; Pakistan nuclear arsenal protected - 49 UPI: Nuclear safety remains a concern - 50 alJazeera Magazine: Towards fresh disaster in Iran 51 AFP: Rice denies US on warpath with Iran - 52 Guardian Unlimited: Aid to Pakistan Not Likely to Be Cut Yet 53 Guardian Unlimited: Pakistan Emergency to End in 1 Month 54 US: Guardian Unlimited: Suitcase Nukes Said Unlikely to Exist US DEPT. OF ENERGY ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 IHT: Iran warns Israel against military threats over nuclear program - International Herald Tribune The Associated Press Published: November 11, 2007 TEHRAN, Iran: Iran's Foreign Ministry warned Israel on Sunday it would retaliate against any military attack and accused Israelis of trying to damage relations between Tehran and the United Nations' nuclear watchdog. "The Zionist regime (Israel) is less than nothing to pose any kind of threat to Iran," ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters Sunday when questioned about recent comments on Tehran's nuclear program made by Israeli officials. It was not clear what Israeli threat Hosseini was referring to, but his statement came as Iran continues to defy international demands that it suspends uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or fissile material for a bomb. The United States has said it is pursuing diplomatic angles with Tehran for now, but has not ruled out military action as a way to halt Iran's nuclear enrichment, claiming it is using it as cover for weapons development — a charge Iranians deny. Hosseini warned Israel not to consider military action. "In case it does, it will be faced with unprecedented response from Iran," Hosseini said, without elaborating. He said Israeli threats were geared at preventing a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear standoff. "Israelis many times have raised such things in order to undermine cooperation between Iran and the (U.N.) International Atomic Energy Agency," he said. In 1981, Israel bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. While Israel neither acknowledges nor denies possessing nuclear arms, it is thought to have about 100-200 nuclear warheads, according to a 2006 report by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Copyright © 2007 the International Herald Tribune All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 2 BlueRidgeNow.com: Nuclear power vital to Carolinas Published Saturday, November 10, 2007 Scott Peterson Readers of David Weintraub's critique of nuclear energy ("Is nuclear power the energy of the future?" Oct. 15) received a full plate of misinformation that obscured the technology's value to North Carolina and our nation. Chief among the factual shortcomings was nuclear energy's significant role in reducing greenhouse gases. Nuclear energy does not produce any greenhouse gases in the process of generating electricity. Based on carbon emissions over the full life cycle of energy production (including construction of the plants and mining of fuel), nuclear energy fares very well relative to other technologies. An International Energy Agency study in 2000 showed that nuclear energy results in the second-lowest emissions of greenhouse gases, next to wind. However, wind power cannot generate the round-the-clock bulk electricity that nuclear power plants provide. Weintraub further missed the mark in his claim about greenhouse gas emissions from the uranium enrichment process. The Paducah, Ky., nuclear fuel enrichment facility that he referenced obtains electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority's fleet of power plants -- meaning that about 40 percent of its electricity comes from non-emitting nuclear and hydroelectric power plants. The Paducah facility doesn't produce CFC-114, more commonly known as "Freon." It uses it as a coolant for safety purposes in its enrichment operations. There is some Freon leakage into the environment, but it is well within Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. In addition, the enrichment plant uses Freon recycled from cars and home air-conditioning units. In the meantime, USEC, the company operating the Kentucky facility, has applied for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate a state-of-the-art centrifuge enrichment plant that will not use any CFCs. Nuclear energy will play a major role in North Carolina's and the nation's energy portfolio well into this century. More than 100 commercial reactors already produce electricity for one in five U.S. homes and businesses, including nearly one-third of North Carolina's electricity. The Carolinas' electric utilities have reported adding new customers at the rate of 70,000 to 90,000 each year. This growth rate is a clear indication that there is a glaring need for new nuclear power plants that can work alongside other sources of electricity generation and enhanced conservation and energy efficiency efforts to meet our growing electricity demand in a way that protects the environment. Nuclear energy is the only proven large-scale electricity technology that can provide baseload electricity on a 24/7 basis without emitting any greenhouse gases or controlled air pollutants. In fact, nuclear energy already is the largest source of carbon-free electricity -- producing nearly 75 percent of all electricity in the United States that doesn't emit greenhouse gases. Nuclear energy also is among the lowest-cost source of electricity. On average, the electricity production cost at nuclear power plants in 2006 was 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to coal at 2.4 cents, natural gas at 6.8 cents and petroleum at 9.6 cents. And nuclear's production costs are stable and not subject to the price and supply fluctuations that are commonplace in the natural gas or oil markets. For these reasons, nuclear energy relieves economic and environmental pressures. Greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector would be far greater without nuclear power generation -- 27 percent greater, in fact. Natural gas price volatility would also be even worse without nuclear energy in the power generation mix. To meet both the expected growth in demand for electricity in the next two decades and our desire to reduce greenhouse emissions, nuclear energy must continue to play a significant role in our energy future. Scott Peterson is vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute. ***************************************************************** 3 [NYTr] N Korea Offers Evidence to Rebut Bush's Uranium Lies Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:29:06 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit The Washington Post - Nov 10, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/09/AR2007110902364_pf.html N. Korea Offers Evidence to Rebut Uranium Claims By Glenn Kessler North Korea is providing evidence to the United States aimed at proving that it never intended to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, undermining a key U.S. intelligence finding, South Korean and U.S. officials said this week. In closely held talks, the North Korean government has granted U.S. experts access to equipment and documents to make its case, in preparation for declaring the extent of its nuclear activities before the end of the year. North Korean officials hope the United States will simultaneously lift sanctions against Pyongyang as the declaration is made. If North Korea successfully demonstrates that U.S. accusations about the uranium-enrichment program are wrong, it will be a blow to U.S. intelligence and the Bush administration's credibility. The U.S. charges of a large-scale uranium program led to the collapse of a Clinton-era agreement that had frozen a North Korean reactor that produced a different nuclear substance -- plutonium. That development freed North Korea to use the plutonium route toward gathering the material needed for a nuclear weapon. Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test last year, detonating a plutonium-based device, and has built a plutonium stockpile that experts estimate could yield eight to 10 nuclear weapons. "They have shown us some things, and we are working it through," a senior U.S. official said yesterday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential. "We are having a discussion about things. Some explanations make sense; some are a bit of a stretch." "This is now in the process of being clarified," a senior South Korean official said in an interview. "The North Koreans are now ready to prove that they did not intend to make a uranium-enrichment program by importing some materials." He said North Korea is attempting to show that the materials it imported -- including 150 tons of aluminum tubes from Russia in June 2002 -- were intended for conventional weapons programs and other dual-use projects, not for weapons of mass destruction. The South Korean official said North Korea's efforts mark an important shift. "In the past, North Korea simply said no," he said. "Now they are trying to convince us." U.S. intelligence first concluded in July 2002 that North Korea had embarked on a large-scale program to produce highly enriched uranium for use in weapons, saying it was constructing a facility that would be fully operational by 2005. "We discovered that, contrary to an agreement they had with the United States, they're enriching uranium, with a desire of developing a weapon," President Bush said in a November 2002 news conference. U.S. officials have also asserted that a senior North Korean official admitted the existence of the program in an October 2002 meeting in Pyongyang between officials from both nations. North Korea later denied that any such admission took place. After the administration accused Pyongyang of violating a 1994 agreement struck with President Bill Clinton to freeze its plutonium facilities, North Korea ejected U.N. inspectors from the country and restarted its plutonium reactor, allowing it to stockpile its weapons-grade material. For years afterward, during the impasse over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, the Bush administration insisted that North Korea first admit having the uranium facility, rejecting arguments from other nations that it was more important to freeze the plutonium facility in order to halt the nation's production. After North Korea tested the nuclear device, the administration agreed to a deal in which Pyongyang froze and then disabled the plutonium facility in exchange for international aid. Plutonium and highly enriched uranium provide different routes to building nuclear weapons. The North Koreans were able to reprocess 8,000 spent fuel rods -- which had been held in a cooling pond and monitored by U.N. inspectors under the 1994 agreement -- to acquire the weapons-grade plutonium. A uranium program would have required Pyongyang to build a facility with thousands of centrifuges to obtain the highly enriched uranium needed for a weapon. Iran's nuclear program, which the United States alleges is intended for weapons, involves enriched uranium. The administration this year began to back off its earlier assertions that North Korea has an active program to enrich uranium. In February, the chief U.S. intelligence officer for North Korea, Joseph R. DeTrani, told Congress that while there is "high confidence" that North Korea acquired materials that could be used in a "production-scale" uranium program, there is only "mid-confidence" that such a program exists. David Albright, a former U.N. inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said in a report this year that there is "ample evidence" that North Korea was trying to put together a small-scale research program involving a few dozen centrifuges but that claims of a large-scale effort were flawed. Albright said yesterday that the tubes acquired by North Korea needed to be cut in half and shaped in order to be used as the outer casings of centrifuges. If Pyongyang proves that the tubes were untouched, he said, it could "shatter the argument" that they were meant for a uranium program. But Albright said it is difficult to see how North Korea could explain away a set of centrifuges that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said a Pakistani nuclear-smuggling network provided to Pyongyang. "I think the North Koreans are making a big mistake" if they deny they had any interest in uranium enrichment, he said. "They are going to create a lot of trouble if they stick to this." * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 4 The Hindu: India, Russia to sign deal on building nuke reactors: official Sunday, November 11, 2007 : 1650 Hrs Moscow (PTI): A deal for building four more nuclear reactors at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu will be among the key pacts that will be signed between India and Russia during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to the country beginning on Sunday, a senior Kremlin official has said. The signing of deal for building four more nuclear reactors at Kudankulam to enhance its capability to six thousand megawatt from the initially projected 2,000 MW has been identified, the official was quoted as saying by the ITAR-TASS. An agreement for the joint production of a multi-role transport aircraft for the armed forces of the two nations under the MTA (Multirole Transport Aircraft) project has also been identified by the Kremlin officials as one of key pacts to be signed during Singh's visit. After a long bureaucratic delay over the specifics, India and Russia are also to sign an agreement on the utilisation of rupee debt repayments funds by Russia for investments in India. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the ***************************************************************** 5 Guardian Unlimited: Albania in nuclear export scheme John Hooper in Rome Saturday November 10, 2007 It is one of the poorest countries in Europe, which still endures acute electricity shortages and almost daily blackouts, even in the capital. Still, Albania is undaunted. In a proposal that has alarmed neighbouring Greece but elicited interest from Italy, the country is proposing to host nuclear plants that would supply electricity across the Adriatic by way of an underwater cable. The news emerged at an Italo-Albanian business conference in Tirana, where the prime minister, Sali Berisha, said he aimed to turn Albania into a regional energy superpower - a glorified socket on the Adriatic capable of supplying cheap electricity to Balkan neighbours and Italy. He said the government was consulting contractors such as Westinghouse. Zana Gonxholi, an economic adviser to the Albanian government, said a Franco-Swiss consortium had prepared a plan for a nuclear plant at Drac on the north coast. An Albanian civil nuclear programme could not only help the country fill its own gaping power shortfalls, but get around popular resistance in Italy to nuclear generation. A referendum there in 1987 led to a five-year moratorium on nuclear power, and no government has since dared reopen the issue. But the idea has prompted alarm in neighbouring Greece. The daily La Stampa yesterday reported that talks had been held with the Italian grid operator, Terna, on linking the Italian and Albanian electricity networks. Pier Ferdinando Casini, a leading candidate to take over from Silvio Berlusconi as leader of the Italian right, said the chance "must not be allowed to slip". The prime minister, Romano Prodi, is due to visit Albania for talks early next month. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 6 albawaba.com Report: Israel fears Syrian attack on its nuclear reactor Posted: 11-11-2007 , 07:38 GMT The UK's Sunday Times reported that fearing a Syrian airstrike, the defensive missile shield around Israel's nuclear facility in Dimona was placed on alert 30 times last week. According to the report, a battery of American-made Patriot antiaircraft missiles has been moved to Dimona following intelligence that a strike may be carried out in retaliation for Israel's air-strike in Syria on September 6. In a rare development, Israel's television Channel 10 even spoke to an officer who is the deputy commander of the battery, saying: "We're ready to launch the missiles in seconds, once we're on full alert." The British publication quoted an Israeli defense source as saying: "The fact that the Syrians didn't launch an immediate strike against Israel doesn't mean that they won't retaliate in due course." He added: "Dimona is on the top of their list." © 2007 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com) ***************************************************************** 7 AFP: Japanese nuclear reactor shut after incident - Sunday November 11, 08:35 AM TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese company said Saturday it shut down a nuclear reactor after detecting a problem, but there was no radioactive leakage. Tohoku Electric Power Co., based in the northern part of the largest Japanese island of Honshu, said it urgently halted reactor number three at its Onagawa plant in Miyagi prefecture, north of Tokyo, at 3:19 (0619 GMT). An inspection had detected a rise in the hydrogen level in part of the reactor, but there was no radioactive leakage, the company said in a statement. The company said it was still investigating the cause of the problem. Japan, which has virtually no natural energy resources, relies on nuclear plants for about one-third of its power needs despite repeated safety scares. In July, a deadly earthquake caused a fire and a small radioactive leak at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant northwest of Tokyo. No one was injured at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant and UN inspectors said there were no safety risks. But its operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., plans to keep the facility closed at least until the end of the year for checks. Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 The Enquirer: Our growing need for nuclear power Cincinnati.Com Last Updated: 6:01 pm | Sunday, November 11, 2007 BY HENRY B. SPITZ The emerging nuclear renaissance has forced many skeptics to acknowledge that the question now is not whether new nuclear plants will be built but how many. Over the past decade, the cost of producing electricity from nuclear power plants in the U.S. has dropped 30 percent. Last year, nuclear production costs were just under 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour - cheaper than electricity from a coal-fired plant and less than one-third the cost of producing power at a plant fueled by natural gas. This is a significant achievement that supports the case for building a new generation of nuclear plants as a way to ensure a reliable supply of electricity, wean the U.S. from foreign oil, clean the air and help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. There is a rational explanation for the improved economic performance of nuclear power plants. In the U.S., repairs and maintenance at nuclear plants are now completed in several weeks instead of several months. More importantly, nuclear plants are being operated reliably, with capacity factors averaging about 90 percent for the seventh year in a row. In fact, during the first two weeks in August, the nation's nuclear plants achieved an average capacity factor of 98 percent, producing large supplies of emission-free electricity to meet high demand for power. Paradoxically, the nuclear industry has retired more nuclear generating capacity than it has added in the last 15 years, yet nuclear power has maintained its 20 percent share of U.S. electricity supply, despite an overall growth in electricity demand of more than 25 percent. Credit for this goes to improved plant performance. Now, additional nuclear-generating capacity is truly needed to replace aging fossil-fuel plants and meet growing demand for electricity. Now 17 utilities are gearing up to build about 35 new nuclear plants, amounting to some 40,000 megawatts of additional capacity. The new plants will incorporate features such as standardized designs and fewer pipes that will make them simpler, safer and less costly to build and operate. And not withstanding claims by nuclear power opponents that the waste problem is unsolvable, used fuel is being stored safely and securely at nuclear plant sites, while licensing and construction of a permanent repository in Nevada continues. Largely as a result of growing public concern over climate change, nuclear power has gone from a pariah to the virtuous darling of clean energy. About 75 percent of carbon-free energy is supplied by nuclear power. From 1995 to 2006, U.S. nuclear plants avoided a cumulative 8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. During that same period, nuclear plants also avoided the release of 44.2 million tons of sulfur dioxide and 17.9 million tons of nitrogen oxides, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. If we hope to arrest global warming, expansion of nuclear power will be essential. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that tripling nuclear power generation to one million megawatts by 2050 would significantly contribute the stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions. And nuclear plants in the U.S. operate at high levels of safety. Data compiled by the World Association of Nuclear Operators shows that last year the number of unplanned automatic reactor shutdowns in the U.S. was less than one per plant. Three-quarters of the U.S. nuclear plants have renewed licenses or indicated to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they intend to do so. This licensing process allows a plant to operate for 60 years, not just 40 years. What still must be solved is the growing need for nuclear engineers to meet the needs of industry. The need for nuclear engineers is expected to continue for many years as the existing aging workforce enters retirement. The Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Dale Klein, noted the decline in nuclear engineering programs from 35 in the 1970s to about only 25 today. About 60 new plants will need to be added in the U.S. by 2030 simply to maintain nuclear power at its current 20-percent share of electricity generation. But in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, nuclear power will need to play a larger role, because it's the only source of clean base-load electricity that is available to meet the growing need for energy. If we don't take advantage of it, a unique opportunity will have been lost - probably never to return. Henry B. Spitz is professor of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering in the University of Cincinnati Department of Mechanical, Industrial & Nuclear Engineering. Copyright © 2007 The Enquirer. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 9 Burlington Free Press: Vermont Yankee part of 6-plant Entergy spinoff burlingtonfreepress.com | Burlington, Vermont Published: Saturday, November 10, 2007 By Dan McLean Free Press Staff Writer Entergy Corp. is planning to spin off six of its 11 nuclear power plants -- including Vermont Yankee in Vernon -- into a new company. The company, which has not been named, would be based in Jackson, Miss., said Entergy spokesman Alex Schott. The reason for creating the spinoff, he said, is "to create value for shareholders." Aside from Vermont Yankee, the nuclear facilities that would be controlled by the spinoff are Entergy's Pilgrim plant in Plymouth, Mass., FitzPatrick plant in Oswego, N.Y.; Palisades plant in Covert, Mich.; and two reactors at the Indian Point facility in Buchanan, N.Y., Schott said. These particular facilities were selected, Schott said, because "it was the most attractive in terms of future growth." New Orleans-based Entergy will retain five nuclear reactors that are part of electric utility businesses that Entergy operates in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, he said. Entergy expects the creation of the spinoff company to be complete by the third quarter of 2008. The plan must be approved by a host of regulatory bodies, including: the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Vermont Public Service Board. "We're just starting to look at this to understand its implications on Vermont Yankee and Vermont," said David O'Brien, commissioner of the Vermont Public Service Department. Contact Dan McLean at 651-4877 or dmclean@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com Copyright ©2007 Burlingtonfreepress.com All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 10 toledoblade.com: Emerging energy plan could carry high costs Sunday, November 11, 2007 Article published Sunday, November 11, 2007 Lobbyists 1, Public 0: For an update on Gov. Ted Strickland's proposed energy plan, we turn to that great sage, Carleton S. Finkbeiner. The colorful (as in changing shades of red) Toledo mayor had this to say at a news conference Tuesday: "So far, it appears the lobbyists are winning the battle!" Yikes. An exclamation point written into the mayor's script, to boot. Carty must really be mad. Mr. Finkbeiner was referring to Ohio Senate Bill 221, which weakened the governor's relatively modest call for energy diversification while allowing FirstEnergy Corp. to keep merrily charging exorbitant rates. Passed by the Senate on Halloween, the bill is masquerading as some sort of breakthrough. "Put simply, the Ohio Senate took my energy proposal and made it even better," Mr. Strickland cooed. Well, not exactly. While some states aggressively seek 20 percent or more of their electricity generation from renewable sources by 2020, Mr. Strickland's plan seeks a minimum of 12.5 percent under the guise that it's one-upping others by calling for 25 percent of the state's electricity from so-called "advanced technology" sources by 2025. But half of that 25 percent could come from largely undefined advanced coal and nuclear generation. Renewable energy buffs were never thrilled by that but didn't make a fuss. They viewed it as better than nothing. Now, the Office of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel - which represents Ohio's 4.5 million households on utility matters with Ralph Nader-esque passion - is upset about the bill's proposed rate structure. It is calling on the House to pass something more consumer-friendly, especially for customers served by FirstEnergy's Toledo Edison Co. The Senate bill would give utilities plenty of wiggle room. It would let them off the hook for renewable energy if they can convince the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio that diversifying will raise electric bills by more than 3 percent. Toledo already has some of Ohio's highest electric rates, 14 percent above those in Columbus and 40 percent higher than Findlay's. That doesn't bode well for economic development. A lot of this region's hopes are pinned on the development of alternative energy. Where's the incentive to create jobs here if higher electric rates prevail, especially if there's not a stronger commitment to alternative energy? In a Word, it's WRDA: On Election Day, no less, the U.S. House overrode President Bush's veto of an arcane-sounding, but important piece of national water legislation called the Water Resources Development Act of 2007. The Senate - which had approved the measure by an 81-12 margin in September - was expected to follow suit and deliver the first override of a Bush veto. The act calls for $23.2 billion by 2022 on flood control, shoreline protection, dredging, other navigational work, and environmental restoration, including combined sewer overflows. For the Great Lakes, the act - the first of its kind in seven years - would help finish off a permanent barrier to keep Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan via the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, something area leaders have wanted for years. The massive carp, voracious 80-pound eaters, could wreak havoc on the region's multibillion dollar fishing industry. The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a consortium of mayors, called on Congress to override Mr. Bush's veto, as did area congressmen and senators. U.S. Sen. George Voinovich (R., Ohio) said the act is "a major step forward toward addressing the challenges we face as a nation and in many of Ohio's communities with water quality." © 2007 The Blade. By using this service, you accept the terms of our privacy statement and our visitor agreement. Please read them. The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 ***************************************************************** 11 APP.COM: Stonewalling opponents is NRC goal Asbury Park Press Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 11/10/07 The people of our area who protest the relicensing of the Oyster Creek nuclear energy plant in Lacey realize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been stonewalling the community without ever considering the people's case. It's time to examine the politics involved in NRC hearings. Each denial of a license would hasten the end of the need for an NRC. Each member of the NRC has a vested interest in keeping the nuclear energy business thriving. In addition, consider the revolving door of employment that exists to provide more gainful employment for NRC members. Take the case of Jeffrey Merrifield. Before he left the NRC, Merrifield's last assignment as an NRC commissioner was to chair an agency task force on ways to accelerate licensing of nuclear plants. His salary at the NRC was $154,600. He then joined the Shaw group, a nuclear builder that has worked on 95 percent of existing nuclear plants. In Shaw Group's peer groups, $705,409 is the median annual compensation for a senior vice president. It appears that every NRC commissioner is looking forward to a lucrative job with the industry. Is it any wonder then that the public doesn't have an ear with the NRC? Now the Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides the means for private owners to build new plants with less investment and all the means for rushing construction with reduced liability. In the rush to find alternative sources, the government is choosing the most dangerous one for consideration. Len Amada Copyright © 2007 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 12 APP.COM - MORE NUKES FOR N.J.? | Asbury Park Press Corzine to present energy draft plan in December Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 11/11/07 Is nuclear energy in New Jersey's future? How can electricity costs be cut? Will windmills become a common sight off the Jersey Shore? These are among the questions that may be answered in the governor's energy master plan, which hasn't been updated since 1995. "We've got a major problem in the state of New Jersey about how we're going to be able to provide the power to meet the demands that are already there," Gov. Corzine said. The plan takes a far-reaching look at where the state will be getting its energy years from now and ways it can reduce consumption and develop renewable energy sources while keeping prices competitive. It's being watched closely by environmental groups that want the governor to emphasize conservation and renewable, clean energy sources such as wind and solar power. It's also being watched by business interests who want to see how the governor plans to battle rising energy costs. One of the biggest questions: Will it include plans for another nuclear reactor? Already, about half of the electricity consumed in New Jersey comes from the state's three nuclear plants. PSEG, whose subsidiary operates the Hope Creek and Salem nuclear power plants, has been exploring building another reactor in South Jersey. "I hope that people recognize that you cannot preserve the quality of life and standard of living that we have just through energy efficiency and renewables. You just cannot make the math work," said Ralph Izzo, president and chief executive officer of PSEG. "Therefore, I would hope that they would leave nuclear in there (the plan)." A draft of the plan should be released by mid-December, with a final version coming early next spring, according to Gary Rose, head of the state Office of Economic Growth. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission would have final approval, but the governor's support would remove a lot of roadblocks. Hal Bozarth, president of the Chemistry Council of New Jersey, said for the energy master plan to be a success, it must include a commitment to building a new electricity-generating station. "Unless we increase our generation .... we're going to end up with extraordinarily high energy costs," Bozarth said. "I'd like to see nuclear, maybe the clean coal (plants) .... I don't think solar and wind are the answer in and of themselves." The prospect of another nuclear reactor in the state doesn't sit well with many environmental organizations that are concerned about nuclear waste and potential terrorist attacks. They argue that nuclear power is so heavily subsidized, it makes renewable energy look too expensive. "Based on a pure market system, it (nuclear) is too expensive and would not happen," said Jeff Tittel, executive director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. Instead, the plan should focus on conservation and renewable energy and encourage more carpooling and the use of hybrid and electric cars and mass transit, he said. In addition, environmentalists hope the governor will create a fund or state program dedicated to developing clean, alternative energy technologies such as wave and wind power. The state should build windmills off the Jersey Shore and harvest even more energy from New Jersey's successful solar program, said Matt Elliott from Environment New Jersey. Copyright © 2007 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 13 Salt Lake Tribune: Next tipping point Public Forum Letter Article Last Updated: 11/09/2007 07:02:38 PM MST I am no expert on either nuclear power or global warming. But I do understand we have limited amounts of clean air, clean water and waste storage capacity. I think that most people are realizing that nature's ability to support humanity is not as boundless as we all once thought. Won't we be facing the same tipping-point situation we are now with greenhouse gas buildup in the future with nuclear power? Won't we someday find we have reached a tipping point with available water supply and waste storage capacity? It seems to me that nuclear power, with its excessive water requirements and deadly radioactive waste, is a slippery slope that will ultimately end up demanding a very high cost to human health and the environment. Richard C. Young Park City ***************************************************************** 14 Salt Lake Tribune: Poll: State divided on the prospect of homegrown nuclear energy Article Last Updated: 11/11/2007 12:40:19 PM MST Key findings of poll The question was: Would you support or oppose the construction of a nuclear power plant in Utah? -- Overall, Utahns are split, with about 43 percent saying yes and 42 percent saying no. -- Women are twice as likely as men to oppose nuclear reactors in Utah, 56 to 28 percent, respectively. -- People 50 and older were more likely to favor having a nuclear plant in Utah (49 percent) than younger Utahns ( 37 percent). -- Half as many Democrats (25 percent) support having a nuclear plant in Utah as Republicans (51 percent). Independents were divided, with 42 percent supporting reactors and 39 percent opposing. Posted: 12:34 PM- Green River resident Nancy Dunham wouldn't mind having safe, clean nuclear power plants in the neighborhood to energize the local economy. But Moab resident Sarah Fields doubts reactors will fly because they are water hogs and will bring more waste into an area already riddled with the dangerous stuff. The two views illustrate Utah's split on the nuclear power plant issue, according to a new opinion poll by The Salt Lake Tribune. About as many Utahns would welcome having nuclear-power plants in the state as those who would oppose reactors, respondents say. Forty-three percent favor construction of nuclear plants in their state and 42 percent object. Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington, D.C., conducted the newspaper's telephone poll of 625 likely voters from throughout the state Oct. 29-31. It has a margin of error of about 4 percent. The findings come just weeks after most Utahns learned about efforts by two legislators, Republican Reps. Aaron Tilton of Springville and Mike Noel of Kanab, to locate two reactors near Green River, Emery County. They would be Utah's first nuclear plants. If the plans go forward, the Utah reactors would be among nearly two dozen on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's schedule of license reviews for new plants. The news has gotten people talking about nuclear energy in Emery County, and Grand County downstream. And everyone seems to agree on one point: People want specifics. Safety, water use and economic benefits - they are all questions that need answers, says Dunham, a 76-year-old who has lived in the area for more than a half-century, raised six children there and whose family supplied mining equipment during the southeastern Utah uranium boom. "People need to understand the whole process and what it does to their environment," she says. "So far as radiation goes, I personally have no problems with it," adds Dunham, who once visited a reactor in Wisconsin. "It's clean power, and it's coming." A number of Green River residents suspect it may be just another get-jobs-quick idea that collapses before any good can come of it. "I think it's just a lot of talk," says Duane Riches, 45, who owns the Melon Vine Food Store with his wife, Penney . "I'm not saying it's good or bad because I don't know much about nuclear power. But I don't see it happening, so I'm not worried about it." Adds Penney: "I heard a couple of locals say it'll be fine: our grandkids will just glow in the dark." Rafting outfitter Bob Quist agreed that too many fly-by-night proposals have roused this community of 900, then dashed its high hopes for economic vitality. "What I would call it is a lot of hype," says the longtime Green River resident. "Just another - what can you say? - boondoggle." He recalls the community uproar over a nuclear plant more than two decades ago that evaporated after millions of dollars and lots of local goodwill had been spent on it. Quist says he would probably fight it again - because of the impact on the community's resources - even though he's not opposed to nuclear energy. Behind the desk of the Green River golf course, former Mayor Glen Dale Johnson says he would like to see a nuclear plant come to the community and bring a bigger payroll. With the city's annual budget of about $1 million, and lacking a property tax, leaders need new resources to fund improvements and services. "We've been promised a lot," he says, noting that proposals for a refinery and other businesses have failed in the past. "And maybe this time we can make it happen." Meanwhile, Green River resident Barbara King is against it. A member of the Sierra Club, she says reactors will mar the scenic beauty so crucial to the local economy that caters to people visiting the San Rafael Swell, Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. "It's my neighborhood," she says. "It's a beautiful area, and [a reactor] would be an eyesore." A newly formed environmental group based in Moab, Uranium Watch, has begun to put the proposed reactors in its crosshairs. Members are drafting an opposition letter to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and state legislators, said Fields, a Moab resident who is organizing the group. "This is not going to fly," she says. Moab is the scene of a U.S. Energy Department cleanup of uranium tailings that is projected to cost as much as $835 million and last for two decades. And it is upstream of a uranium processing plant that some have accused of "sham disposal" of radiation-contaminated waste. Uranium Watch is concerned about the proposed reactors' water use, on-site waste storage, endangered species in the Colorado River, electric transmission lines and other issues that will come up as the public considers the proposal. "Here we are trying to get rid of nuclear waste and they [the reactor proponents] want to come in," says Uranium Watch member John Weisheit. Grand County Council member Joette Langianese predicted her community would "respond vocally" to the new reactor proposal. "It will be a very controversial issue for Grand County," she says, "one way or the other." fahys@sltrib.com ***************************************************************** 15 Reuters: Japan's Tohoku Electric shuts down nuclear reactor Sat Nov 10, 2007 1:05pm GMT TOKYO, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Tohoku Electric Power Co. (9506.T: Quote, Profile, Research) shut a reactor at one of its nuclear plants on Saturday due to an unspecified problem that occurred when the unit was restarted after a regular inspection, Kyodo news agency reported. A sharp rise in the hydrogen concentration in pipes for gaseous waste disposal prompted the emergency shutdown at the Onagawa nuclear power plant in Japan's Miyagi Prefecture, the company said, according to Kyodo. It said there was no radioactive leakage. Kyodo did not say how long the shutdown was expected to last. (Writing by Sophie Hardach; Editing by Robert Woodward) © Reuters2007All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 Antiwar: Nukes, Nuclear Power and Global Warming - by Gordon Prather Antiwar.com November 10, 2007 To the horror of Jason Leopold, Senior Editor at Truthout, Dick Cheney and Clay Sell, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy, have been regularly visiting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ever since Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 [.pdf], which, inter alia, changed the start and end dates of daylight saving time. Why the visits? Well, the National Energy Policy Development Group – chaired by Vice President Cheney – had recommended in 2001 that President Bush support the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States "as a major component of our national energy policy" by encouraging the NRC "to expedite applications for licensing new advanced-technology nuclear reactors," and supporting extension of the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 did extend Price-Anderson. Furthermore, the Act provided "investment protection" in the form of "standby support" or "risk assurance" to offset the financial impact of delays "beyond industry’s control" that could occur during construction and initial phases of plant "startup." It provides for 100 percent coverage of the cost of delays for the first two new plants for up to $500 million each, and 50 percent of the cost of delays for up to $250 million each, for plants three through six. The Act provides a production tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first eight years of operation of the first six plants. Other sources of carbon "emission-free power" have received such a production tax credit since 1992. As a result of these incentives, the NRC expects to receive by the end of this year up to 25 combined construction and operating license [COL] applications. Leopold reports that in September, NRG Energy submitted an application to build two new General Electric ESBWR nuclear power plants in Bay City, Texas, a "move that came as direct result of several private meetings NRG lobbyists held with Cheney and Sell." Worse, in October, an application was filed with the NRC by NuStart Energy Development to construct two Westinghouse-Toshiba AP1000 nuclear reactors, which received NRC Design Certification two years ago. According to Leopold, the costs for design certification of the AP1000s under NRC’s new streamlined program were underwritten by a special Bush-Cheney DOE program, the Nuclear Power 2010 Initiative. Well, you can see why Leopold is horrified. Or can you? Many Greenies have been extremely upset with Bush-Cheney. Because Bush-Cheney launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq on the false pretext of preventing Saddam Hussein from reconstructing his capability to enrich small amounts of uranium? Or because Bush-Cheney appear to be on the verge of launching another unprovoked war of aggression to prevent the Iranian Mullahs from completing their capability – operated in accord with their Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – to enrich large amounts of uranium? No, neither of those wars of aggression appear to particularly upset those Greenies who have long been anti-nuclear-everything, and appear to equate – as do Bush-Cheney, the Likudniks and the neo-crazies – the proliferation of IAEA Safeguarded uranium-enrichment facilities with the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In any case, the Greenies have been applauding several recent victories over Bush-Cheney. Earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency had no "reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change." Then, recently, Al Gore got an Academy Award for his "documentary" – An Inconvenient Truth – which declared anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions to be the "single greatest threat" to civilization. Soon thereafter Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the UN International Panel on Climate Change for their efforts to address that single greatest threat. The IPCC's stated mission is "to assess the scientific, technical, and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change." The operative terms are "assess" and "human-induced." The IPCC has three working groups, one of which is charged with assessing options for limiting "human" greenhouse gas emissions. Evidently, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee agrees with the assessment of Gore and the IPCC – despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary – that the greatest threat to World Peace is not the apparent intention of Bush-Cheney to launch yet another war of aggression. Well, maybe they’re right. And maybe Bush-Cheney won’t launch yet another war of aggression before leaving office. After all, the way things are going to hell in a wheelbarrow – largely as a result of Bush-Cheney actions – in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, Bush would have to be a certified End of Timer to accelerate the process. So, who knows? Maybe next year the Peace Prize will go to Bush-Cheney for their efforts to dramatically curtail anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, by accelerating the construction – everywhere but in Iran – of nuclear power plants. Even James Lovelock – father of the Gaia hypothesis – might applaud that award. After all, Greenie Lovelock apparently agrees with the IPCC assessment and urges the fastest possible substitution of nuclear energy for fossil fuels: "Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies, and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. "I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy. Even if they were right about its dangers – and they are not – its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. "We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear – the one safe, available energy source – now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet." So, the Nobel Peace Prize for Bush-Cheney? Bring it on! Antiwar.com Home Page Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. Copyright 2007 Antiwar.com ***************************************************************** 17 Daily Herald: Legislator works to bring nuclear power to Utah NOV. 10-11 ** ** FILE ** Rep. Aaron Tilton, R-Utah County, a member of the conservative caucus holds a document in the state legislature in this Feb. 23, 2007 file photo. He has been a vegetarian restaurateur, worked for a company that sells Viagra online, and tried to fix your kids, before moving into energy consulting. Now Rep. Aaron Tilton wants to split the atom, as he proposes the most ambitious energy project in Utah's history. (AP Photo/Salt Lake Tribune, Al Hartmann, File) ** DESERET MORNING NEWS OUT. NO MAGS. NO SALES ** Sunday, November 11, 2007 Legislator works to bring nuclear power to Utah PDF  | Print  |  E-mail Robert Gehrke - CANYON COUNTRY EXCHANGE He has been a vegetarian restaurateur, worked for a company that sells Viagra online, and tried to fix your kids, before moving into energy consulting. Now Rep. Aaron Tilton wants to split the atom, as he proposes the most ambitious energy project in Utah's history. The Springville Republican and father of two is CEO of Transition Power Development LLC, a company that wants to build at least two 1,500 megawatt nuclear power plants in the state, with early signs indicating they are looking at land near the Green River in Emery County. It is the most recent incarnation for the 35-year-old self-taught businessman, whose eclectic background has just recently, and almost entirely by chance, landed him in the nuclear energy realm. "Ever since I got out of high school I never had a big desire to work for anybody," he says. He enrolled in some classes at Brigham Young University, but never attended. Instead, a friend's parents sold him their vegetarian restaurant in Provo -- Govinda's Buffet & Health Bar. He hated it and bailed out three months later. He did construction work for a few years before going on a Mormon mission to Washington, D.C. He returned to create Rockberry.org, which marketed "Let's Fix Our Kids," a series of audio tapes and online and at-home coaching for parents with troubled kids. But Rockberry ran into its own trouble. Tilton says the funding dried up when the dot-com bubble burst. Rockberry folded and one creditor ended up suing for over $146,733. Tilton paid $700 to settle the complaint, records show. From there, Tilton moved in several directions. He went to work in a pharmacy business, selling automated voice-recognition systems to fill prescriptions, before ending up as director of business development for PCM Ventures I, which runs the online pharmacy KwikMed.com. KwikMed allows consumers to get a prescription and order Viagra, Cialis, Propecia or Levitra online and have it delivered to their homes, thanks to a unique deal the company struck with Utah regulators. Sen. Peter Knudson sponsored a bill last year to do away with online prescriptions, but it was defeated in the Senate; Tilton never voted on the measure. In 2002, about the same time Tilton got into the pharmacy business, a friend was looking to invest some money and Tilton's father, who had worked as a pipefitting engineer at power plants, suggested they look at the energy industry. "I said, 'What? I don't know anything about power plants,' " Tilton says, but they toyed with buying a small power plant at the defunct Geneva Steel before deciding against it. The research, however, kick-started Tilton's interest in energy. "I started looking at that and really started studying the power industry," he says. "From that project, I figured out there was (about to be) a very significant growth in power needs." He started looking for energy projects in the West that would work, and ended up consulting on a coal-power project in Sigurd, Utah, and some projects in Wyoming's Powder River Basin. Then, in 2004, disgusted with what he paid in state taxes and believing he could do better, Tilton decided to run against Rep. Calvin Bird. Beating an incumbent is a daunting challenge, but Tilton says he worked hard knocking on doors and met with delegates before he caught a break. While campaigning one evening in May, his cell phone rang and a reporter gave him the news: Bird had been arrested for soliciting sex from a prostitute and would quit the Legislature. "I stopped knocking on doors, got in my car and went home," Tilton says. Gov. Olene Walker appointed him to Bird's seat after Bird resigned. Tilton retained the seat in 2004 and was re-elected in 2006. In the Legislature, Tilton is a predictably solid conservative Utah County Republican. He has sponsored legislation to help block gay clubs in schools, prevent government from taking property for trails or recreation areas, and would have made it difficult for environmental groups to challenge energy and road projects. He is vice-chairman of the pro-industry group Americans For American Energy, which advocates domestic energy production. Tilton got a seat on the Legislature's energy advisory panel and on Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s climate-change panel, where he quietly urged his colleagues to support exploration of nuclear power. Tim Wagner, an energy advocate with the Sierra Club, served on both panels with Tilton, and was unimpressed. Tilton, he said, used his seat on the committee to demean advocates for renewable power, has been dismissive of opposing viewpoints and often doesn't bother paying attention in meetings. "If I would have to sum him up in one word, it would be 'arrogant,' " Wagner said. Through his service in the Legislature, Tilton met Rep. Mike Noel, which ultimately led to the creation of Transition Power. In 2006, Noel had backed the inclusion of nuclear power in the state's energy policy and he took a drubbing from opponents and on editorial pages. Those press clippings found their way to Tom Retson, a North Carolina energy consultant who had spent 23 years in General Electric's nuclear division. Retson contacted Noel to pat him on the back and offer his expertise, then met him on a ski trip to the state, where Noel introduced him to Tilton. "It was almost an immediate meeting of the minds," says Retson. "He has (energy) experience. It's not long-lived, but . . . he's a young man with a lot of positive energy, intelligence, a quick learner, and obviously his experience within the state government is important." After months of discussions, they formed Transition Power on Feb. 2. It was not, Retson says, a case of a company with deep pockets putting them up to pushing nuclear power. "Aaron and I are the birth fathers of this thing and that's literally true. There's no wizard behind the curtain," Retson says. Tilton says he brings to the table his management skills, self-taught through his years of business experience. "Managing this project is an art more than a skill that can be taught," he said. "If there's something I don't know, I can find somebody who knows it." ThisThose experts include Nils Diaz, the former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Reed Searle, director of the Intermountain Power Agency, which generates coal power, mostly for Southern California. Both are partners in Transition Power. At a recent legislative meeting, Tilton took the unusual step of testifying on his nuclear project before a committee on which he sits. Critics were outraged, blasting Tilton for what they viewed as a clear conflict of interest. Tilton says he didn't vote on any legislation to help his company, so he's clean under Utah's law. But the stir made headlines that he says have actually helped his company: Investors from Utah and elsewhere are lining up to give his company money. The Salt Lake Tribune Copyright © 2007 Daily Herald and Lee Enterprises | Privacy Policy ***************************************************************** 18 Knoxville News Sentinel: Nuclear plant is focus of scrutiny Inspectors to seek shutdown causes at TVA's Browns Ferry By Andrew Eder (Contact) Saturday, November 10, 2007 Federal regulators will send a team of four inspectors to TVA's Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant next week to examine the causes of five unplanned shutdowns of Unit 1 since the reactor was restarted in May. "It is a fact-finding mission, and this inspection hopes to pull together all of the information available on what TVA has done to determine the causes of the scrams and what they've done to fix it," said Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Ken Clark. TVA spent five years and $1.8 billion refurbishing Unit 1 at the three-reactor plant in northern Alabama. The reactor unit had been dormant since 1985 before operators achieved a self-sustaining nuclear reaction on May 22. Unit 1 was manually shut down just two days later when a control system pipe burst, spilling 600 gallons of hydraulic fluid. Since then, the reactor unit has seen four additional unplanned shutdowns, most recently on Oct. 12. Clark said the NRC team would conduct a "focused inspection" related to the shutdowns, review records, talk to plant personnel and physically inspect some of the plant's operating areas. NRC management will review the inspectors' report and decide whether further action is appropriate, Clark said. "There's no perception at this point in time of any major safety problem, but any time a unit shuts down, it's a challenge to all of the systems," he said. Unit 1 is in a planned outage for a chemical application to prevent corrosion to critical parts and protect workers from radiation exposure, said Jason Huffine, a spokesman for the Alabama nuclear plant. He said the restart of Unit 1 was a success for TVA, and operators would try to draw lessons from the shutdowns and ensure the safety of the plant. "We've got to learn from every shutdown that takes place," Huffine said. Business writer Andrew Eder may be reached at 865-342-6318. © 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 19 Herald Sun: Coalition MPs opposing nuclear power | NEWS.com.au | Gerard McManus November 12, 2007 12:00am ONE in four Coalition MPs is telling voters in their electorates they are opposed to nuclear power, directly contradicting Government policy to develop a nuclear industry in Australia. Coalition MPs who have spoken out against a nuclear reactor in their electorate or tried to stifle nuclear discussion include up to a third of the Howard Cabinet, ministers and parliamentary secretaries and at least six Victorian MPs. Some Liberal MPs have even gone to the extreme of including a "no nuke" statement in their campaign mail-outs. They include Victorian Liberal MPs Jason Wood and Russell Broadbent. Labor has labelled the campaign of official nuclear endorsement and local nuclear condemnation as dishonest politics. "They are walking both sides of the street on this issue, it is a totally dishonest campaign," Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese said last night. Mr Albanese described the Liberal Party position on the nuclear industry as "a virtual policy". "Their MPs are saying there will be no reactors and no waste, so where will the 25 new reactors go?" Cabinet ministers who have tried to scotch nuclear stories running in their electorates include Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough ("never a nuclear reactor on Bribie Island"), Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran ("a distant prospect"), and Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews ("not much room"). According to a list compiled by the ALP, 23 out of 87 Coalition MPs have spoken out against nuclear reactors in their electorates. Victorian Liberals who have come out opposed to nukes include Greg Hunt, who claims his Western Port Bay electorate is not geologically suited to a nuclear reactor, while not opposing the actual policy itself. Prime Minister John Howard first pushed the case for a nuclear industry late last year as a panacea for global warming. © Herald and Weekly Times. All times AEDT (GMT + 10). ***************************************************************** 20 The Wild Frontier at The Times: Attack on nuke facility a tad worrying, no? 11 November 2007, 15:19 GMT + 2 Is it just me, or is an attack by armed gunmen on one of South Africa's nuclear facilities ever-s0-slightly worrying? The attack by armed gunmen took place at the country's Pelindaba nuclear plant. The Pretoria news reported on Friday that gunmen “stormed the facility’s emergency response control room in the early hours of Thursday morning.” They shot emergency services worker, Anton Gerber, in the chest. The newspaper was rightly gobsmacked at the intrusion, observing that śIt is surrounded by electric fencing, has 24-hour CCTV surveillance, security guards and security controls and checkpoints.” Government must act fast to secure this strategic facility. I am Ray Hartley, the editor of The Times, South Africa, a daily newspaper which was launched in June 2007 under the Sunday Times umbrella. I’m also the editor of www.thetimes.co.za. Copyright © 2007 The Times ***************************************************************** 21 Greenpeace International: World Energy Congress and nuclear madness | 11 November 2007 Greenpeace activists make an unexpected appearance during the opening ceremony of the World Energy Conference. Enlarge Image Rome, Italy — The people of Italy turned their back on nuclear power in a referendum 20 years ago. Good move. But an Italian company, with government backing, is only too happy to build a dangerous reactor over in Slovakia. We made a surprise appearance during the opening of the World Energy Conference to point out this hypocrisy. ENEL is the Italian company engaged to complete the reactor in Mochovce, Slovakia. Designed in the 1970s, the reactor lacks crucial safety systems introduced elsewhere following the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. The Italian government is the main shareholder of ENEL, One thousand billion dollars Two activists this evening unfurled a five by seven metre banner reading "Stop Nuclear Madness – Energy Revolution Now" during the opening ceremony of the World Energy Congress in Rome, Italy, attended by Romano Prodi, Italian Prime Minister. We're also critical of the conference organizer's plan to deal with climate change. Their plan lets global warming carbon dioxide emissions keep rising as late as 2030 before decreasing AND proposes an expansion in nuclear power. The costs of doubling the number of nuclear reactors around the world could exceed one thousand billion dollars. Yet such a move would fail to achieve any significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, investments need to go into increasing renewable energy capacity and energy efficiency. "We have less than a decade to halt and reverse the trend of growing emissions of greenhouse gases if we are to head-off the worst impacts of climate change," said Jan Beranek, nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace International, referring to recent scientific warnings on global warming. "It is time for a true energy revolution not the failed â€Alice in Wonderland†nuclear dream of 'power too cheap to meter'," said Beranek. Luckily, we've got a better plan. Our 'Energy Revolution' scenario is a blueprint for preventing climate change from reaching catastrophic proportions. Produced in conjunction with the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and the European Renewable Energy Council, the scenario shows that reliance on existing energy technologies can halve global greenhouse emissions while simultaneously phasing out nuclear energy. This would compromise neither sustained economic growth nor fair access to energy for people in developing countries. ***************************************************************** 22 Gallup Independent: Veterans to be tested for uranium November 8, 2007: By Kathy Helms Diné Bureau WINDOW ROCK ? The New Mexico Department of Health will be testing New Mexico veterans and active duty military personnel beginning next week to determine whether they have high concentrations of natural uranium and/or depleted uranium in their urine. The department?s Environmental Health Epidemiology Bureau is offering the tests free of charge at its Scientific Laboratory in Albuquerque for military personnel and veterans who may have been exposed to depleted uranium in the Persian Gulf War, the Afghanistan conflict or the current war in Iraq. The Department of Health will make appointments to test individuals in every county of the state from Nov. 13 to the week of Dec. 10. Tests will be conducted the week of Dec. 10 for individuals from San Juan, McKinley, Cibola, Sandoval and Los Alamos counties. ?The New Mexico Legislature gave us funding to test veterans and active duty military who may have been exposed to depleted uranium,? said Health Secretary Dr. Alfredo Vigil. ?We encourage military personnel to take advantage of these free tests.? At the appointment, a Department of Health staff member will give a brief questionnaire and take a tap water sample, which will also be tested for total uranium. The water is tested for uranium because New Mexico, on average, has a higher concentration of uranium in drinking water than the rest of the country. If the urine sample tests high for uranium, the department will offer a follow-up test to determine if this uranium is depleted or natural uranium. Depleted uranium is used for bullets, tank armor and explosives. One of the possible side effects of having high levels of depleted uranium is kidney damage. Another possible consequence of exposure to depleted uranium is diabetes, according to Leuren Moret, a geoscientist and international radiation specialist who formerly worked as a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore laboratories. In an article published in 2006, Moret said data from Japan, the United States, India and Europe confirms her discovery of ?a global epidemic of diabetes which began with Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and has continued to increase during atmospheric testing, nuclear power plant operations, and very sharply since depleted uranium was introduced in 1991.? ?The major radioactive pollutant from atmospheric testing was uranium. There is an established link in the scientific literature between uranium and diabetes. Diabetes has also been linked to radiation exposure in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl survivors,? Moret said. Her theory has been corroborated by Dr. Ernest Sternglass, professor emeritus of Radiological Physics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, a pioneer in the study of the health effects of low-level radiation, and other health experts. In an article first published from last December through Valentine?s Day 2007 in the San Francisco Bay View, ?From Hiroshima to Iraq, 61 Years of Uranium Wars,? Moret wrote that the conduct of secret nuclear wars since 1991, through the use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States and Great Britain with their allies, has taken place in the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Lebanon. ?It has been carried out for the express purpose of destroying the public health and mutilating the genetic future of vast populations in oil rich and/or pipeline regions,? she said. ?Carpet and grid bombing with depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan has guaranteed permanent radioactive terrain contamination. The recent discovery that U.S. depleted uranium bombs dropped by Israel on Lebanon in 2006 contained enriched uranium suggests covert testing of fourth generation nuclear weapons,? in violation of the Geneva and Hague Conventions and the 1925 Geneva Poison Gas Protocol. ?For populations that must continue to live in contaminated areas, the long-term effects are lingering illnesses and mutilation of their DNA. ? Mutations induced in the DNA of a single egg or sperm which form a fertilized egg are expressed and repeated in every cell of the developing organism, and defects are passed on to all future generations. ?Global atmospheric pollution from depleted uranium particulates will result in massive depopulation on a global scale. By increasing death rates and decreasing birth rates globally, more than 2 billion people will be eliminated,? Moret predicts. ?Not only are U.S. and allied soldiers exposed and civilian populations genocidally targeted, but the depleted uranium pollution is now global. In reality, we are all Gulf War veterans.? Information: To volunteer or find out more, contact the Department?s Environmental Health Epidemiology Bureau at: DOH-EHEB@state.nm.us or call toll-free, 888-878-8992. All contents property of the Gallup Independent. Any duplication or republication requires consent of the Gallup Independent. Please send the Gallup Independent feedback on this website and the paper in general. Send questions or comments to gallpind@cia-g.com ***************************************************************** 23 Gallup Independent: Something in the wind; Former Hopi chairman talks about his bout with cancer November 9, 2007: By Kathy Helms Diné Bureau Ivan Sidney sits on the porch of his childhood home in First Mesa Village. Sidney is a survivor of radiation-related cancer and has been compensated as a downwinder. [Photo courtesy of Russell Honicker] FIRST MESA, Ariz. ? In 1981, at the age of 33, Ivan Sidney became the youngest man ever to be elected chairman of the Hopi Tribe. In October 2006, during the 10th month of his third term, he was ousted following a painful alcohol-related incident in Winslow. He makes no bones about it. It?s not something he?s proud of. But he survived. As a matter of fact, Sidney has survived a lot of pain since his birth in 1947, but nothing quite so painful or quite as humiliating as cancer, he said. Of course, when first diagnosed several years ago, Sidney had no idea that he was one of thousands of victims known as ?downwinders.? During the era of atomic testing at Nevada Test Site, it was not uncommon for radioactive clouds to rain down poisonous trails of fallout across the Hopi Reservation. Perhaps that accounts for what some members of the Hopi Tribe say is a high incidence of cancer, but with no definitive health studies ever having been conducted, it?s hard to say. As of April 2005, approximately 20 Hopi had been approved to receive compensation as downwinders under the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act. That same year, the New Mexico Tumor Registry had documented more than 250 Hopi born before July 1, 1962, with RECA-compensable cancers. If it weren?t for the fact that Sidney?s cancer was related to radiation exposure, one might be led to believe that the illness in his family is hereditary. About 14 to 15 years ago, he watched his mother die from breast cancer. ?It just spread all over her body,? he said recently. ?About 10 years later, her younger brother, my uncle, died from prostate cancer. Then, prior to that, her younger sister, an aunt of mine, had a lump removed from her breast. She?s deceased now too. ?About a month and a half ago, another aunt of mine ? another sister of my mother ? died of cancer. She was a retired director of health care with Indian Health Service. It spread from breast cancer and went into her brain.? In Sidney?s case, he was working at Northern Arizona University when he first became ill. ?I would have very high fevers. My temp would be as high as 102, 103, and I would develop chills. I was going to the hospital here locally, in and out, in and out. I was diagnosed for many things,? he said. ?I found out that Native Americans on the reservations were supposedly provided health care through the Indian Health Service. Our new health care center is an ambulatory care facility, it?s not a hospital, so there?s limited service ? there?s virtually no inpatient care,? he said. ?In my particular case, cancer, Indian Health told me that?s not part of their services. In fact, it took me over two years to be diagnosed finally that I had cancer.? After going back and forth to IHS at Hopi, Sidney became ill once again during a family trip to Flagstaff. He said he called a Hopi doctor at IHS who told him, ?Ivan, we can?t help you ? it?s obvious. Why don?t you go to the Flagstaff Medical Center?? In order to do that, however, he had to have a referral from IHS. ?It?s called contract health care,? Sidney said. After receiving the referral, he went to the medical center where he was immediately admitted because his temperature was dangerously high. ?I was admitted on a Friday. It took three doctors at Flagstaff Medical Center three days to tell me that I had cancer. It was behind my back, my lymph nodes. I immediately went into surgery the fourth day and immediately went into chemotherapy. It took 18 months of chemo for my doctor in Flagstaff to tell me I was infected with stubborn cells, they refer to them as T-cells, and that normal chemo would not cure me. I had stubborn cancer cells which meant, it?s over for me,? Sidney said. The doctor told him there was a new cancer treatment, still in its early stage, but that it was only offered at the University of Arizona or Tucson. He was referred to Tucson for a blood stem cell transplant. While in Tucson, Sidney asked the new doctor what might have caused his cancer. Once more, he was told that it was caused by radiation. ?Again I was asked, ?Do you ever remember being exposed to radiation?? I said no. He said, ?Where do you live?? I said on Hopi. He said, ?Has that area been part of the downfall from Nevada, the nuclear testing, the uranium mining?? I said, ?Yes it is.?? ?I drank from our springs and lived on the farm with my grandma. I grew up the traditional way ? and that?s why I brought up my mother and her brothers and sisters. All of us are dying of cancer.? Now, he realizes that he is very lucky. While at NAU he had the foresight to take out private health insurance. ?I would have died if I hadn?t had my own insurance. I just thought of all the other Hopi and Navajo who maybe don?t have insurance that probably could have been saved. I kind of feel guilty about that sometimes ? that I?m alive today and somebody else isn?t,? he said. ?I?ve been to the point, lying in the hospital so sick, I remember not wanting to go to sleep because I was afraid I was going to wake up dead ? die in my sleep. But I got so tired I would fall asleep, and then open my eyes and I would see the morning light coming, the sun coming in. I would say, ?I?m alive!? ?So, every day is a good day,? he said, but he feels especially bad for Hopi children now suffering similar illnesses. ?One I know of is 5 years old, a leukemia victim,? he said. ?I?ve lived a good life, and I didn?t mind seeing myself maybe somehow fade away by cancer, but these young people, it?s all wrong. It shouldn?t have to happen.? Sidney is now in remission, ?but I have to live with the fact that any day it can come back ? and I don?t know that I want to go through it again, especially the blood cell transplant, because I know how it is and I?d be crazy to repeat something that hurts so bad.? Last year, when he was ousted by the Hopi Tribal Council after it was learned that he had been drunk at a motel in Winslow and had urinated in the hallway, he saw some people in the audience laughing. ?That was, I felt, a real discourtesy to not only me, but other cancer victims,? he said. ?Alcohol, sadly, became a part of me because of the pain. But people couldn?t understand that. We run to those things because there is nothing for us to go to.? No one can describe the pain and no one will understand what he and other cancer victims have been subjected to unless they experience it for themselves, he said. Now, Sidney counsels other Hopi cancer victims, some of whom helped remove him from office, telling them, ?how I coped with it and what happened to me,? he said. ?I am a survivor, and I?m doing everything I can to help.? He started playing music while undergoing chemo, and later put together a country band, The Hopi Clansmen, which plays to raise funds for charitable events. ?Right after I was told I was in remission, I put together a music festival called ?Joining Hands to Fight Cancer Through Music.? We just finished our fourth annual. The first year, we raised $18,000. That was put into an account with the Women?s Health Program, where cancer patients can apply to get small grants to help with expenses while they?re traveling back and forth to Flagstaff for treatment. ?Every little bit helps. I used to drive myself four times every other week for chemo, all the way to Flagstaff at my own expense, and that was tough,? he said. He is also pushing for a drug and alcohol treatment center as well as a local chemotherapy center to serve Hopi and Navajo cancer patients. ?Our community needs to wake up to the fact that cancer is killing our people. Statistics tell us that it?s happening here,? he said. ?I hear about new uranium mining on Navajo. Don?t they know what?s happening to all of us?? All contents property of the Gallup Independent. Any duplication or republication requires consent of the Gallup Independent. Please send the Gallup Independent feedback on this website and the paper in general. Send questions or comments to gallpind@cia-g.com ***************************************************************** 24 Daily Yomiuri: Government to tighten law on radioactive isotopes The Education, Science and Technology Ministry has decided to strengthen a system monitoring about 700 institutions nationwide that deal with radioactive isotopes (RI) in a bid to avoid RI being used for terrorist purposes, according to sources. The ministry intends to revise in the near future regulations based on the Law Concerning Prevention of Radiation Injury due to Radioisotopes and Others, and require the 700 institutions--such as medical institutions and factories--to submit immediate reports on the way they handle RI. This potentially could include reports about the entities' possession or transfer of the isotopes, the sources said. The ministry is considering the establishment of a computer system to unify and collectively manage each institution's information relating to RI stockpiles, purchase records and distribution channels. About 5,000 institutions nationwide deal with radioactive isotopes. The new mandatory reporting scheme specifically targets institutions that handle the kind of high-level radioactive material that, if approached without protection, results in death within minutes or hours, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. These institutions include hospitals, factories, inspection bodies and distributors that possess certain quantities of cobalt 60, cesium 137 and other high-level radioactive materials. When target institutions import, produce, process, sell or lease radioactive isotopes to or from other institutions, they are required to report to the ministry information relating to the kinds and quantity of RI being dealt with; transaction and trading dates; and the names of the businesses involved. The Daily Yomiuri, The Yomiuri Shimbun © The Yomiuri Shimbun. ***************************************************************** 25 El Defensor Chieftain: Health Department to test for uranium in veterans Saturday, November 10, 2007 Health Department to test for uranium in veterans Evelyn Cronce El Defensor Chieftain Reporter It has been slightly more than a year since veteran Jerry Wheat spoke to audiences at the Disable American Veterans Hall and at the Socorro Public Library about his experiences in the first Gulf War, in 1991. In October 2006, he spoke on the physical and bureaucratic problems he continued to battle from wounds received when his Bradley armored personnel carrier was accidentally hit twice by "friendly fire" with American shells made from depleted uranium. At that time, Wheat said he was getting a runaround from the Veterans Administration. On Monday, Nov. 5, the New Mexico Department of Health issued a press release stating the department would be making appointments to test New Mexico veterans and active duty personnel who may have been exposed to depleted uranium in the Persian Gulf War, the Afghanistan conflict or the current war in Iraq. Health Department personnel will be in Socorro, Catron and Valencia counties the week of Dec. 3 to gather test samples from individuals here. This is being done by appointment only. To schedule an appointment, volunteer to help, or for more information, contact the department's Environmental Health Epidemiology Bureau by e-mail to DOH-EHEB@state.nm.us or call toll-free 888-878-8992. At the appointment, a Department of Health staff member will give each participant a brief questionnaire, take a urine sample, and take a tap water sample that will also be tested for total uranium. The water is tested for uranium because New Mexico, on average, has a higher concentration of uranium in drinking water than the rest of the country. The tests will determine if individuals have high concentrations of natural uranium and/or depleted uranium in their urine. "The New Mexico Legislature gave us funding to test veterans and active duty military who may have been exposed to depleted uranium," said Health Secretary Dr. Alfredo Vigil in the press release. "We encourage military personnel to take advantage of these free tests." The department will test the person's urine for total uranium at its scientific laboratory in Albuquerque. If the urine sample tests high for uranium, the department will offer a follow-up test to determine if this uranium is depleted or natural uranium. Depleted uranium is used for bullets, tank armor and explosives. One of the possible side effects of having high levels of depleted uranium is kidney damage. ecronce@dchieftain.com Copyright © 1999-2007 El Defensor Chieftain. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 26 NEW EUROPE: Depleted uranium weapons still a threat - Author: Luisa Morgantini 10 November 2007 - Issue : 755 “European Union should set an example for the International Community for a worldwide moratorium on Uranium weapons” said MEP Luisa Morgantini, a vice-president of the European Parliament. She spoke with Els de Groen, a Dutch MEP of the Green/EFA Group in supporting a recent resolution passed by the United Nations. The document called for UN countries to re–examine the health hazards provoked by using of uranium weapons that also cause widespread and long lasting radioactive contamination of the environment. Three EU countries, France, The Netherlands and the Czech Republic, voted against the resolution and Morgantini said, “It’s urgent to raise the awareness on this issue inside the European Institutions,” at the presentation in parliament of a global disinvestment campaign against investments by high street banks and investment companies around the world in the manufacturers of uranium weapons, presenting new findings concerning the policy around depleted uranium weapons. “The use of uranium weapons has devastating consequences on human health and the environment. That’s why we call for an immediate end to the use of uranium weapons and for the disclosure of all locations where uranium weapons have been used,” she said. “These weapon systems are radiologically and chemically toxic. That’s why, since 2001 the European Parliament has made repeated calls for a moratorium to be introduced on the use of uranium weapons, but the implementation of the ban is far to be accomplished in the European Union. All the European countries should follow the Belgian example, that in March 2007, became the first country in the world to ban uranium weapons and armour as well, invoking the following damning evidence of uranium’s chemical toxicity: unfortunately till today at least 18 countries still possess these weapons, the use of which is contrary to existing humanitarian law,” she said. Rss Syndication Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Archive Copyright © The Media Company S.A. 2006. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 27 Rocky Mountain News: Flats revelation irks lawmakers Action urged for any workers who were overlooked By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News November 10, 2007 Colorado's congressional leaders were not happy to learn this week that federal officials apparently overlooked thousands of Rocky Flats workers when they determined eligibility for automatic aid for victims of job-related cancer. On Friday, four lawmakers sent U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao a letter urging her to give anyone who ever worked at the former atomic bomb factory northwest of Denver immediate compensation and medical benefits if they develop cancer with known links to radiation. If they are not granted streamlined aid, each must attempt to individually prove their exposures made them ill, a process that can take years. One in 10 Rocky Flats workers who qualified for aid has died before they got it. The workers now being offered the streamlined aid - including more than 800 added to the list this week - are "only a small portion of Rocky Flats workers who deserve to be covered," said the letter, signed by Sen. Ken Salazar and Congressmen Mark Udall, John Salazar and Ed Perlmutter, all Democrats. A spokesman for Sen. Wayne Allard said the Republican was unable to sign the letter because he was on an airplane, but would be sending his own letter to Chao next week. The entire Colorado delegation has previously urged that all Flats workers with radiation-related cancers be granted the immediate aid, which the Flats workers themselves asked for more than two years ago. The vast majority were denied, however, when government scientists said they could estimate each worker's cancer risk individually. The only exceptions were those who worked from 1952-1966 and were at risk of exposure to neutron radiation, one of the most dangerous and least-monitored kinds. A spokesman said the Labor Department has to follow that determination, made by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. But if more workers are found to have risked neutron exposure during that time, they will be added to the list, as were more than 800 workers from Building 881 this week. The Rocky Mountain News reported Friday that more than 6,000 workers from another 19 Rocky Flats buildings risked neutron exposure but were left off the list. "The Department of Labor will apply the same standard to workers who worked in other buildings within the Rocky Flats complex as was applied to Building 881," spokesman David James said. "Consistent with the scientific analysis given to us by NIOSH, the Department will include other facilities in the SEC when there is evidence of neutron exposure." Meanwhile, advocates for ill nuclear workers elsewhere in the nation said the confusion over which Rocky Flats workers deserve streamlined aid could impact similar claims in others states. "If (the government) can miss entire buildings, then what assurance do claimants have that they are capturing all the documents needed" to address their individual claims, asked Dr. Maureen Merritt, a longtime advocate for ill workers in New Mexico. Workers from an area of the Los Alamos National Laboratory were added to the list for immediate aid there in September after being "inadvertently omitted." Scripps Newspaper Group — Online © 2007 The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 28 The Spectrum: Are we creating a second generation of Downwinders? www.thespectrum.com -The Spectrum, St. George, UT Sunday, November 11, 2007 When the federal government wanted to blow up a simulation of a nuclear weapon at the Nevada Test Site - code name Divine Strake - more than 10,000 Utah residents, mostly from the southern part of the state, petitioned the feds and forced an end to the nonsense. They had been there, done that through the Cold War when nuclear hell rained from the skies, poisoning an innocent population. Years later, we learned that souls in the 48 contiguous states, residents of Canada and Mexico and some in Europe were also victimized by nuclear fallout. Another threat is coming our way. It's the Toquop Energy Project, a coal-fired power plant planned for construction just 14 miles north of Mesquite. Company officials are promising no ill effects will be visited upon the people of Southern Utah, that pollutants will be kept at a minimum and pollutants that do escape will not land here. What you need to know, however, is that in 2002, according to Environmental Protection Agency reports, coal-fired power plants were responsible for 63 percent of the nation's sulfur dioxide emissions, a major cause of acid rain; 40 percent of mercury emissions, which can cause brain damage in fetuses and neurological problems in children; and 22 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions that cause smog. What you need to know is that it takes five to 10 days for the pollution from China's coal-fired plants to reach the United States where it is already showing up as mercury in the trout and bass caught in Oregon's Willamette River. How long would it take to hit Southern Utah from Mesquite? What you need to know is that the United States is the No. 1 cause of climate-warming greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide emitted from coal-fired plants and petroleum-powered vehicles. What you need to know is that this stuff can kill you, just as surely as the lethal byproducts the federal government spewed into the air when it exploded more than 1,000 atomic test bombs at the Nevada Test Site even though the feds lied to Southern Utah and the world, saying the fallout was harmless when they knew otherwise. The people of this country have had enough lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, thyroid cancer, breast cancer and other pollutant-related cancers shoved through their nostrils and into their lungs. We don't need any more poison, not even in the name of supporting ludicrous growth numbers whether here, Cedar City, Mesquite or anywhere there is still bare land to exploit and convert green space into homes or environmentally dirty industry. They've done it to us before, from the atomic tests to nuclear dumps to a pig farm owned by one of the largest environmentally unfriendly companies in the world Đ all here in Utah. Just as we did with Divine Strake, we must take a stand and not allow lives to be compromised in the name, this time, of growth. We - you and I - did not call for this growth, which spurs the need for more electrical power. We did not call for this growth that has some of our leaders considering the absurdity of a pipeline delivering water from Lake Powell. And, we did not call for this growth that will pollute our air as more and more cars travel our highways and byways or coal-fired plants power our big-screen TVs. What can we do? Write Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff at uag@utah.gov and demand he take legal steps to stop construction of this plant. Write Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. at http://governor.utah.gov/goca/form_comment.html and demand that he joins the fight. We gathered 10,000 signatures before and we can do it again. Contact Local News Editor Ed Kociela at ekociela@thespectrum.com or call 674-6237. Copyright ©2007 The Spectrum. ***************************************************************** 29 London Tims: The fight goes on for veterans broken by the horrors of war - November 12, 2007 Terry Walker died a wreck of his former self. Now his parents are suing the MoD for damages Andrew Norfolk When Ted and Hazel Walker took part in the Remembrance Sunday service at their parish church their thoughts were for the son they buried this year. Three weeks before his death, Terry Walker woke up in his hospital bed screaming that the tanks were coming. Thrashing around, the Gulf War veteran pulled out the tubes and wires that connected him to the monitoring equipment in the specialist heart unit at Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne. He fought the nurses who tried to calm him down. It was one of the final nightmares to visit a man who died a broken shell of his former self. They are suing the Ministry of Defence for more than Ł400,000, citing clinical negligence over the care and treatment their son received during the last 15 years of his life. With legal backing they are also fighting to overturn a coroner’s decision that their son’s inquest in December should not consider the impact of his service in the Gulf. Terry Walker was born into an army family. He grew up in Britain, Hong Kong and Germany, the eldest child of a career soldier who rose from the rank of private to major. “As a boy, Terry was always mad about the Army,” recalls his 67-year-old mother. “He used to put on his Dad’s army gear and run around the garden playing soldiers. He made models of tanks and aeroplanes and loved drawing military pictures.” Mr Walker was 17 when he joined up and by 1991 had been in the Army for 14 years. He had served in the Falklands and worked for the bomb disposal unit in Northern Ireland. He had always been “fit as a fiddle”. He played football and rugby and loved cycling and canoeing. He was married with a young child. Then came the Gulf. The 31-year-old lance corporal was there for only three months, from January to April 1991, as a driver and storeman with the 11th Armoured Workshop, which was attached to the Fourth Armoured Brigade. Based initially in Saudi Arabia, he joined the push through the desert into Iraq and then east to Kuwait. He never lost the smell of death that lingered from clearing the human remains strewn along the road from Kuwait City to Basra, the infamous Highway of Death. Just over 18 months later, in November 1992, Mr Walker was invalided out of the Army. He had returned to Germany, and later to Britain, a changed man physically and mentally. His family recall that they first noticed violent mood swings, sudden outbursts of temper and the piercing headaches, which would have him “bouncing his head off the wall”. Skin rashes, aching joints and chest infections soon followed. About 53,000 British veterans saw service in the first Gulf conflict of 1990-91. Some 5,000 to 6,000 later contracted mysterious illnesses. In the autumn of 1992 reports first appeared that a large number of US Army veterans had suffered a variety of illnesses since serving in the Gulf. In July 1993 the BBC reported that several hundred British Gulf veterans had contacted a helpline complaining about extreme fatigue, physical disabilities, skin rashes and a mysterious flu. And so began the long — as yet unfinished — quest to establish Gulf War syndrome as a recognised disease and to find out what caused it. Theories ranged from the cocktail of vaccinations given to troops before they were deployed to the use of organophosphate pesticides and exposure to depleted uranium shells or chemical and biological attacks. It took until 1998 before Mr Walker was granted a 100 per cent war disablement pension based on diagnosed conditions of post-traumatic stress disorder, asthma, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome and irritable bowel syndrome. At this stage the MoD was still refusing to acknowledge the existence of Gulf War syndrome. To this day, no public inquiry has been held and it was not until late 2005 that the Government acknowledged the syndrome as an appropriate medical label for a variety of symptoms that were causally linked to service in the 1990-91 war. To understand why the veterans, their families and campaigners feel such anger at the callous complacency that characterised the MoD’s initial response to their concerns, and why the department is still blamed for a “haggling, procrastinating” approach to individual cases, one need look only at its treatment of Mr Walker. In March he was told that his pension was being slashed by 60 per cent, a reduction of Ł80 a week. He went to his parents in tears, telling them that he and his children — Stefan, 17, and Kirsty, 13 — faced “financial ruin”. Seemingly the MoD had ruled that he deserved less money because — being on a series of repeat prescriptions — he had not been visiting his doctor regularly. In April, on his 48th birthday, he began coughing blood and his parents took him to York District hospital, where he spent five weeks before being transferred to the Freeman's specialist cardiothoracic centre. He died on June 2. The MoD’s response was to cancel his war disablement pension and his army service pension, and demand the repayment of Ł245, a weekly payment that had been made in advance and covered the week after his death. It said it would consider a contribution towards his funeral costs, but wanted to await the results of his inquest to determine whether his Gulf-linked illnesses were a contributory factor to his death. Ted Walker, 68, said: “It’s put us on the breadline. We’ve got a teenage girl to look after and we’re both pensioners. Our whole world has been turned upside down and we decided the only option was to fight, fight, fight.” He and his wife mounted a campaign to expose the MoD’s actions. It has enjoyed considerable success. The MoD waived the Ł245, paid for the funeral, repaid the deductions in the war disablement pension and have agreed to pay a monthly sum to the Walkers until Kirsty’s 16th birthday. But the Walkers are still going to court. Mr Walker said: “We’re not doing this just for Terry. It’s for all the other lads and all the other families who have gone through what we have. All Terry wanted was to get proper help.” The youngest British soldier to be injured in Iraq left hospital to pay tribute to his comrades. Jamie Cooper, 19, lost the use of both legs when he was hit by two mortar bombs in Basra. He later contracted MRSA twice in British hospitals. Mr Cooper was at the centre of a political storm two weeks ago when it emerged that he had received only Ł57,000 in compensation. © Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions. Please read our Privacy Policy.To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from Times Online, The Times or The Sunday Times, click here.This website is published by a member of the News International Group. News International Limited, 1 Virginia St, London E98 1XY, is the holding company for the News International group and is registered in England No 81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69. ***************************************************************** 30 Salt Lake Tribune: Call to arms Public Forum Letter Article Last Updated: 11/09/2007 07:02:38 PM MST We write this letter in response to Brandon Griggs' review of Mary Dickson's play "Exposed." Griggs depicts the play as more a "call to arms" than theater and claims the play is "flawed." Although we disagree with his belief that the play is flawed, it is crucial to emphasize that the play is designed to be a call to arms. The play provides a strong imperative to remain vigilant about preventing future nuclear weapons testing and for all of us to get involved. The character of Preston Truman makes this point throughout the play, at one point saying, "Today we celebrate and tomorrow we get back to work." We believe that this is the message we need to take from the play. We need to transfer our outrage into constant attention to the entire nuclear weapons complex. Once we do that, we will realize the many ways in which nuclear weapons development and testing impact Utahns, Americans, and the world. Danielle Endress and Tony Guzman Salt Lake City ***************************************************************** 31 Cherry Creek News: Colorado Delegation Defend Rocky Flats Workers' Access to Health Care Written by Valencia, Stephanie (Salazar) Friday, 09 November 2007 WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, United States Senator Ken Salazar and Congressmen Mark Udall (CO-2), John Salazar (CO-3) and Ed Perlmutter (CO-7) wrote a letter to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao regarding the recent decision by the department to include 775 Rocky Flats workers from Building 881 under the Special Exposure Cohert (SEC) status. While the delegation members believe the decision is the right one, they are emphasizing that much more remains to be done to address the needs of the additional Rocky Flats workers that deserve compensation for their service to our Nation. The delegation members wrote, “Building 881 might not be the only facility where crucial information has been overlooked or ignored. It is highly probable that other buildings would qualify under the SEC if we had access to complete records. But, as you are well aware, it has been close to impossible for many Rocky Flats workers to determine the dose of radiation they received due to the shoddy, inaccurate, incomplete, or lack of records that our government maintained, which is why we urged the Secretary to approve the petition in its entirety.” The delegation also asked several questions that need to be answered, “Further, many questions remain unanswered regarding the Department of Labor’s building review of the Rocky Flats site. For example, was a formal and thorough building review performed? If yes, which federal agency performed the review and is there a spreadsheet that can be made publicly available? Furthermore, when will Rocky Flats workers receive a justification from the Department of Labor as to why a particular building was excluded from the SEC?”-The Cherry Creek News- North Denver News - Your community newspaper ***************************************************************** 32 Daily Mail: Fury at MoD ploy to delay compensation bid by nuclear test veterans By NICK ROSEN - More by this author » Last updated at 22:06pm on 10th November 2007 The Ministry of Defence is under fire for using a legal ploy to delay a multi-million-pound compensation claim by 1,000 nuclear-test veterans. And because the ex-servicemen are dying at the rate of 50 a year from cancers and genetic disorders, many may not live long enough to receive a penny. As the nation honours its war dead on Remembrance Sunday today, the MoD is accused of using a technicality known as a Defence of Limitation, to stall the proceedings. It means that the veterans' case may not be heard in court for another two years. For more than 50 years, the exservicemen have failed to win compensation despite horrendous medical problems they claim they and their children have suffered because their chromosomes and genetic make-up have been altered as a result of nuclear tests in the South Pacific – mainly Christmas Island – in the Fifties and Sixties. The MoD, which has told the High Court it will enter its defence in January, says that the veterans should have claimed compensation within three years of suffering any injury. The court will now have to decide whether the veterans have the legal right to make a claim. Clive Hyer, commercial litigation partner with leading City lawyers Rosenblatt, who is handling the veterans' case, said last night: 'A limitation defence means that instead of getting to the meat and bones of whether the MOD is liable for the illnesses and injuries suffered by these men, a case first has to be presented to the court and argued that the action brought against the MoD was within the right timescale. 'If the argument fails, the case ends at that point without the court ever hearing the real issues and evidence in the case. Arguments about limitation could delay the real fight for justice by up to two years.' Former Royal Engineer Denis Shaw, 70, from Grosmont, North Yorkshire, who took part in the clean-up of Christmas Island in 1958, now spends most of his time in a wheelchair and suffers from debilitating heart problems and emphysema. He said: 'It's disgraceful that the MoD will not acknowledge the danger they put us in and appalling they are using legal tactics to deny us compensation.' Last week, a Commons crossparty inquiry said the veterans had been 'stonewalled' by the Government and recommended an interim payment be made to the veterans of Ł4,000 a man. But even that may now be put on hold. The MoD says it is 'considering' the MPs' recommendation. A spokeswoman added: 'It will ultimately be the courts, not the MoD, which decide whether this group action can proceed.' ©2007 Associated Newspapers Ltd · Terms & Conditions · Privacy ***************************************************************** 33 Financial Post: Battle Not Over For Atomic Vets Canadians at nuclear tests seek compensation David Pugliese, CanWest News Service Published: Saturday, November 10, 2007 George Clarke was taking in the peacefulness of a Nevada desert morning in the summer of 1957 when a voice came booming out of a nearby loudspeaker. There was no wind, no sound, and little movement of any kind across the desert expanse. A man's voice began counting down from 10 and Mr. Clarke and his fellow Canadian soldiers huddled in their trench. "Then you heard a click and there was this flash of light so intense I could see the bones in my arm," recalls Mr. Clarke, at the time a 22-year-old corporal in the army. "Then there was nothing. Fifteen to 20 seconds later the shock wave hit and it was like we were in the middle of an earthquake. Then came the dust and dirt." The trench Mr. Clarke and his comrades were taking cover in collapsed as an enormous atomic fireball rose up from ground zero several thousand metres away. Mr. Clarke of Victoria, B.C., along with other veterans such as Jim Huntley of Balzac, Alta., Donald Bernicky of Smiths Falls, Ont., and Rayburn Waters of Rockland, Ont., are all members of a unique club. As Canada's atomic vets, they are among a small number of people still alive who have witnessed the fury of a nuclear weapon detonation. Decades later, some still have trouble describing exactly what they saw during the Cold War tests. Others live with the memories daily as they battle various ailments. It's not known how many of the atomic veterans are still alive. Some of those remaining, however, are now involved in a battle with the Defence department and the government for both recognition and compensation for illnesses they believe are caused by exposure to radiation during the atomic tests. Others, however, view their participation in such tests as simply part of their military duty. According to a Defence department study produced in January by John Clearwater, a nuclear weapons specialist in Ottawa, Canadian military personnel attended up to 29 nuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1963. The tests were done in Australia, the Pacific Ocean and in Nevada. According to Mr. Clearwater's report, 689 military personnel took part in such tests and were exposed to radiation. Many of those military personnel were involved in Operation Plumbbob, a series of atomic bomb detonations at the Nevada test site in the summer of 1957. At Plumbbob, Canadian troops witnessed between three and seven nuclear detonations, according to Mr. Clearwater's report. The Plumbbob tests were designed to provide military planners with first-hand experience with atomic weapons and show the troops that if they were properly dug-in a few kilometres from ground zero they could survive. After the tests, problems for the atomic veterans started. Some came down with cancer as early as five years after the tests while others suffered from various medical ailments over the decades. U.S. records show that the 40 members of the Queen's Own Rifles, which included Mr. Huntley, Mr. Clarke and Mr. Bernicky, were exposed to higher doses of radiation than other troops during one detonation in August, 1957. The Clearwater report did not attempt to determine how many of the Canadian veterans became ill as a result of their exposure. But it did note the levels of protection used were at times questionable. The Harper government is looking at offering the atomic veterans a lump sum payment of up to $24,000, an amount some of the former soldiers say does not come close to making amends. U.S. atomic veterans receive $75,000 if they are suffering from any of a list of various ailments, mainly cancer. © National Post 2007 ***************************************************************** 34 Gallup Independent: Talks focus on impact of uranium on Navajo November 5, 2007: By Kathy Helms Diné Bureau WINDOW ROCK ? In 1989, the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency and its Superfund program received funding by U.S. EPA, Region 6, in Dallas, to assess abandoned uranium mines within the reservation. At that time, Navajo came up with a list of 64 sites. Though it was not Navajo who made the mess, profited by it, and then pulled a disappearing act ? it has been the Navajo Nation which largely inherited the cleanup operations that have been conducted to date. The Navajo Abandoned Mine Lands Department has done the best it could with funds from the U.S. Department of the Interior?s Office of Surface Mining, according to Stephen Etsitty, executive director of Navajo EPA. ?They?ve done a lot to mitigate the physical features of many abandoned uranium mines across the Nation to prevent problems related to access and to provide a measure of physical safety. However, this work over recent years has been compromised in its integrity,? Etsitty said at a recent hearing in Grants before the Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee. ?Erosion and other weathering processes have damaged the integrity of some of those barriers that were constructed and we have now radioactive hazardous substances beneath the soil barriers being released into the environment. ?We know that these conditions exist at several sites that were also reclaimed by U.S. EPA, Santa Fe Railroad, and U.S. Department of Energy near Prewitt, N.M,? Etsitty said. Despite efforts to have the various entities readdress these sites, resources are hard to come by and are not now readily available to ensure long-term operation and maintenance, he said. This week in Washington, U.S. Reps. Tom Udall, D-N.M., Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., will host a Navajo Nation uranium roundtable to examine the health effects and environmental impacts of past uranium mining as well as the problems and concerns of the Navajo Nation with proposed new uranium mining. Of major concern to Navajo, especially in the Eastern Agency of New Mexico, is jurisdiction. Hydro Resources Inc. plans in-situ recovery operations within areas U.S. EPA has determined are Navajo Indian Country. The ultimate decision, however, now lies before a federal court in San Francisco. Mining also is proposed at Mount Taylor ? one of the four sacred mountains defining the homeland of the Navajo people ? as well as within 2 miles of the reservation?s borders. Navajo Nation Vice President Ben Shelly cautioned mining company representatives at the meeting that Navajo is prepared to meet any jurisdictional challenges in court, because contamination does not adhere to lines on a map. Etsitty said one question that continues to come up is, ?Why do interests in another round of uranium development seem to take precedence over the need to restore human health and the environment?? He questioned whether current regulations are sufficient to ensure proper cleanup. ?We always have to worry in environmental management, if an owner/operator walks away, will the appropriate authorities ? step in to correct the problems that are left behind. ?As we have brought up many times before, we have not seen much of this type of activity happening in our area. It begs the question: Have we learned anything from our current uranium legacy?? Etsitty said. ?Throughout my tenure at Navajo EPA, I have personally visited several communities where pollutants have migrated from abandoned uranium mines, from capped uranium tailings, from uncapped uranium waste piles ... and I know that we?ve seen, in many instances, how people?s livelihoods have been changed, and we?ve heard a lot of stories about the decline in overall health. ?Some of these abandoned uranium mines and waste piles are located on adjoining state, federal and private lands. Sitting on our side of the fence, we know ... there are no magic boundaries that prevent the migration of hazardous pollutants from popping over from one jurisdiction into another,? he said. New Mexico does not have a Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or CERCLA, the federal Superfund program which mandates cleanup of hazardous substance releases, Etsitty said. ?Nor does the state have a comprehensive reclamation law, and uses only the New Mexico Mining Act.? ?We know that in one instance, a situation on our reservation, that for approximately seven years United Nuclear Corp. challenged the state?s authority to assert the New Mexico Mining Act at the Northeast Churchrock abandoned uranium mine site, and we know there was confusion over jurisdiction. ?The government operated on the assumption that the mine was located on state jurisdiction. We found out recently that it was actually located on Navajo Nation trust land. ?The state agencies had working knowledge about off-site migration of hazardous substances to eight Navajo residences,? he said, but ?there was never any compelling for the responsible parties ? in this case, UNC and their parent company, General Electric ? to address these impacts. ?The state agency, Mining & Minerals Division, reviewed the plan to close and characterize the work that needed to be done at this mine site. When we finally cleared up some of this confusion over jurisdiction and found out that we had a better hand to play regarding jurisdiction, we asked U.S. EPA Region 9 to take the lead in getting the Northeast Churchrock site cleaned up. We?ve worked alongside them since 2006,? Etsitty said. Bill Brancard, division director for New Mexico Mining & Minerals Division, said that in terms of reclamation, abandoned mines from the 1950s and 1960s often were on a smaller scale than those developed in later years. ?There were no regulatory controls on those mines and in a lot of cases, companies packed up and walked away. ... So we have an issue about how to get those old mines cleaned up.? Of course, it?s difficult to develop a comprehensive cleanup strategy when it is not even known how many mines there are that need to be dealt with. ?As the issue started to grow in the last year or so, I wanted to try to get a grip on just how many sites are there out there that the Bureau of Reclamation project has no control over,? Brancard said. ?So I looked around for a good list of how many mines were out there and what happened to them. What we discovered was there really were no great lists.? Using data from N.M. Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources, U.S. EPA, Bureau of Land Management, State Mine Inspector, Mining & Minerals, and other state, tribal and federal agencies, Brancard said they came up with what he believes is ?a pretty good list? of mines that had been in the production of uranium. ?We came up with about 260 mines,? he said. ?You?ll hear a larger number from some other agencies. There are probably two reasons for that: One, we probably did a lot of lumping where some people might be splitting. In other words, if there was a company that had several openings in one section, they may have given them different names, but effectively, they were operated as one mine and we called it one mine. ?But probably the biggest difference ? what we didn?t cover ? were nonproducing openings, and there are, in our estimate, over 400 that we know of, openings or facilities out there where there is disturbance but there is no production associated with it. These can be, in some instances, such as health and safety, a significant problem if there?s a shaft that has not been closed,? he said. ?In the final analysis, higher than 50 percent of the sites out there have no regulatory authority that has required reclamation,? he said. The next step for his division is to try to get out in the field, visit the sites and verify their status, then figure out how to get the work done. Etsitty said, ?We can only speculate about the costs to clean up our land. We can only speculate on the cost of human toll. We agree that there may never be sufficient resources to undo the damages caused by past uranium mining and milling. ?Nevertheless, we cannot allow renewed interest in uranium development to overshadow our joint responsibilities to do things better, and to restore the land, the air and the water, and to do everything possible to protect our citizens now and for generations to come.? Gallup Independent. Please send the Gallup Independent feedback on this website and the paper in general. Send questions or comments to gallpind@cia-g.com ***************************************************************** 35 ReviewJournal.com: Cortez Masto seeks to block Yucca license Nov. 10, 2007 Incomplete design plans cited in letter to senator By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Nevada's attorney general is asking a Senate chairwoman to prevent the Department of Energy from seeking a license to build a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste complex until the site is fully designed. Any lack of final blueprints for the radioactive waste site "raises serious health and safety concerns" and also helps explain why the public lacks confidence in the Yucca project, according to Catherine Cortez Masto. Cortez Masto made her request in a letter sent Wednesday to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., on an issue that appeared to resonate at an Oct. 31 hearing held by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Boxer, the committee chairwoman, questioned the head of the Yucca Mountain Project at the hearing after being told that safety-related designs for the repository would be 35 percent to 40 percent complete by next summer when DOE plans to apply for a construction license. The Yucca site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is being planned as a depository for 70,000 metric tons of high level nuclear spent fuel from commercial power plants and nuclear waste held by the government. "You can't go ahead and build a house when its design is only 35 percent complete," Boxer charged to DOE official Ward Sproat. Sproat said the site would be designed to the level that would be sufficient to show it is safe, and that to go further at this point would be overkill. Deeper design work would add little to understanding the site, he said. Nuclear Regulatory Commission official Michael Weber told Boxer it is not unusual for nuclear project applicants to submit partial designs at licensing, and that the NRC would weigh whether DOE's application was sufficient. But Boxer said Yucca Mountain was a first of its kind project that merited extra scrutiny. "I was impressed by the level of understanding exhibited by the committee members," Cortez Masto, who testified at the hearing, said in her letter to Boxer. "I ask you and the committee to prohibit the NRC staff from accepting for review any DOE licensing application that does not contain final designs for all the proposed Yucca Mountain facilities," the attorney general said. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., also is seizing on the matter of Yucca Mountain blueprints. A spokesman said Reid is preparing questions for Boxer to forward to the Energy Department about what segments of the project will not be fully mapped by next summer. "For instance, one of the elements they are leaving out is emergency response," spokesman Jon Summers said. Cortez Masto also asked for Boxer's help to shake loose dozens of Yucca Mountain technical documents the state has been unable to obtain from the DOE. The state official said the department refuses to make some available, while it cites legal privileges to shield others. The state is disputing the DOE reasoning. Marta Adams, a deputy Nevada attorney general, said the documents are needed for the state to prepare for Yucca Mountain licensing hearings. "They play hide the ball with us on just about everything," Adams said of the Energy Department. DOE officials had no immediate comment on Friday. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2007 Stephens Media, LLC Privacy Statement ***************************************************************** 36 The Canadian Press: Waste-disposal problem forces Japan power firm to shut down nuclear reactor TOKYO - A Japanese power company is investigating a waste-disposal problem that forced it to shut down a reactor at a nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan, a plant spokesman said Sunday. No radiation was leaked in the incident at the No. 3 reactor at the Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi state Saturday afternoon, plant operator Tohoku Electric Power Co. said in a statement. Power plant workers manually shut the reactor down after an abnormal jump in hydrogen concentration in the reactor's gaseous waste-disposal system, plant spokesman Toshio Abe said. Workers at the plant detected the buildup at midday; the reactor had only resumed operations about 12 hours earlier following the completion of a six-month-long regular inspection, Tohoku Electric Power said. Officials decided to shut down the reactor a few hours later to investigate the cause, the statement said. No radiation was leaked and no other anomalies were detected, it said. Japan relies heavily on its nuclear power program, which supplies about 30 per cent of its electricity. Copyright © 2007 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 37 Dallas Morning News: Radioactive waste surfaces at Texas gas sites | Since '05, 140 Texas cleanups; experts uncertain of risks 12:00 AM CST on Sunday, November 11, 2007 By PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE / Denton Record-Chronicle pheinkel-wolfe@dentonrc.com Blasted free by millions of gallons of fresh water and chemical soup sent miles below ground, some of earth's baddest geological actors – radioactive elements capable of scarring soil and scourging human health – are slowly rising to the surface along with the Barnett Shale's natural gas. Once above ground, if they can stay afloat, they continue to travel suspended in the water produced from the well. Otherwise, they fall from their own weight and accumulate. They crystallize as shiny, black scales on tubular steel. Or cake in layers of whitish-brown sludge at the bottom of tanks and separators. Eventually, they can crust over gas production fixtures like a rusted hot-water heater about to flood the house. Yet licensed decontamination workers wait for the phone to ring. Statewide, 140 such sites were decontaminated from January 2005 to the present, according to documents obtained from the Department of State Health Services, which oversees disposal of the state's hottest radioactive waste. Moreover, 25 of those decontamination sites were in Denton, Tarrant and Wise counties, the core counties of the Barnett Shale. The cleanups signal that fracing – short for fracturing, the water-guzzling process that busts the gas out of the shale – could be pulling up much more than energy companies bargained for, experts say. Known as technologically enhanced, naturally occurring radioactive material, or NORM, the residue can be the most toxic waste that oil and gas production generates. The risk to human health and the environment varies widely. Small concentrations of NORM provide less exposure than even a dental X-ray. But when allowed to accumulate in greater concentrations, especially with poor monitoring and containment practices, NORM can hurt people and the environment as any radioactive waste can. Few researchers have traced the residue's radioactive trail. Pete Ramirez of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Wyoming found radium from drilling activities in the bones of ducks captured in contaminated wetlands there. He couldn't say what long-term implications that had for the ducks or how that translated to human health. But, he said, "I wouldn't want to live next to it." In Denton, Tarrant and Wise counties, all kinds of equipment – from pipes and separators to frac and brine-hauling tanks – were decontaminated of NORM – the most toxic waste the wells can generate. Texas Railroad Commission rules allow the industry to self-monitor for NORM, and many operators are slow to decontaminate the radioactive residue because of the cost, industry insiders say. Furthermore, only two of nearly 200 operators registered with the commission in the Barnett's core counties – Key Energy Services and Devon Energy – have provided for such decontamination in the past two years. Hot waste In the Barnett Shale, everything from equipment to producing well sites is being decontaminated. At most area well sites, decontamination workers cleaned and disposed of 10 barrels of radioactive residue or fewer. (One barrel equals about 42 gallons.) However, in places where equipment has been stored, or production waste has accumulated, the cleanups have been much larger. Based in Andrews and one of a dozen Texas firms licensed to decontaminate radioactive waste, Lotus disposed of 100 barrels of contaminated material from Devon's Bridgeport pipe yard in February 2006 in Lotus disposal facilities. In October 2006, Lotus workers made an emergency cleanup around a leaking vessel at Devon's North Tarrant saltwater disposal well in Saginaw. They removed about 105 barrels of radioactive residue. Doug Bridwell, an environmental and health specialist for Devon Energy's central division, said the tank involved in the spill was inside a secondary containment area, which is designed to prevent soil contamination. "It [the NORM] was all picked up within that lined dike," Mr. Bridwell said. "But not all operators work like that." The largest Barnett Shale decontamination to date occurred at Key Energy Services' Chico storage yard. Houston-based Soloco, another licensed decontamination firm, cleaned up more than 40 different tanks, including frac and brine-hauling tanks, hauling the hot waste for licensed underground disposal in Big Hill in November 2006. Ken Houston, vice president of health, safety and environmental for Key Energy Services, said the cleanup and disposal contract cost $120,000, not counting labor and materials on Key's part. Key has acquired more than 100 smaller companies in the last 15 years – a lot of them "as is," he said. "When we recognized an existing issue, we've taken an effort and expended the cost to clean it up." The known number of decontaminated sites in the Barnett Shale exceeded those in Panola County, although the total amount of hot waste was less. Workers in Panola County have cleaned up several thousand barrels of hot waste from 24 different sites in the past two years. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency and Texas Railroad Commission continue to wrestle with large-scale contamination of the soil and drinking water there. Not normal Radium-226 and radium-228 are the two most common elements to travel up gas and oil wells. Both emit alpha particles and gamma radiation as they decay. Radon gas, the second-leading cause of lung cancer, is emitted as they decay. Radium and other NORM often come up with oil, but typically not with natural gas, according to James Otton, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who has studied radium contamination. However, the more water is used to mine the gas, the more likely operators are to bring up NORM. Unlike most natural gas mining, which produces little water as a byproduct, Barnett Shale gas mining uses and produces about as much wastewater as oilfields do. A median 1,638 gallons of wastewater is produced per thousand cubic feet of Barnett Shale gas, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. Denton County gas wells produce 36 percent more wastewater, or a median 2,226 gallons, for every thousand cubic feet of gas. Other factors also can predict whether concentrated levels of radium or other radioactive material will be produced along with the gas, Dr. Otton said. Organic-rich shale such as the Barnett Shale has higher levels of uranium, for one. The high level of salt in the wastewater produced along with the gas is another predictor. As a gas well is producing, the variable pressure also helps free NORM from the shale, bond with other elements, such as barite and calcium carbonate, and travel to the surface along with the gas. Operators should regularly survey their equipment for NORM, according to Gerri Cooley, a health physicist with Lotus. Typically, operators decontaminate production equipment that gets plugged with the residue if they need to use the equipment. Otherwise the pipes and tanks sit in storage until needed. But because proper disposal is expensive, some operators put off dealing with it. "They are somewhat slow to call [us]," said Kenny Ryan, operations manager for Soloco. In addition to charges for cleaning up and hauling the waste, operators must pay upward of $300 a barrel for proper disposal, Mr. Ryan said. Both Soloco and Lotus have disposal facilities as well as cleanup crews. Health experts are still learning about the long-term effects of low-level radiation exposure, said Evan Douple, director of radiation effects research at the National Academy of Science National Research Council. People are exposed to radiation every day in myriad different ways, some of it innocuous and some harmful. Over the last 40 years, the council has published seven reports on the biological effects of ionizing radiation, much of it learned from studying the survivors of the atomic bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago. A person can get a whole-body dose of radiation standing near a contaminated site that is emitting alpha particles or gamma rays. A person can also get a dose by ingesting or breathing in particulate, Dr. Douple said. While risk of exposure can be highest for oilfield workers, that risk can be managed as long as workers' doses are measured, Dr. Douple said. However, for the general public, exposure requirements are stricter because the circumstances are less controlled. Updated Sun 11.11.07 © 2007, The Dallas Morning News, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 38 Thailand Nation: 'Nuclear power worth the waste' - Pennapa Hongthong Bangkok's Independent Newspaper Mon, November 12, 2007 : Last updated 11:14 hours Radioactive waste is a topic supporters of nuclear power plants try to avoid. The Nation's Pennapa Hongthong tried to get answers on this issue from nuclear physicist Pricha Karasuddhi, vice president of Nuclear Society of Thailand, during a roundtable discussion at the Thai Journalists' Association. How will Thailand plan to deal with radioactive waste? Each country has its own method of waste management. Before the International Atomic Energy Authority imposed a ban on reuse of plutonium, the big five of Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Japan all reprocessed waste for reuse. These countries now have their own ways of handling waste. Nuclear waste is not something that can be spread around; it's a solid stack containing plutonium, some remaining uranium 235 and other radioactive materials. My question was about Thailand. How do you propose waste management as a supporter of the plan to build a nuclear plant? Well, we keep it inside the power plant in a pool of water for three to five years. Then we have to take it out of the water because the container is made of steel and could rust. We have to keep it in a dry place. But since the stuff inside is still radioactive, we have to find a way to prevent radioactive leakage. We have to put it in concrete tanks of helium. It's for multi-protection. We can store the tanks inside the plant. How long do we have to keep it? As long as the life of the power plant, 40 to 50 years. If we build more plants in future, we may have to find a new place to store the tanks. The half-life of plutonium is tens of thousands of years. How can we store it securely for that long? Why are you asking these questions? Don't you see that those Roman or Greek pillars stand for hundreds of years. Nobody seems to be bothered by them. What kind of comparison is that? [no answer] So how much waste are we talking about storing if we were to build a 1,000MW plant? I'm not sure. Do your own calculation. We use about 30 tonnes of uranium a year. That amount produces waste that fits in a half-tonne concrete storage tank. What I'm sure of is that we won't reprocess the waste. Look at the US. It has used nuclear power for 40 years already, and the [combined] storage space is only the size of a football field. Do we have enough nuclear scientists to operate nuclear plants? More than enough. We have produced 30 master graduates per year. But they are forced to take other jobs. If we decide to go nuclear, these scientists can demonstrate their expertise. Look at me. I'm now 70. Some critics said the early generations of nuclear graduates like yourself support Thailand going nuclear simply to make your dream come true because you were left stranded for several decades with nothing to do. That's not true. I had other jobs. Now I'm retired, but still working because the government asked me to help. I don't want future generations of nuclear graduates to ask why my generation allowed the country to be without a nuclear plant, the way I questioned my predecessors 30 years ago. So building a nuclear power plant is your ultimate dream? Privacy Policy (c) 2007 www.nationmultimedia.com Thailand 1854 Bangna-Trat Road, Bangna, Bangkok 10260 Thailand. Tel 66-2-338-3000(Call Center), 66-2-338-3333, Fax 66-2-338-3334 Contact us: Nation Internet ***************************************************************** 39 Blair `knew Iraq had no WMD' Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:04:27 -0600 (CST) http://www.rinf.com Only information that will stand up in a court of law is presented on the RINF newswire. No speculation, no rumours, no theories. Just solid facts Sunday, November 11th, 2007 Blair `knew Iraq had no WMD' TONY BLAIR privately conceded two weeks before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein did not have any usable weapons of mass destruction, Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, reveals today.John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), also "assented" that Saddam had no such weapons, says Cook. His revelations, taken from a diary that he kept as a senior minister during the months leading up to war, are published today in The Sunday Times. They shatter the case for war put forward by the government that Iraq presented "a real and present danger" to Britain. Cook, who resigned shortly before the invasion of Iraq, also reveals there was a near mutiny in the cabinet, triggered by David Blunkett, the home secretary, when it first discussed military action against Iraq. The prime minister ignored the "large number of ministers who spoke up against the war", according to Cook. He also "deliberately crafted a suggestive phrasing" to mislead the public into thinking there was a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, and he did not want United Nations weapons inspections to be successful, writes the former cabinet minister. Cook suggests that the government misled the House of Commons and asked MPs to vote for war on a "false prospectus". He also reveals that Blair earlier gave President Bill Clinton a private assurance that he would support him in military action in Iraq if action in the UN failed "and it would certainly have been in line with his previous practice if he had given President Bush a private assurance of British support". Cook's long-awaited diaries, published in book form as Point of Departure, are the first memoir of any member of Blair's cabinet. His disclosures are likely to lead to renewed calls for a judicial inquiry into the legitimacy of the war. The Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly has dealt only with the question of what the government believed ahead of publication of its Iraq dossier in September 2002 and whether Downing Street hardened intelligence reports to make the threat from Saddam seem more compelling. Cook today opens a new controversy. He says that just days before sending troops into action, Blair no longer believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction ready for firing within 45 minutes, the claim the prime minister had repeatedly made when arguing the case for war. Cook reveals that on February 20 this year he was given a briefing by Scarlett. "The presentation was impressive in its integrity and shorn of the political slant with which No 10 encumbers any intelligence assessment," Cook writes in his diary. "My conclusion at the end of an hour is that Saddam probably does not have weapons of mass destruction in the sense of weapons that could be used against large-scale civilian targets." Two weeks later, on March 5, Cook saw Blair. At the time the government was still trying to get a fresh UN resolution and Cook was still in government as leader of the Commons. Cook writes: "The most revealing exchange came when we talked about Saddam's arsenal. I told him, `It's clear from the private briefing I have had that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction in a sense of weapons that could strike at strategic cities. But he probably does have several thousand battlefield chemical munitions. Do you never worry that he might use them against British troops?' "[Blair replied:] `Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly for use'." Cook continues: "There were two distinct elements to this exchange that sent me away deeply troubled. The first was that the timetable to war was plainly not driven by the progress of the UN weapons inspections. Tony made no attempt to pretend that what Hans Blix [the UN's chief weapons inspector] might report would make any difference to the countdown to invasion. "The second troubling element to our conversation was that Tony did not try to argue me out of the view that Saddam did not have real weapons of mass destruction that were designed for strategic use against city populations and capable of being delivered with reliability over long distances. I had now expressed that view to both the chairman of the JIC and to the prime minister and both had assented in it. "At the time I did believe it likely that Saddam had retained a quantity of chemical munitions for tactical use on the battlefield. These did not pose `a real and present danger to Britain' as they were not designed for use against city populations and by definition could threaten British personnel only if we were to deploy them on the battlefield within range of Iraqi artillery. "I had now twice been told that even those chemical shells had been put beyond operational use in response to the pressure from intrusive inspections. I have no reason to doubt that Tony Blair believed in September that Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction ready for firing within 45 minutes. What was clear from this conversation was that he did not believe it himself in March." Cook asks: "If No 10 accepted that Saddam had no real weapons of mass destruction which he could credibly deliver against city targets and if they themselves believed that he could not reassemble his chemical weapons in a credible timescale for use on the battlefield, just how much of a threat did they really think Saddam represented?" He raises "the gravest of political questions. The rules of the Commons explicitly require ministers to correct the record as soon as they are aware that they may have misled parliament. If the government did come to know that the [United States] State Department did not trust the claims in the September dossier and that some of even their top experts did not believe them, should they not have told parliament before asking the Commons to vote for war on a false prospectus?" Cook decided not to publish his diaries ahead of last week's Labour conference in Bournemouth. Had he done so, his revelations would have ensured Blair received a much tougher ride from activists, many of whom are deeply uneasy about the war. He reveals that in the months leading up to the war Downing Street aides, including Alastair Campbell, Blair's former director of communications, and Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, were obsessed with not falling out with Washington. Cook discloses that several cabinet ministers had held misgivings about the war, not just himself and Clare Short. At a cabinet meeting in late February 2002, Blunkett asked for a discussion on Iraq and Cook received cries of "hear, hear" from cabinet colleagues when he argued that Arab governments regarded Israel, not Iraq, as the real problem for the Middle East. Cook records it was "the nearest thing I've heard to a mutiny in cabinet". His diary entry of March 7, 2002, a year before the war, says that Blunkett and Patricia Hewitt, the trade secretary, raised objections at cabinet. "A momentous moment. A real discussion at cabinet. Tony permitted us to have the debate on Iraq which David [Blunkett] and I had asked for. For the first time that I can recall in five years, Tony was out on a limb." According to Cook, Blunkett asked Blair: "What has changed that suddenly gives us the legal right to take military action that we didn't have a few months ago?" Hewitt warned Blair: "We are in danger of being seen as close to President Bush, but without any influence over President Bush." But the prime minister was "totally unfazed" and, when Hewitt again raised objections at cabinet the following month, Blair refused to be boxed in, telling colleagues: "The time to debate the legal base for our action should be when we take that action." Cook reveals that Bush had wanted to hold a crucial war council with Blair in London on the weekend before the invasion of Iraq, a move that would have been a public relations disaster given public hostility to the war. Blair persuaded Bush to hold the summit in the Azores instead. By September last year most of the cabinet had fallen into line. At cabinet on September 23, before parliament was recalled from its summer break, Cook says: "Personally I found it a grim meeting. Much of the two hours was taken up with a succession of loyalty oaths for Tony's line." He says only Estelle Morris, then education secretary, "bravely" reported public disquiet that Britain was simply following Bush. Iraq Section has more related reports ***************************************************************** 40 albawaba.com Iran: Israel is too weak to attack Posted: 11-11-2007 , 12:42 GMT Israel is too weak to threaten Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said on Sunday. Speaking to reporters at his weekly press conference, he said that Iran considers the "Zionist regime" to be too weak to threaten Iran. However, according to IRNA, Hosseini warned, "In case any threat is made against Iran, it will definitely face Iran's unpredictable response." Meanwhile, Hosseini added that Iran is ready to put its expertise on nuclear technology at disposal of other countries. he underlined that within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran is prepared to put its expertise on nuclear technology at disposal of other states. © 2007 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com) ***************************************************************** 41 TheStar.com: Is it bigger than a (nuke) suitcase? Sunday, November 11, 2007 | Today's Toronto Star Much bigger. An actual portable nuclear device would be more the size of an SUV, experts say Katherine Shrader Associated Press WASHINGTON–Congress has been briefed on the threat of suitcase nuclear bombs. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has alerted Americans to the danger and the warning is posted on the White House website. The TV thriller 24 devoted an entire season to Jack Bauer's hunt for suitcase nukes in Los Angeles. But experts say the threat gets vastly more attention than it deserves – that a true suitcase nuke would be highly complex to produce, require significant upkeep and cost a small fortune. "The suitcase nuke is an exciting topic that really lends itself to movies," says Vahid Majidi, the assistant director of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. "No one has been able to truly identify the existence of these devices." Majidi and others say the real threat is from a terrorist who does not care about the size of his nuclear detonation and is willing to improvise, using a less deadly and sophisticated device assembled from stolen or black-market material. During the 1960s, intelligence agencies received reports from defectors that Soviet military intelligence officers were carrying portable nuclear devices in suitcases. The threat was too scary to stay secret and word leaked out. The genie was never put back in the bottle. But current and former government officers agree that no U.S. official has seen a Soviet-made suitcase nuke. The idea of portable nuclear devices is not a new one. In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. made the first ones, known as the Special Atomic Demolition Munition. It was a "backpack nuke" that could be used to blow up dams, tunnels or bridges. While one person could lug it on his back, it had to be placed by a two-man team. But suitcase-size nukes are a different matter. They attracted considerable public attention in 1997, thanks to a 60 Minutes interview and other public statements from retired Gen. Alexander Lebed, once Russia's national security chief. Lebed said the separatist guerrillas in Chechnya had portable nuclear devices, which led him to create a commission to get to the bottom of the Chechen arsenal. He said that when he ran the security service, the commission could find only 48 of 132 devices. The numbers varied as he changed his story several times – sometimes he stated that 100 or more were missing. The Russians denied he was ever accurate. In a 2004 interview with the Kremlin's Federal News Service, Col.-Gen. Viktor Yesin, former head of the Russian strategic rocket troops, said he thought Lebed's commission might have been misled by mock-ups of special mines used during training. Yesin said a true suitcase nuke would be too expensive for most countries to produce and would not last more than several months because the nuclear core would decompose so quickly. "Nobody at the present stage seeks to develop such devices," he asserted. Majidi, who joined the FBI after leading Los Alamos National Laboratory's prestigious chemistry division, uses science to make the case that suitcase nukes are not a top concern. Nuclear devices are either plutonium, which comes from reprocessing the nuclear material from reactors, or uranium, which comes from gradually enriching that naturally found element. Majidi says it would take about 22 pounds of plutonium or 130 pounds of uranium to create a nuclear detonation. Both would require explosives to set off the blast, but significantly more for the uranium. Although uranium is considered easier for terrorists to obtain, it would be too heavy for one person to lug around in a suitcase. Plutonium would require the co-operation of a state with a plutonium-reprocessing program. It seems highly unlikely that a country would knowingly co-operate with terrorists because the device would bear the chemical fingerprints of that government. Also, Majidi says, nuclear devices require a lot of maintenance because the material that makes them deadly also can wreak havoc on their electrical systems. "The more compact the devices are – guess what? – the more frequently they need to be maintained. Everything is compactly designed around that radiation source, which damages everything over a period of time." Laura Holgate, a vice-president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, says the U.S. has not appropriately prioritized its responses to nuclear threats and, as a result, is poorly using its scarce resources. Homeland Security plans to spend more than $1 billion on radiation detectors at ports of entry. But government auditors found that the devices cannot distinguish between benign radiation sources, such as kitty litter, and potentially dangerous ones, including highly enriched uranium. For Holgate, highly enriched uranium poses the greatest threat because it exists not only at nuclear weapons sites worldwide, but also in more than 100 civilian research facilities in dozens of countries. The big problem, she says, is not a fancy suitcase nuke, but rather a terrorist cell with nuclear material that has enough knowledge to make an improvised device. How big would that be? "Like SUV-sized," she says. "Way bigger than a suitcase." © Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2007 | ***************************************************************** 42 AFP: US has secret plans to safeguard Pakistan's nukes - Monday November 12, 10:39 AM WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States reportedly has secret contingency plans to safeguard Pakistani nuclear weapons if they risk falling into the wrong hands. But US officials worry their limited knowledge about the location of the arsenal could pose a problem, the Washington Post said, a week after Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency. "We can't say with absolute certainty that we know where they all are," one unidentified former US official told the newspaper, adding that any US effort to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal "could be very messy." Under a more optimistic scenario, the Pakistani military would help the United States in any intervention, the Post said. In other cases, that assistance might not be forthcoming, it cautioned. The report said US officials would not discuss details of the classified plans, "but several former officials said the plans envision efforts to remove a nuclear weapon at imminent risk of falling into terrorists' hands." US officials and lawmakers have voiced alarm that the Musharraf government could lose control over its nuclear arsenal amid the mounting political crisis there. "I'm very concerned about it. Not immediately, but over the next year to two years," Senator Joseph Biden, a Democratic presidential contender, said on CNN. Biden, chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, said the United States needed to shore up anti-Musharraf moderates or risk seeing Pakistan go the way of Iran three decades ago. "The Shah got overthrown and moderates got crushed by extremists," he said. But Richard Armitage, who as deputy secretary of state led the US effort to get Musharraf on board the anti-terror struggle after the September 11 attacks of 2001, dismissed fears over the safety of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. "You know as well as I do that that nuclear arsenal is one, dispersed, and second, carefully guarded by the army," he told CNN. "Now we have had, historically, discussions with the Pakistani army about the safeguarding of those nuclear weapons," the former official said. "So I think in the short or even medium term, should things turn badly, we are not going to worry about nuclear weapons in the first instance." Lieutenant General Carter Ham, director of operations with the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that the Pentagon was keeping a close eye on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. "Any time there is a regime that has nuclear weapons and that experiences a situation like in Pakistan, of course there is a primary concern," he told reporters. Islamabad, Washington's key ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, has amassed about 50 nuclear weapons since detonating its first atomic devices in May 1998 in a series of tit-for-tat tests with India. Pakistan also is suspected of selling atomic secrets on a global black market headed by its disgraced chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. The Post recalled US allegations that two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists traveled to Afghanistan in August 2001 to brief Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden about how to make nuclear weapons. Among US intelligence agencies, there is particular concern now over the cohesion of Pakistan's army if extremist violence and opposition protests against Musharraf escalate, the report said. "If there is a collapse in the command-and-control structure -- or if the armed forces fragment -- that's a nightmare scenario," said John Brennan, a retired CIA official and ex-director of the National Counterterrorism Center. "If there are different power centers within the army, they will each see the strategic (nuclear) arsenal as a real prize," he told the Post. Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 43 Haaretz: Saudis tout Mideast consortium to solve Iran nuke issue - Sun., November 11, 2007 Kislev 1, 5768 | | I srael Time: 01:57 web haaretz.com By Zvi Bar'el Saudi Arabia has proposed that countries in the Middle East establish a consortium for enriching uranium as a possible way to defuse the nuclear crisis with Iran. The proposal calls for peaceful nuclear projects by a consortium of Middle Eastern countries including Iran but excluding nuclear enrichment. The actual processing of the material, according to the Saudi proposal, would take place in a neutral country such as Switzerland. Advertisement The enrichment process would be carried out at an installation to be built by the consortium, and its activities would be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. King Abdullah's proposal is similar to the Russian offer that uranium enrichment for Iran's nuclear reactors be carried out in Russia, and that shipments of the fissile material be made whenever that is necessary. The Russian proposal also called for a gradual return of enrichment activities to Iran, following an agreed period, and in line with plans that would have to be approved by the IAEA. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected the offer. This rejection was one of the reasons Iran's nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, stepped down last month. Larijani's resignation shed further light on the depth of disagreement in the Iranian leadership about the country's nuclear program. On one side of the spectrum stands Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who heads the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council, two powerful bodies in Iran's political structure. Rafsanjani, a former president of Iran and a political rival of Ahmadinejad, is opposed to the confrontational approach of the current president on the nuclear issue. For his part, Ahmadinejad believes that the United States is too preoccupied with other international commitments and drained by its military effort in Iraq and Afghanistan to seriously consider striking Iran. The Saudi king would like to leverage this internal Iranian debate to further his proposal, which met with opposition in Iran and Moscow, but which is supported by Washington, Paris and London. © Copyright Haaretz. All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 44 Alalam News: Moussa: Israel Nukes Threaten Mideast Monday, 12 November 2007 CAIRO, Nov 11--Arab League chief Amr Moussa has denounced the Israeli occupying regime's nuclear weapons program as a threat to stability in the Middle East. Moussa referred to Israel's continued balking at joining the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. He said the Zionist regime is the only party in the Middle East "to have nuclear weapons and nuclear capabilities which are not under international control". Israel, which neither denies nor admits its access to nuclear weapons, is regarded as a threat to the regional security by Arab countries, he added. "What threatens stability in the area are actually the nuclear programs that are not subject to international monitoring such as the Israeli one," Moussa said. He stressed the need to halt any military nuclear programs for the best interest of everyone in the Middle East region. The Arab League chief also condemned the occupying regime's attack on Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). On Thursday, the occupying regime's deputy prime minister and minister of transportation Shaul Mofaz called for ElBaradei to be removed as head of UN nuclear watchdog, accusing him of turning a blind eye to Iran's nuclear program. ElBaradei has said there is no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons, as claimed by the US and Israel and warned against any military action to disable Tehran's nuclear energy program. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Iran has already installed 3,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Moussa expressed his astonishment at Israel's criticism on the IAEA chief, who represents an international organization that plays a key role in safeguarding nuclear non-proliferation. Copyright © 2004 - 2007 Alalam Inc. ***************************************************************** 45 Huffington Post: Gareth Porter: How Cheney Cooked the Intelligence on Iran - Posted November 9, 2007 | 09:37 PM (EST) As I reported for Inter Press Service this week, Dick Cheney has been trying to pressure intelligence analysts who have not drunk the neocon kool-aid on Iran to go along with his line on the issues at stake in a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that the White House has been holding up for more than a year. Think Progress immediately noted the parallel between the Cheney's effort to get an Iran NIE that is more to his liking and the way he pushed intelligence analysts to accept the fabrications the neocons were pushing in on Iraq in 2002. The similarities between Cheney's efforts to cook the intelligence on Iraq and on Iran are worth noting, but so are the differences. Cheney may have had a bigger impact in shaping the intelligence estimate on Iran to fit the policy he is pursuing than was the case on Iraq in 2002. The Washington Post reported in June 2003 that Cheney and his chief of staff Scooter Libby had visited CIA analysts several times in 2002 to get them to reexamine their skeptical analysis on the WMD issue. But equally important, the Post quoted a "senior agency official" as saying that speeches by Cheney in August 2002 charging Saddam with having a nuclear weapons program "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here." The effect was achieved despite the fact that the October 2002 NIE on Iraqi WMD was done very quickly, because it had been forced on the White House in September by the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Bob Graham. The White House had only just begun to roll out its propaganda campaign on the fictive Iraqi nuclear weapons program at that point. Now flash forward to autumn 2006. Cheney had a draft NIE on Iraq that he didn't like. The intelligence community had already issued an NIE on Iran in spring 2005 that had concluded Iran's nuclear program would not progress to the point of having the capability to produce a nuclear weapon until sometime between 2010 and 2015. The new draft Iran estimate was still reportedly offering a similar analysis. Cheney wanted it to endorse the neocons' alarmist view that Iran could acquire the knowledge with which to make nuclear weapons much sooner than that. Furthermore, Cheney needed an NIE that would support the policy of attacking Iran over its alleged role in Iraq and seizing supposed Iranian "Quds force" personnel there. He wanted it to endorse the charge that Iran is supplying armor-piercing weapons to Shiites in Iraq who were killing American troops. But the draft NIE didn't do that, according to former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi. So part of Cheney's strategy was to keep sending the draft back for further work while he was creating a new political atmosphere on Iran's role in Iraq. He began in early 2007 to use the U.S. military command in Iraq to wage an intensive propaganda campaign on how the Iranians were supplying EFPs to anti-U.S. Shiite guerrillas through the Quds force. Ignoring intelligence available to the military that EFPs were being manufactured in machine shops in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus and his subordinates formulated a new narrative that would dominate media coverage and political discourse on the issue of Iran and Iraq. That Iranian EFP narrative has now been repeated without any alternative view being reflected in the media for ten months. The complete dominance of that narrative in the society for so long has certainly had its effect on the NIE process. As a former CIA intelligence officer told me, "Look, most of the intelligence analysts are young guys with less than ten years of experience. A lot of them are willing to give the administration line on Iran the benefit of the doubt." My sources suggest that the analysts ready to go along with the new narrative are now the majority. Nevertheless, some intelligence analysts on Iran are reportedly still refusing to say that there is concrete evidence to support the official line that the Iranian regime is exporting EFPs to Iraq. They are insisting on including their dissenting views on the issue in the NIE. That is why the new Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, under orders from Cheney, has refused to circulate the NIE until all dissenting views on the issue have been removed. There has been no comparable administration propaganda campaign over Iran's nuclear program, so Cheney's tactics were more direct. Last April the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Thomas Fingar, who presides over the NIEs, was made to go on National Public Radio and declare that the intelligence community was reevaluating whether its judgment on how soon Iran might produce a nuclear weapon needed to be revised. Fingar said the estimate "might change" and vowed that the analysts were "serious about reexamining old evidence". He even revealed the fact that the NIE on Iran was being delayed because of the reexamination. Although he didn't say so explicitly, Fingar's statement left little doubt that the White House had forced the reexamination of the analysts' judgment on the Iranian nuclear program by holding the NIE hostage. How successful that hardball tactic has been in getting language more acceptable to Cheney is still not known, but there were still differences of view on the issue in the draft NIE as of last month, according to my sources. These approaches to cooking the intelligence on Iran are even more nefarious than Cheney's direct approach on Iraq in 2002. They will certainly give Cheney language supporting his belligerent policy that he can leak to the press and use to keep Congress in line. Hopefully responsible officials with access to whatever dissenting views remain will leak those to anti-war Democrats, along with more details about how Cheney has manipulated the process. Bush and Merkel have a "plan for Iran," according to the news services. More sanctions are planned even as verification that Iran is not going nuclear is coming in. Does this have something to do with the IPI pipeline being touted in Iran? Corporate America makes all global decisions. The fix is in. A big quid pro quo on the environment, for example, allows multinationals and American corporations to hire mercenaries to protect pipelines and use terror. Cheney uses his own intelligence sources and controls others. Certain lobbies are "calling the tune," in Iran and elsewhere. In France there is a court investigation Cheney. We do not "police the world," we actually need a world police to police the activities of the United States. The big money has overcome our government's ability to resist the influence of the corporations. Moving operations overseas allows these companies to run rampant without access to American courts. The MSM does not cover this because their sponsors are the same oil companies that are behind these policies. Reply | posted 03:54 pm on 11/10/2007 THE FALLACY OF NPR Most free minded people, and liberal thinkers resort to NPR for their news and we often take their reports for truly fair and balanced, showing both sides of the issues. Closer inspection would reveal how the news is always biased towards one side and often omits critical information, perhaps not as blatantly as other news sources, but still, far from the real accurate news. Consider the atrocities committed by the occupation forces in Iraq at the Abu-Ghraib prison. Shortly after the news came out, the Bush administration labeled them as "prisoner abuse" and that was the only term that NPR used to refer to them thereafter. Now, let's see what constitutes "prisoner abuse" in the English language? Prisoner abuse would be something of the likes of shoving them around, kicking them on the rump-, that kind of treatment. To have a prisoner, shackled and treating him/her this way would be wrong and we would be right to label it an "abuse of prisoners". Placing electrodes to someone's genitalia and giving him electric shocks is torture and it cannot be labeled anything else. If you label those kinds of atrocities as "prisoner abuse", it really condones the action and allows the perpetrators to soften the atrocity and underplay what really happened. If we continue our analysis we see that NPR is consistently guilty of similar biases around other issues. For instance, it is not difficult to find reports about the Iranian president, the leader of Hezbollah or any other Persian or Arab officials. Notice how religiously NPR ends the report reporting with the statement that such person "does not recognize the right of Israel to exist".I am sure listeners can recall hearing this statement countless times; often towards the end of the report as a "take home message". Now, can we recall any broadcast that mentions that Israeli officials do not recognize the right of Palestine to exist? This is quite an omission because Israel's attitude towards Palestine is at the core of all the problems of the Middle East (Carter 2006)... * Copyright © 2007 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. | ***************************************************************** 46 UPI: Poll finds support for nuclear-free world - UPI.com Published: Nov. 10, 2007 at 6:45 PM COLLEGE PARK, Md., Nov. 10 (UPI) -- A poll indicates majorities in both Russia and the United States support steps to cut the number of nuclear weapons sharply. Almost three-quarters, 73 percent, of those surveyed in the United States support the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's goal of eliminating nuclear weapons, and 79 percent say the government should be doing more. In Russia, 63 percent support the goal and 66 percent want more government action to further it. The poll was conducted by Knowledge Networks in the United States and the Levada Center in Russia for WorldPublicOpinion.org and the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. The poll also found high support in both countries for the steps recommended in "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons," released by a group that included two former U.S. secretaries of state, George Schultz and Henry Kissinger. They include taking nuclear weapons off full alert, reducing their number and banning the production of weapons-grade nuclear material. © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 47 UPI: Egyptian minister urges nuke-free Mideast - UPI.com Published: Nov. 11, 2007 at 2:01 AM CAIRO, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit called on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a step toward a nuclear-free Middle East. He also praised the U.N. General Assembly for adopting an Egyptian draft of a resolution calling for a region without nuclear weapons, KUNA, the Kuwait news agency, reported. But some EU countries sent a mixed message by voting for the resolution in the General Assembly and then abstaining on a similar resolution at the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Abul Geit said. Israel has not officially admitted possession of nuclear weapons. If it signed the treaty, it would have to put its weapons under the supervision of the IAEA. © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 48 UPI; Pakistan nuclear arsenal protected - UPI.com Published: Nov. 10, 2007 at 12:41 AM LONDON, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- Britain and the United States reportedly have been assured there is little risk of militants gaining control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. The issue was discussed between British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. President George W. Bush in light of the current political situation and growing militant violence in Pakistan, Britain's Independent reported. The report said U.S defense and intelligence services are believed to have a secret "contingency" plan for any eventuality involving Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Brown has been assured military forces in Pakistan remain firmly in control and there is no present risk of the weapons falling into the hands of extremists, the report said. "The military is the most functional part of the regime," one senior official was quoted as saying. "No one is suggesting there is any particular concern." Neither Britain nor the United States has any new intelligence or evidence of any threats or change in the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, the report said. Pakistan is believed to possess enough highly enriched uranium for about 50 nuclear weapons or warheads, the report said. © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 49 UPI: Nuclear safety remains a concern - UPI.com Published: Nov. 11, 2007 at 6:49 AM ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. officials are increasingly worried about keeping Pakistan's nuclear weapons from the hands of Islamic radicals, it was reported Sunday. The nuclear concerns have escalated amid Pakistan's rising radical violence and the volatile political environment made worse by the recent declaration of emergency rule by President Pervez Musharraf. The New York Times said U.S. officials have also raised concern about what would happen if Musharraf is overthrown. The issue is reportedly being quietly discussed among the United States, France and Britain. Pakistan's nuclear controls are only seven years old and have never been put to a test, The Times noted. A U.S. official told The Times Pakistan's military is quite professional but noted it is not known "how many of the safeguards are institutionalized, and how many are dependent on Musharraf's guys." Another concern is if a terrorist group like the al-Qaida exploits the crisis in the streets, it could distract the government from monitoring its scientists and others who might be tempted to sell their knowledge and technology. © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 50 alJazeera Magazine: Towards fresh disaster in Iran 11/11/2007 11:43:00 PM GMT (Depesjer.no) Now Iran is Bush's enemy number one, as incarnated in its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Bush administration’s anti-diplomatic discourse on Iran is coupled with a number of deliberate and threatening activities that risk military confrontation. There’s a substantial difference between declaring that the third world war has begun and identifying the new Hitler. Since 9/11, President George Bush’s enemies have included al-Qaida, the “axis of evil,” and proliferators of weapons of mass destruction. But now Iran is public enemy number one, as incarnated in its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to the U.S. under-secretary of state, Nicholas Burns: “Our beef with the Iranian government is not just about Iran; it’s about what Iran is doing in the broader Middle East. With the Middle East occupying the great majority of the time and attention of our administration and Congress -- I want to set the problem of Iran in the larger context of what we are doing in the Middle East and in the world. Our view is that Iran is a generational challenge. It is not a challenge that is going to be episodic or fleeting; it will likely be on the front burners of our foreign policy in 2010, and 2012, and probably 2020." Iran is a leading oil-exporting nation, but is it really an evil monster? Its military expenditure has risen considerably since 2000, but the army is still under-equipped. Iraq’s fragmentation has increased the relative importance of Iran, but whose fault is that? A transnational Shia clergy may be an advantage: Some Iraqi and Lebanese Shia are loyal to Iranian ayatollahs. But it could equally prove to be a weakness since many Iranian Shia are loyal to Iraqi and Lebanese ayatollahs. The Shia clergy is divided, not least over one of the present Iranian government’s basic tenets, velayat-e faqih (guardianship of jurisprudence), which gives absolute power to the Supreme Leader -- once Ayatollah Khomeini, now Ayatollah Khamenei. Aside from the religious aspect, there are divisions in Iranian politics that do little to strengthen the regime. From the early 1990s several U.S. reports predicted that Iran would have nuclear weapons within two to three years. This has regularly been denied but the forecasts have just as regularly been updated: in 1991, 1995, 2000, and today. And yet the International Atomic Energy Agency has stated several times that despite Tehran’s attempts to avoid controls, there is no evidence of an Iranian military nuclear programme. If Iran did obtain nuclear weapons tomorrow, what would happen? In an interview in January, Jacques Chirac, then French president, made a controversial statement that led to a hasty official correction. “Where could Iran drop its bomb?” he asked. “On Israel? If that were so, Tehran would be flattened by the time the bomb was 200 metres out of Iran. There would be retaliation and coercion. That’s what nuclear dissuasion is all about.” But as Chirac pointed out, Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons would accelerate nuclear proliferation in the region. Egypt and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries have already declared their intention to develop nuclear power for civilian purposes. The goal of a nuclear-free Middle East was supposed to be a priority, on condition that it included Israel -- the first country in the region to possess nuclear weapons. * Black and white But the United States sees things in black and white. It does not think the idea of dissuasion is likely to work with an Iranian government under Ahmadinejad, any more than it did with Gamal Abdel Nasser or Saddam Hussein. Professor Bernard Lewis, the “orientalist” historian who supported U.S. intervention in Iraq, went so far as to warn, quite seriously, that Tehran might drop a nuclear bomb (which it does not have) on Israel on 22 August 2006, because that is the day the Muslim calendar commemorates Prophet Muhammad’s flight to Jerusalem and thence to heaven. He wrote: “This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for August 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.” This level of madness is commonplace in Washington, where hostility to Iran since the Islamic revolution has become pathological and has led to an aggressive anti-Iran stance, not only in the White House but also by most of the election candidates, Democrat and Republican, who accuse Iran of subverting Iraq and Afghanistan. A similar stance is taken by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who claimed that Iran was behind everything in Iraq and was transforming it into a perfect training ground. France now stands out from its European colleagues by hardening its stance, demanding more sanctions against Iran and aligning itself with Washington, just when the U.S. war on terror is clearly a failure. (See video: Bush, Sarkozy show united front against Iran) The United States, as part of its regional strategy, is increasing aid to the Kurdish, Arab, Azeri, and Baluchi minorities in Iran. Will the fragmentation of Iraq spread to Iran? Such a policy can result in some surprising reverses: while the Kurdish Workers’ Party is listed as a terrorist organisation, a delegation from its sister organisation in Iran, the Kurdistan Free Life Party, was welcomed in August in Washington with its leader Rahman Haj Ahmadi. That is not the only contradiction in the anti-Iranian strategy Bush is trying to put in place with Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the moderate Gulf countries -- and will reinforce during the Annapolis conference. Just a year from U.S. presidential elections, and 16 months before Bush’s term of office ends, there is a considerable risk that he may be tempted to rush into a military operation against Iran to cover up his setbacks in Iraq. In 2006, after four years as Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Dani Ayalon was asked if he thought a president as unpopular as Bush could make such a decision. “Yes, I do,” he replied. “You have to know this man. I was privileged and I consider him a personal friend. People who know him know he is very determined. He is certain of the moral supremacy of democracies over dictatorships. The way he sees it, Iran with a nuclear bomb makes an intolerable combination that threatens the existing world order, which is why he will not let this happen on his shift." -- Alain Gresh is editor of Le Monde diplomatique and a specialist on the Middle East. © 2007 Le Monde diplomatique Source: Middle East Online AlJazeera Magazine Online Edition  |  About Us | Contact | Privacy Policy | Copyright 1992-2007 AlJazeera Publishing, Dubai, UAE. ***************************************************************** 51 AFP: Rice denies US on warpath with Iran - by Jitendra Joshi Sun Nov 11, 5:09 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied Sunday that the United States was bent on war with Iran and renewed an offer of reconciliation talks if the Islamic republic renounces its nuclear drive. Interviewed on ABC television, Rice was pressed on a Senate resolution passed in September that labeled Iran's Revolutionary Guards a terrorist operation -- a step that critics said had brought war nearer. She said that President George W. Bush was clear "that he's on a diplomatic path where Iran comes into focus." "Obviously, it can be the case that he will never take his options off the table, but this particular resolution has nothing to do with that from our point of view," Rice said referring to the prospect of military force on Iran. "This resolution is saying that there need to be strong measures taken against Iran, which we have definitely done," she said after the Bush administration announced new sanctions on Iranian groups, including the Guards. Rice spoke a day after US President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed diplomatic strategy towards Iran. The two leaders appear to still differ over when additional sanctions should be imposed on Tehran, with Merkel preferring to wait until European and UN diplomatic efforts have run their course. "The top of my agenda is Iran," Bush said as they met on his Texas ranch. "We will continue to work together to solve this problem diplomatically, which means they will continue to be isolated." Democratic critics such as presidential contender Barack Obama have said the Senate resolution is a "blank check" for Bush to wage war on Iran, which has refused to bow to international demands to halt its uranium enrichment. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been using bellicose rhetoric against the Islamic republic, with the president warning of the threat of "World War III" if Iran gains the know-how to make nuclear weapons. Obama reaffirmed Sunday that he would "not hesitate" to open talks with US foes, arguing that the Bush administration was instead "itching to escalate the tensions between Iran and the United States." "Strong countries and strong presidents speak with their adversaries," he said on NBC television, insisting that Washington should offer not just sticks to Iran "but also the carrots" of enhanced trade and normalized relations. Democratic White House frontrunner Hillary Clinton has accused Obama of naivete for his willingness to open high-level talks with US enemies. But Clinton's chief foreign-policy advisor, former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke, said it was one of Bush's "great failures" to have ignored an Iranian offer of dialogue after the September 11, 2001 attacks. "The policy with Iran has to be reexamined from the roots up," he said on CNN, arguing that US demands for a halt to uranium enrichment before any talks can start had contributed to an "impossible impasse" with Iran. Rice, however, said the United States and its European allies had already offered Tehran trade and political incentives to stop its enrichment work. "I've even said that we would reverse 28 years of policy," she said, referring to a US embargo imposed after Iran's Islamic revolution, and said she would meet her Iranian counterpart "any place, any time, anywhere." "They just have to give up the fuel cycle, the enrichment and reprocessing that can lead to the technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapon," Rice said. "So the question isn't why will we not talk to Tehran. The question is, why will Tehran not talk to us?" Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 52 Guardian Unlimited: Aid to Pakistan Not Likely to Be Cut Yet Friday November 9, 2007 11:46 PM By MATTHEW LEE Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration has concluded it is not legally required to cut or suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Pakistan despite President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of a state of emergency and a crackdown on the opposition and independent media. U.S. assistance to the key anti-terrorism and nuclear armed ally - which has totaled nearly $10 billion since 2001 - is governed by legislative requirements that could trigger automatic aid cutoffs, but all are covered by locked-in presidential waivers, said officials familiar with a government-wide review. Those waivers exempt Pakistan from aid restrictions. They do not need to be renewed until Congress approves the budget for the current fiscal year that began Oct. 1 and requests $845 million for Pakistan, the officials said, citing preliminary findings from the review that began this week. The initial findings do not mean aid to Pakistan will never be cut, only that there is currently no statutory reason to do so, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the review is not yet finalized. It was not immediately clear Friday when it would be complete. The review comes as congressional pressure mounts on the administration to respond to the situation, which took an ominous turn Friday when Pakistani authorities placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest and barred her supporters from staging a mass demonstration against Musharraf's emergency rule. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who chairs the panel that oversees State and foreign operations spending, said unless there was an ``immediate halt'' to Musharraf's crackdown, Congress would inevitably step in to restrict U.S. aid to Pakistan and she called for the suspension of cash transfers to the government. ``Failure to take these steps immediately is sure to come at a steep cost,'' said Lowey. As it has done since the crisis erupted last Saturday, the White House urged Musharraf ``quickly to return constitutional order,'' adding a new appeal for the release of Bhutto and other detainees believed to number in the thousands and asking all parties to refrain from violence. ``All parties in Pakistan agree that free and fair elections are the best way out of the current situation there,'' Gordon Johndroe, a National Security Council spokesman, said in Texas where President Bush is spending the weekend. ``Free and fair elections require lifting of the state of emergency. We therefore continue to call for an early end to that state of emergency and the release of political party members and peaceful protesters who have been detained.'' Defense Secretary Robert Gates voiced concern that the political turmoil there will undermine the Pakistani army's fight against terrorism. ``The concern I have is that the longer the internal problems continue, the more distracted the Pakistani army and security services will be in terms of the internal situation rather than focusing on the terrorist threat in the frontier area,'' he told reporters Friday as he returned from Asia. To date, the Pentagon has said the unrest has had no effect on U.S. military operations. But Gates' comments underscored the administration's nervousness, even as it voices support for Musharraf as an ally in the war on terror. Musharraf yielded somewhat to U.S. pressure on Thursday and said Pakistan would hold parliamentary election by mid-February - a month later than originally planned. But he has still shown no sign of relinquishing his military post as chief of the army - another key demand of opposition leaders and the Bush administration. Bush has been obligated by law since 2002 to issue waivers for most assistance to Pakistan, declaring that direct payments to Islamabad are in the U.S. national interest because they promote the transition to democratic rule. The officials familiar with the aid review conceded Musharraf's recent actions are at odds with the process of democratization but noted that unless Congress enacts new legislation or passes the new budget, the existing waivers continue to apply. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte spoke to the administration's position in congressional testimony Wednesday. ``Our judgment at the moment is that there is nothing that is automatically triggered by the current situation, that everything is covered at the moment by appropriate waivers,'' he said. On Thursday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack addressed the waiver-budget connection. ``Because of the fact that you do not yet have new legislation appropriating funds, some of those waivers carry over,'' he told reporters. ``I think, actually, all of the waivers carry over.'' In addition to the Pakistan-specific waivers imposed by Congress, U.S. foreign aid in general is also covered by legislation that forces the suspension of non-humanitarian assistance in the event a democratically elected government is toppled through unconstitutional means. Although that requirement was triggered when Musharraf came to power in a 1999 coup d'etat, and some aid was cut, administration lawyers contend the current state of emergency and suspension of the constitution does not meet that legal standard, the officials said. ``Basically, you can't stage a coup against yourself,'' said one. --- Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann in Crawford, Texas, Anne Flaherty in Washington, and Lolita C. Baldor traveling with Gates contributed to this report. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 53 Guardian Unlimited: Pakistan Emergency to End in 1 Month Saturday November 10, 2007 11:31 AM By MUNIR AHMAD Associated Press Writer ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan announced plans to lift its state of emergency within one month and allowed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to leave her villa following a day under house arrest, as the country sought Saturday to restore its battered image at home and abroad. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf insists he called the week-old emergency to help fight Islamic extremists who control swathes of territory near the Afghan border, but the main targets of his subsequent crackdown have been his most outspoken critics, including the increasingly independent courts and media. Thousands of people have been arrested, TV news stations taken off air, and judges removed. The government - under mounting pressure from the United States and other Western allies to follow through with promises to restore democracy - has announced that parliamentary elections initially slated for January would be held no more than a month later. And Attorney General Malik Mohammed Qayyum told The Associated Press on Saturday that the state of emergency would ``end within one month.'' He provided no further details and would not say when a formal announcement might come. Security forces threw a cordon around Bhutto's villa in an upscale neighborhood of the capital Friday, and rounded up thousands of her supporters to prevent a planned demonstration against the crackdown. But she was allowed to leave her home 24 hours later, meeting first with party colleagues and then addressing a small journalists' protest. But dozens of helmeted police blocked her silver, bulletproof Land cruiser when she tried to visit Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, the independent-minded chief justice who was removed from his post following Musharraf's state of emergency. She tried to convince them to let her pass, but turned back after they refused. ``Those holding guns are afraid of an unarmed girl!'' Bhutto's supporters chanted. Aides said she would meet later with foreign diplomats to discuss the political crisis. The restrictions on Bhutto dimmed the prospect of her forming a U.S.-friendly alliance with Musharraf against militants who have seized control of an ever-greater area of northwestern Pakistan. Some U.S. officials have expressed concern that the political crisis will actually distract Pakistan from that task, and NATO said Saturday insurgents had killed six American troops in eastern Afghanistan. But the Bush administration continues to describe Musharraf as an ``indispensable'' ally against the Taliban and al-Qaida, suggesting it is unlikely to yield to calls from some lawmakers in Washington for cuts in its generous aid to Pakistan, much of it to the powerful military. Bhutto, for her part, has left open the possibility of re-entering talks with Musharraf on issues including her wish to serve a third term as prime minister of this nuclear-armed nation of more than 160 million people. Her return home last month, following eight years in exile, came after he agreed to drop corruption charges against her. Hundreds of police blocked the street in front of Bhutto's home Friday to keep her from leading a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi that had been expected to draw thousands. She said Saturday she was still determined to go ahead with a 185-mile march Tuesday from the city of Lahore to Islamabad. ``To get Pakistan from the clutches of dictatorship, we are organizing a long march,'' Bhutto told around 100 journalists protesting the new media clampdown, which would impose jail time for those who criticize Musharraf or the army. ``I request ... all segments of the population to join us in the struggle for democracy. When the masses combine, the sound of their steps will suppress the sound of military boots.'' Many critics say the main goal of Musharraf's emergency was to pre-empt a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of his victory in a presidential election last month. Under the constitution, public servants cannot run for office. Qayyum, the attorney general, said the court - now purged of its more independent-minded justices - would swear in more judges in the next two or three days, bringing it up to the strength required to restart hearings in the case. Musharraf says he will quit his post as army chief and rule as a civilian once the court has confirmed his re-election, but set no date for that step. --- Associated Press writer Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 54 Guardian Unlimited: Suitcase Nukes Said Unlikely to Exist Saturday November 10, 2007 4:31 PM By KATHERINE SHRADER Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Members of Congress have warned about the dangers of suitcase nuclear weapons. Hollywood has made television shows and movies about them. Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency has alerted Americans to a threat - information the White House includes on its Web site. But government experts and intelligence officials say such a threat gets vastly more attention than it deserves. These officials said a true suitcase nuke would be highly complex to produce, require significant upkeep and cost a small fortune. Counterproliferation authorities do not completely rule out the possibility that these portable devices once existed. But they do not think the threat remains. ``The suitcase nuke is an exciting topic that really lends itself to movies,'' said Vahid Majidi, the assistant director of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. ``No one has been able to truly identify the existence of these devices.'' Majidi and other government officials say the real threat is from a terrorist who does not care about the size of his nuclear detonation and is willing to improvise, using a less deadly and sophisticated device assembled from stolen or black-market nuclear material. Yet Hollywood has seized on the threat. For example, the Fox thriller ``24'' devoted its entire last season to Jack Bauer's hunt for suitcase nukes in Los Angeles. Government officials have played up the threat, too. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., once said at a hearing that he thought the least likely threat was from an intercontinental ballistic missile. ``Perhaps the most likely threat is from a suitcase nuclear weapon in a rusty car on a dock in New York City,'' he said. In a FEMA guide on terrorist disasters that is posted in part on the White House's Web site, the agency warns that terrorists' use of a nuclear weapon would ``probably be limited to a single smaller 'suitcase' weapon.'' ``The strength of such a weapon would be in the range of the bombs used during World War II. The nature of the effects would be the same as a weapon delivered by an intercontinental missile, but the area and severity of the effects would be significantly more limited,'' the paper says. --- THE GENIE THAT ESCAPED During the 1960s, intelligence agencies received reports from defectors that Soviet military intelligence officers were carrying portable nuclear devices in suitcases. The threat was too scary to stay secret, government officials said, and word leaked out. The genie was never put back in the bottle. But current and former government officials who have not spoken out publicly on the subject acknowledge that no U.S. officials have seen a Soviet-made suitcase nuke. The idea of portable nuclear devices was not a new one. In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. made the first ones, known as the Special Atomic Demolition Munition. It was a ``backpack nuke'' that could be used to blow up dams, tunnels or bridges. While one person could lug it on his back, it had to be placed by a two-man team. These devices never were used and now exist - minus their explosive components - only in a museum. Following the U.S. lead, the Soviets are believed to have made similar nuclear devices. Suitcase nukes have been a separate problem. They attracted considerable public attention in 1997, thanks to a ``60 Minutes'' interview and other public statements from retired Gen. Alexander Lebed, once Russia's national security chief. Lebed said the separatist government in Chechnya had portable nuclear devices, which led him to create a commission to get to the bottom of the Chechen arsenal, according to a Center for Nonproliferation Studies report. He said that when he ran the security service, the commission could find only 48 of 132 devices. The numbers varied as he changed his story several times - sometimes he stated that 100 or more were missing. The Russians denied he was ever accurate. Even more details emerged in the summer of 1998, when former Russian military intelligence officer Stanislav Lunev - a defector in the U.S. witness protection program - wrote in his book that Russian agents were hiding suitcase nukes around the U.S. for use in a possible future conflict. ``I had very clear instructions: These dead-drop positions would need to be for all types of weapons, including nuclear weapons,'' Lunev testified during a congressional hearing in California in 2000, according to a Los Angeles Times account. Naysayers noted that he was never able to pinpoint any specific location. In a 2004 interview with the Kremlin's Federal News Service, Colonel-General Viktor Yesin, former head of the Russian strategic rocket troops, said he believes that Lebed's commission may have been misled by mock-ups of special mines used during training. Yesin believed that a true suitcase nuke would be too expensive for most countries to produce and would not last more than several months because the nuclear core would decompose so quickly. ``Nobody at the present stage seeks to develop such devices,'' he asserted. Some members of Congress remained convinced that the suitcase nuke problem persists. Perhaps chief among these lawmakers was Curt Weldon, a GOP representative from Pennsylvania who lost his seat in 2006. Weldon was known for carrying around a mock-up of a suitcase nuke made with a briefcase, foil and a pipe. But it was nowhere near the weight of an actual atomic device. --- THE SCIENCE Majidi joined the FBI after leading Los Alamos National Laboratory's prestigious chemistry division. He uses science to make the case that suitcase nukes are not a top concern. First, he defines what a Hollywood-esque suitcase nuke would look like: a case about 24 inches by 10 inches by 12 inches, weighing less than 50 pounds, that one person could carry. It would contain a device that could cause a devastating blast. Nuclear devices are either plutonium, which comes from reprocessing the nuclear material from reactors, or uranium, which comes from gradually enriching that naturally found element. Majidi says it would take about 22 pounds of plutonium or 130 pounds of uranium to create a nuclear detonation. Both would require explosives to set off the blast, but significantly more for the uranium. Although uranium is considered easier for terrorists to obtain, it would be too heavy for one person to lug around in a suitcase. Plutonium, he notes, would require the cooperation of a state with a plutonium reprocessing program. It seems highly unlikely that a country would knowingly cooperate with terrorists because the device would bear the chemical fingerprints of that government. ``I don't think any nation is willing to participate in this type of activity,'' Majidi said. That means the fissile material probably would have to be stolen. ``It is very difficult for that much material to walk away,'' he added. There is one more wrinkle: Nuclear devices require a lot of maintenance because the material that makes them so deadly also can wreak havoc on their electrical systems. ``The more compact the devices are - guess what? - the more frequently they need to be maintained. Everything is compactly designed around that radiation source, which damages everything over a period of time,'' Majidi said. --- PROVING A NEGATIVE A former CIA director, George Tenet, is convinced that al-Qaida wants to change history with the mushroom cloud of a nuclear attack. In 1998, Osama bin Laden issued a statement called ``The Nuclear Bomb of Islam.'' ``It is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God,'' he said. Among numerous of avenues of investigation after the Sept. 11 attacks, Tenet said in his memoir that President Bush asked Russian President Vladamir Putin whether he could account for all of Russia's nuclear material. Choosing his words carefully, Tenet said, Putin replied that he could only account for everything under his watch, leaving a void before 2000. Intelligence officials continued digging deeper, hearing more reports about al-Qaida's efforts to get a weapon; that effort, it is believed, has been to no avail, so far. But intelligence officials are loath to dismiss a threat until they are absolutely sure they have gotten to the bottom of it. In the case of suitcase nukes, one official said, U.S. experts do not have 100 percent certainty that they have a handle on the Russian arsenal. Laura Holgate, a vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, says the U.S. has not appropriately prioritized its responses to the nuclear threat and, as a result, is poorly using its scarce resources. Much to many people's surprise, she noted, highly enriched uranium - outside of a weapon - is so benign that a person can hold it in his hands and not face any ill effects until years later, if at all. It can also slip through U.S. safeguards, she says. The Homeland Security Department is planning to spend more than $1 billion on radiation detectors at ports of entry. But government auditors found that the devices cannot distinguish between benign radiation sources, such as kitty litter, and potentially dangerous ones, including highly enriched uranium. Holgate considers the substance the greatest threat because it exists not only at nuclear weapons sites worldwide, but also in more than 100 civilian research facilities in dozens of countries, often with inadequate security. Her Washington-based nonproliferation organization wants to see the U.S. get a better handle on the material that can be used for bombs - much of it is in Russia - and secure it. The big problem, she said, is not a fancy suitcase nuke, but rather a terrorist cell with nuclear material that has enough knowledge to make an improvised device. How big would that be? ``Like SUV-sized. Way bigger than a suitcase,'' she said. ^--- On the Net: White House's ``Are You Ready?'' information: http://tinyurl.com/5x6y FEMA's kids' page: http://www.fema.gov/kids/nse/radiological.htm FBI's weapons of mass destruction page: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/nsb/wmd/wmd-home.htm National Atomic Museum: http://www.atomicmuseum.com/ Nuclear Threat Initiative: http://www.nti.org/ Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************