***************************************************************** 11/28/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.273 ***************************************************************** 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 NUCLEAR REACTORS 1 US: Nuclear dinosaur seeks more public financing 2 US: Alert: Act Now - Stop Loan Guarantees for Nuke Industry 3 US: San Luis Obispo County: Initiative to reverse ban on nuclear pla 4 US: Journal Record: State's power producers put off by nuclear plant 5 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Activists object to nuke plant transfer 6 US: Hartford Courant: Nuclear Plant Site Declared Safe -- 7 FIA: NPP Belene is an adventure that will rip next generation off wi 8 Boston Globe: A world without nukes - 9 US: ajc.com: Nuclear foes protest Plant Vogtle expansion 10 US: Newsday.com: Connecticut Yankee plant is officially decommission 11 London Times: French seal $12bn Chinese nuclear deal 12 Evening Star: New nuclear plant for Sizewell? 13 AfricaNews - Ghana paves the way for nuclear energy - 14 Earth Times: New accident at Bulgarian nuclear plant leads to reacto 15 Daily Yomiuri: Govt's G-8 priorities to include nuclear nonprolifera 16 US: Bulletin Online: Time for a U.S. energy strategy | NUCLEAR SECURITY 17 BBC NEWS: Arrests in Slovak 'nuclear plot' 18 Sunday Herald: Top police officer warns that nuclear attack is inevi NUCLEAR SAFETY NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 19 US: AU ABC: Uranium group wants more mines under Labor - 20 US: Casper Star Tribune: Judge: Drilling can go on 21 US: DailyBulletin.com: Stop the plume's spread ... now 22 SWRM: More radioactive waste in Ontario landfills 23 US: ANI: Las Vegas sitting on an explosive sleeping earthquake fault 24 US: Gallup Independent: Groups air uranium concerns; Seek moratorium 25 barrow in furness: Union worry over plan for future of Sellafield 26 News & Star: Lack of vision on future of n-plant, say union chiefs 27 ReviewJournal.com: NRC puts (Nevada) complaint about Yucca on hold 28 US: Indybay: Building 606 points to a time and direction when things PEACE 29 NYMHM: Japan's nuclear victims, Kosovo independence, Kenya's 30 [NYTr] Planting Nuclear Evidence in Iran the Hard Way: Discussion 31 BBC NEWS: Missile plan sneaked out, say MPs 32 Guardian Unlimited: Russia Criticizes US Missile Plans US DEPT. OF ENERGY 33 SN: Is Nuclear Waste Seeping From Hanaford Waste Site To The Columbi 34 Bellingham Herald: Hanford reactor envisioned as part of national pa 35 Tri-City Herald: Hanford topics voiced at State of the Site meeting 36 Rocky Mountain News: Panel weighs new information in Rocky Flats cas 37 Rocky Mountain News: No clear answer on Flats ruling 38 KOB.com - Groups criticize planned prescribed burn at LANL ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Nuclear dinosaur seeks more public financing Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:53:50 -0600 (CST) Hello friends, Below is an op-ed I wrote that was published this past Tuesday in the Columbia Daily Tribune. I hope you will check it out and share this info with others. While there are clearly many critical issues facing us, and the possible revival of nuclear power is but one of them, it is one that we have a very real opportunity to effectively address in the immediate moment. As I indicate in the article below, Wall St. will not finance--and the utility industry will not build--new reactors w/o massive new subsidies. If taxpayer guaranteed loans are defeated, we have the opportunity to refocus on sustainable options--efficiency and renewables--rather than having to fight the expenditure of hundreds of billions on a dangerous, dead-end technology. I also want to urge those of you who are in mid-Missouri to consider working with Missourians for Safe Energy. Our next meeting is Tuesday, Dec. 4, 7:15 p.m. at the Peace Nook. The need for action to stop Ameren from building a new 1,600 MW nuclear plant in Callaway County is very real and immediate. If you are elsewhere, please look into hooking up with a group working for safe, sustainable energy in your neck of the woods. All the best, Mark Haim P.S. I also invite you to check out my recent KOPN interview with Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service at http://kopn.org/?q=archive. Just click on Evening Edition and go to the 11/13/07 show. Jurassic Park Marketplace dinosaur seeks more public financing. By MARK HAIM Published Tuesday, November 20, 2007 http://showmenews.com/2007/Nov/20071120Comm008.asp In a July 31 interview with a New York Times reporter, Michael Wallace, co-chief executive of UniStar Nuclear - Amerens partner in the proposed new Callaway reactor - said, "Without loan guarantees, we will not build nuclear power plants." Theyve picked our pockets before, and now they are back for more, tens of billions more. Having failed the test of the marketplace nearly three decades ago, the nuclear power industry has repackaged itself. Today its trying to sell its overpriced product as the answer to global climate change. Wall Street isnt buying it, however, so the nuclear lobby wants you and me, the taxpayers, to underwrite a whole new generation of plants. They want $50 billion in federally guaranteed loans. And thats just a down payment - the amount theyre asking for fiscal years 2008 and 2009. More than 50 years ago, when the Atoms for Peace program began, its backers promised us limitless energy so abundant it would be "too cheap to meter." By 1985, Forbes Magazine declared, "The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale." And in 2001, The Economist, Britains leading financial journal, wrote "Nuclear power, once claimed to be too cheap to meter, is now too costly to matter." For decades nuclear power has been a classic example of lemon socialism. Taxpayers have picked up the tab for everything from research and development to assuming ultimate responsibility for the deadly waste that needs to be isolated in perpetuity, to acting as the insurer of last resort in the event of a major nuclear accident. Over the 50-year period of 1948-1998, nuclear power received $74 billion in federal research and development subsidies (in constant 2003 dollars). This was 56 percent of all federal energy research and development money. Despite nearly six decades of pump-priming and $13 billion in new subsidies in the 2005 energy act, nuclear power is still not ready to stand on its own two feet. Before Congress agrees to underwrite a new generation of nuclear dinosaurs, I hope they will consider the following: ? The last U.S. nuclear plants were ordered in 1973. No one really knows how much a new nuclear plant will cost or how long it will take to build one. ? Plants being built in Finland, China and Taiwan are all significantly over budget and behind schedule. In September, Thompson Financial reported Finlands Olkiluoto-3, the first reactor to be ordered in Western Europe since the disastrous 1986 Chernobyl accident, is delayed more than two years. Its original cost estimate was 3 billion euros ($4.35 billion), but this has now risen to 4.5 billion euros ($6.53 billion), and the latest estimated completion date is still four years off; thus the final price tag is still unknown. ? Moodys Investor Services in October estimated new generation nuclear plants in the United States will cost as much as $6 billion to $9.6 billion each, more than double optimistic industry projections. ? The leading U.S. investment banks, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, in comments for rulemaking on the Federal Loan Guarantee Program, indicated their unwillingness to finance new nukes. They said in part: "We believe these risks, combined with the higher capital costs and longer construction schedules of nuclear plants as compared to other generation facilities, will make lenders unwilling at present to extend long-term credit." ? The Congressional Budget Office shares this skepticism. In a 2003 report examining costs of the prospective energy bill, it expressed concern that taxpayers would be saddled with heavy losses if loan guarantees were provided for nuclear plants, saying in part: "CBO considers the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high - well above 50 percent. The key factor accounting for this risk is that we expect that the plant would be uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs relative to other electricity generation sources." ? The Government Accountability Office in February expressed its concerns that taxpayers would bear an undue burden if the government implemented a loan guarantee program, saying in part: "Although LGP guidelines call for borrowers to be charged fees to cover program costs, the program could result in substantial financial costs to taxpayers if" the Department of Energy "underestimates total program costs." They went on to say, "DOE will have to estimate the subsidy cost to determine the fees to charge borrowers, but it currently has no policies or procedures for doing so. Estimating this cost could be difficult because the program targets innovative energy technologies, and loan performance could depend heavily on future economic conditions, including energy prices, which are hard to predict accurately." Where are we headed? Before diving, its essential to know how deep the water is and what rocks might lie below the surface. If we, the taxpayers, underwrite eight large new nuclear plants to the tune of $48 billion, we might be saddled with huge losses. Even if everything went well, however, with no defaults, is this really the best place to invest our limited funds? Consider: If eight large nukes are built, we would net only 12,800 megawatts of generating capacity. This $48 billion, coincidentally, is about the same amount of capital currently invested in the entire global wind industry. But $48 billion has purchased 74,000 megawatts of generating capacity. If our interest is in cutting our use of fossil fuels - both because they are finite and because burning them alters the climate - the fastest and most cost-effective route is investing in efficiency improvements and renewable energy sources. We can get the energy we need, and get it more quickly and more cheaply, if we eschew the nuclear option. We would also avoid the downsides of nuclear power, including waste, accident risks, terror threats, transportation issues, weapons proliferation risks and more. As Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, said in a 2006 paper, "Every dollar invested in nuclear expansion will worsen climate change by buying less solution per dollar." If we take seriously the charge to address climate change and peak oil, we must move expeditiously to invest in efficiency and renewables. We cant afford to allow the nuclear industry to hijack our energy policy and divert us from cost-effective solutions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Mark Haim has been active around sustainability and energy concerns for more than 30 years. He is a co-founder of Missourians for Safe Energy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Mark Haim 1402 Richardson St. Columbia, MO 65201 (w) 573-875-0539 (h) 573-442-2360 E-mail: mhaim@riseup.net [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ***************************************************************** 2 Alert: Act Now - Stop Loan Guarantees for Nuke Industry Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 07:16:54 -0600 (CST) Morning All, The nuclear industry is at it again - trying to get us to be the collateral for any mistakes or cost-overuns. A $50 Billion largess was added to the current energy bill and these boys are hungry for more more money they ain't made. For decades the alternative energy sources, like wind and solar, have been declared 'not cost-effective' and ignored, but the polluters have been given massive subsidies. The Libertarian crowd claims the 'market-place' should be the final arbiter or all that happens under the sun, but the polluters would never be able to survive without these grants. Almost all alternative forms are cost effective when the corrupt standards are changed. These subsidies can be stopped - but you need to move now. In two days the bill moves forward. Please contact your congressional member, and call the speaker of the house, Pelosi, and let her know this is wrong. Many organizations are working to oppose this. One is , where you can find many good links. In addition, there is a petition at My Best, David Grace "All it takes is the signature of a low ranking NCO to send someone right around the world and have them locked up indefinitely but it takes the signature of the secretary of defense to let them go." --Torin Nelson, Private Intelligence Contractor Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 To: dpgrace@hotmail.com Subject: Alert: Act Now in Nancy Pelosi's District--Stop Loan Guarantees for New Reactors] -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Alert: Act Now in Nancy Pelosi's District--Stop Loan Guarantees for New Reactors Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:51:40 -0500 From: Michael Mariotte To: Michael Mariotte ACTION ALERT: ACT NOW IN NANCY PELOSIS DISTRICT HELP STOP LOAN GUARANTEES FOR NEW NUCLEAR REACTORS! November 26, 2007 As Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi needs to know that her constituents do not support the provision in the energy bill that would give loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. She has the power to remove the loan guarantee provision from the energy bill, which could be brought back to Congress the first week of December. Washington-based environmental groups are working to arrange a meeting with Rep. Pelosis office later this week. We want to take as many signatures as possible to her office for this meetingso please act now. Please activate your e-mail lists. Get your friends, colleagues, family, acquaintances, even strangers on a street corneranyone who may be in her district--to sign the statement below. The more she hears from the people in her home district the better, and time is short. These tax-payer backed loan guarantees would allow the nuclear industry to build new nuclear power plants that would be too economically risky to build without them. Without this provision in the energy bill, lending institutions would not finance the building of new nuclear power plants. In October, Moodys Investors Service reported that new reactors could cost $6 billion or more each. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office projects that utilities would default on 50% of the loans under this program. Loan guarantees eliminate the financial risk incurred by lending firms that is inherent in the building of new nuclear reactors, by passing it onto the tax-payers. Please email or fax sign-ons to Michael Mariotte at NIRS by Thursday morning, November 29, so we can make sure that Nancy Pelosi hears from her home district. If the meeting with Pelosis office occurs later than Thursday (it has not yet been firmly scheduled), we will let you know. Email: nirsnet@nirs.org NIRS fax number: 301-270-4291 In addition, please take a moment to call Rep. Pelosis San Francisco office (415-556-4862) this week with the same message! Thanks for your help! Nuclear Information and Resource Service 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340, Takoma Park, MD 20912 301-270-6477; f: 301-270-4291; www.nirs.org; nirsnet@nirs.org Sign-on Statement Hon. Nancy Pelosi: As constituents in your home district, we do not support the provision in the current energy bill that would give the nuclear industry $50 billion or more in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to build new nuclear reactors across the country. Do not allow this provision to remain in the energy bill. NAME ADDRESS e-mail address _________________________________________________________________ You keep typing, we keep giving. Download Messenger and join the im Initiative now. http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=TAGLM ***************************************************************** 3 San Luis Obispo County: Initiative to reverse ban on nuclear plants statwide is withdrawn website | 11/27/2007 | Insufficient public support for new nuclear plants in California prompts sponsor to shelve the plan By David Sneed Should the ban on new nuclear plants be repealed in California? Yes. We need the energy and nuclear is a good way to get it. No. Nuclear is no good. Only if there is no expansion at Diablo. Only if there are no new reactors in earthquake zones. I don't know. An initiative to lift the state’s ban on new nuclear power plants will not appear on the June 2008 ballot. State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, has withdrawn the ballot initiative he submitted to state elections officials, after public opinion polls found lukewarm support for new nuclear power plants in the state. His initiative would have overturned a 1976 state law prohibiting construction of new nuclear reactors until a permanent solution for the storage of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel is found. About 14 percent of California’s power comes from nuclear plants. The state has two nuclear power plants in operation: the San Onofre plant near San Diego and the Diablo Canyon plant near Avila Beach. “This was certainly a controversial initiative,” DeVore said. “If we pushed this thing to the ballot, we were likely to lose.” Lifting the state’s nuclear moratorium is relevant to San Luis Obispo County because most proposals for new nuclear plants call for adding reactors to existing plants. Officials with Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which owns and operates the Diablo Canyon plant, say they are interested in more nuclear power but are not proposing adding new reactors to Diablo. PG&E spokesman Pete Resler said Monday the utility had no comment on the De- Vore initiative. There is renewed interest nationally in nuclear power and federal regulators expect to process applications for about 30 new reactors along the East Coast and in the Southeast in coming years. A group of entrepreneurs has proposed building a new nuclear plant in Fresno. Unless it is overturned, the state’s nuclear moratorium will prevent new nuclear plants for the foreseeable future. Completion of a planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is at least a decade away—maybe longer if Nevada legislators succeed in their pledge to keep the repository out of their state. Lacking support In addition to lifting the nuclear moratorium, DeVore’s ballot initiative would have prevented nuclear plants from being built in earthquake-prone areas and along ecologically sensitive parts of the coastline. In October, DeVore got permission to begin gathering signatures to place the initiative on the ballot. No signature gathering was done, however, because several opinion polls showed that 52 percent of the public supports more nuclear power while 42 percent is opposed. That was not enough support to justify moving ahead given the fact that environmental and some consumer groups were gearing up to fight the initiative. “That’s very modest support,” he said. “You want to be in the mid-60 percent range before you start on something that controversial.” Rochelle Becker, who heads the San Luis Obispo-based Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, said she was delighted by DeVore’s decision to stop the campaign. The state Energy Commission is doing a cost-benefit analysis of nuclear power and it would be premature and irresponsible, she said, to change the law before that analysis is finished. Becker was working with other groups, including the Sierra Club, to fight the initiative. They want the state to pursue renewable energy sources rather than nuclear power. “When Mr. DeVore introduced this initiative,” she said, “he brought many more people together on our side than he anticipated.” DeVore said he hasn’t given up on the idea of new nuclear power plants in California as a way of meeting ambitious state goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He plans to submit a bill next year that would lift the nuclear moratorium legislatively and said it may take several years to generate enough public support to change the law. DeVore submitted such a bill to the state Legislature last year, but it was voted down in committee. The new bill has not been written yet, so De- Vore is not sure how it will differ from the previous one. Reach David Sneed at 781- 7930. ***************************************************************** 4 Journal Record: State's power producers put off by nuclear plant's high cost, long construction time by Tim Talley The Associated Press November 28, 2007 OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Oklahoma power producers said Tuesday the high cost and lengthy construction time for a nuclear power plant make it unlikely they will turn to nuclear energy to meet rising consumer demand for power in the state. John Wendling, director of power supply operations for Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co., said OG&E is the largest generator in the state with 6,200 megawatts of capacity but is still too small to afford the cost of a nuclear power plant, estimated by industry officials at between $5 billion and $6 billion. “As an individual company, we’re not big enough,” Wendling told state lawmakers at a meeting of the House Energy and Technology Committee where producers and an official with the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Energy Institute discussed the future of nuclear energy in Oklahoma. Wendling and representatives of other power producers said nuclear energy is one of many options they consider when deciding how to keep up with Oklahoma’s growing demand for electric power. But licensing and construction of a nuclear power plant would take up to 10 years, too long to meet the demand producers will face in the next five years. “Part of it is how long does it take to build the asset,” Wendling said. “We need to be able to understand the risks.” Mike Kiefner, chief operating officer of the Grand River Dam Authority, said it may require the financial resources of all of Oklahoma’s energy providers to afford the cost of a nuclear power plant. Wendling also said energy providers need to educate the public about the safety and reliability of nuclear energy to overcome what he called “the Three Mile Island syndrome,” a reference to the 1979 nuclear accident in Pennsylvania. Following the meeting, an environmentalist, Jean McMahon of Fort Gibson, said she opposes nuclear energy, describing nuclear power plants as “extremely dangerous.” “They still have nowhere to store the waste,” said McMahon, who wore a polar bear suit on which “No Nukes — Solar Yes” was written on the front. Last month, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission rejected a $1.8 billion, 950-megawatt coal-fired plant proposed by OG&E, Public Service Company of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority. The utilities said they needed the massive Red Rock plant to keep up with Oklahomans’ growing appetite for energy. Using coal as a fuel would diversify their fuel mix and help keep consumer costs low. “We’re all concerned about power and the cost of power,” commission Chairman Jeff Cloud told lawmakers. He said nuclear power is clean, reliable and inexpensive, but raising the issue “can be, no pun intended, politically radioactive.” Mike McGarey, director of state outreach for the NEI, said 104 nuclear reactors in the U.S. currently provide 20 percent of the nation’s power. Nuclear power has the lowest production costs of any fuel and is the largest source of emission free electricity in the nation, McGarey said. However, utilities have been reluctant to build new plants due to high construction costs, uncertainty over how to dispose of nuclear waste and a licensing process that costs hundreds of millions of dollars, Cloud said. “That upfront cost has been a deterrent,” Cloud said. But demand for electricity nationally is expected to rise 45 percent by 2030, and nuclear power is one way to increase generating capacity, Cloud said. “Other states are moving in that direction. Oklahoma is not in the game yet,” Cloud said. Oklahoma is one of 19 states that does not have a nuclear power plant, Cloud said. In the 1970s, PSO proposed the Black Fox nuclear power plant near Inola in eastern Oklahoma but abandoned it after a nine-year battle with opponents. In the seven-state region that includes Oklahoma, nuclear plants are operating in Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri and Texas. Colorado and New Mexico also do not have nuclear plants. In September a power producer in Texas, NRG Energy Inc., submitted the first application for a new nuclear reactor in the U.S. in nearly 30 years. NRG’s application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is for two new units at its facility in Bay City, Texas, about 90 miles southwest of Houston. ***************************************************************** 5 Brattleboro Reformer: Activists object to nuke plant transfer BRATTLEBORO, VT By BOB AUDETTE, Reformer Staff Saturday, November 24 BRATTLEBORO -- Before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agrees to allow Entergy to spin off eight of its nuclear reactors into a separate holding company, it should hold hearings in the six communities where those power plants are located. That's the request from the anti-nuclear group Friends United for Sustainable Energy, which represents people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The spinoff -- of Pilgrim in Plymouth, Mass., Vermont Yankee in Vernon, Indian Point on the Hudson River, James A. FitzPatrick in Oswego, N.Y., and Palisades in South Haven, Mich. -- is intended to consolidate debt and increase the amount the holding company can borrow to make upgrades on reactors in operation or to build new reactors. FUSE's request, called a petition to intervene, followed a similar petition filed by a Massachusetts labor union, representing workers at the Pilgrim nuclear power station, which claimed the spinoff would affect safety at the power plants. "If they don't hold hearings at each site, it's absolutely impossible for the rights of citizens to be involved in the process to be fully exercised," said Sherwood Martinelli, spokesman for FUSE, who lives in Peekskill, N.Y., three miles from the three reactors at Indian Point nuclear power plant. Spinning off the nuclear power plants "will decrease the overall ability of Entergy ... to adequately protect human health and environment during various accidents and threat scenarios," contended Martinelli in the FUSE petition. In response, Entergy filed a motion to strike FUSE's petition on the grounds it doesn't comply with the NRC's guidelines for submitting such documents. "FUSE ... has filed multiple iterations of its petitions causing confusion in the record and significantly disadvantaging Entergy in attempting to provide a meaningful response," wrote attorneys representing Entergy. In addition, they wrote, FUSE failed to forward a copy of its petition to Entergy, which the group contends is required by federal regulations. Quoting from an earlier NRC ruling, Entergy's attorneys wrote that FUSE had been admonished by the NRC for failing to send documentation in the past to all parties involved. "Failure to comply with the rules can well result in a litigant being dismissed from the proceeding," they wrote. But, wrote Martinelli in response to the Entergy motion to strike, regulations do not demand that petitions must be sent to all parties of interest. "The federal notice states that the licensee should be served. Should is not mandatory." This is just one attempt of many by Entergy attorneys to "swamp" FUSE with minutiae, said Martinelli in a telephone interview with the Reformer. "(The NRC) says it grants us involvement in the process," he said. "What they really try to do anytime and every time is to thwart citizen involvement in the process." The hearings are required, he wrote, because the action requested by Entergy presents "unique, and heretofore unknown problematic issues, to both the NRC and we as stakeholders" that may not be addressed without public input." "Every reactor community has to have its chance to speak its voice," he said. In its motion to strike FUSE's petition, Entergy attorneys wrote that FUSE's filings are redundant and confusing. "(FUSE) has created an incoherent record in terms of the various petitions it has filed, in effect shifting a very considerable and costly burden to (Entergy) and others to divine which version remains viable," wrote Entergy attorneys. "Entergy attempts to throw a red herring into the mix by claiming they are confused by (what) was filed," wrote Martinelli. "Dismissing viable contentions on the basis of technical breeches of the rules would not be in the best interest of justice, nor would it fulfill the NRC's superseding responsibility to protect human health and safety," he wrote. "Entergy does not raise any argument as to the viability, or lack of, for the contentions ... but instead simply tries to have them dismissed on a misunderstanding of the rules." Without grass-roots organizations, the NRC would fail to recognize the very real concerns of people who live near a nuclear power plant, said Martinelli. "It's absolutely imperative that every reactor community have groups like the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution and FUSE," said Martinelli. And it's also important, he said, that these groups join forces to prevent new nuclear reactors from being built and old nuclear reactors from being relicensed. Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com or 802-254-2311, ext. 273. ***************************************************************** 6 Hartford Courant: Nuclear Plant Site Declared Safe -- Courant.com November 27, 2007 Haddam Neck Land Gets Green Light For Unrestricted Use By Public By GARY LIBOW | Courant Staff Writer HADDAM — - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the former Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant site a clean bill of health Monday, releasing several hundred Haddam Neck acres for unrestricted public use. "A member of the public can live, sleep and eat at the site, 365 days a year and 24 hours a day, and not be subjected to unsafe levels of radiation," NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said. The release was signed by NRC Deputy Director Keith McConnell in a culmination of the plant's multimillion-dollar decommissioning, the dismantling of the reactor and the remediation of radioactive contaminants. "I'm happy to see the conclusion of many years of work. It's been ongoing for 11 years," said Ted Smith, the NRC's project manager for Connecticut Yankee. "A lot of stuff happens on paper, and a lot of things have to happen at the site: the water monitoring, the decontamination of facilities, surveys, remediation and confirming surveys." The dismantling and decommissioning of Connecticut Yankee — the second nuclear power plant built in New England and sixth in the nation — was completed in July. The facility, which generated power for the first time on Aug. 7, 1967, produced 110 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity before it ceased operations on Dec. 5, 1996. Following final grid inspections of the former nuclear power plant site by state and federal inspectors, the NRC ruled that the land is not a threat to public health and safety. First Selectman Tony Bondi said he has confidence in the NRC's final determination that unhealthy contamination levels have been cleaned. "If I can't trust the people who are the experts," Bondi said, "who can I trust? I would go over there and have lunch and look out at the Connecticut River." Hugh Curley, longtime chairman of the citizens' advisory panel overseeing the decommissioning and cleanup, lauded Connecticut Yankee and the diligent oversight of regulators and the public. "It won't ever be listed as a brownfield, which is to Haddam's benefit," Curley said. But Sal Mangiagli, an anti-nuclear activist who lives on Old Turnpike Road, just over a mile from the plant site, remained skeptical. "I'm glad the site has been cleaned up. They remediated over 200,000 cubic yards of soil," Mangiagli said. "I still have concerns about the strontium-90 that's still in the wells. They [the state] are going to be monitoring it. ... There needs to be a monument over there: 'Gone But Not Forgotten.'" Wayne Norton, Connecticut Yankee's president and CEO, in a prepared statement, credited the NRC and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the state Department of Environmental Protection and local stakeholders for "overcoming many challenges along the way." According to Norton, Connecticut Yankee's mission and focus will be the safe storage of more than 1,000 of the plant's spent nuclear fuel rods and contaminated metals. The radioactive materials are stored in steel-reinforced concrete casks about a mile from the former plant's footprint. The Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co.'s spent fuel storage complex site, about 5 acres, remains licensed by the NRC. Guarded around the clock, the spent radioactive waste will likely remain on-site for decades. The federal government has faced numerous delays in establishing a permanent repository for these and other highly radioactive wastes. The town and state have expressed keen interest in acquiring the vast Haddam Neck woodland from Connecticut Yankee, but Norton said Monday that the company hasn't decided on the future use of the site. Bondi said he'd like to buy several Haddam Neck acres from the company, at below market price, for a playground and/or an open space recreational area. "In terms of land donation, I'll believe it when I see it," Bondi said. "There is a dollar value to those acres. From what I can gather, they are more inclined to keep it." Contact Gary Libow at glibow@courant.com. Copyright © 2007, The Hartford Courant ***************************************************************** 7 FIA: NPP Belene is an adventure that will rip next generation off with about EUR 20 million FOCUS Information Agency 25 November 2007 | 12:58 | FOCUS News Agency Sofia. We find out that Bulgarian representatives have told many untruths the European Commission in reference to the Nuclear Power Plant Belene, former chairperson of the Nuclear Regulation Agency Georgi Kaschiev said in an interview to BNR. He pointed out that the key problem of NPP Belene is that evaluation for environmental influence doesn’t affects the issue of seismicity of the area. There is a lack of money for stopping the exploitation of the power plant he added. Information Agency FOCUS is a member of FIBEP and is certified under the ISO 9001:2000 standard ***************************************************************** 8 Boston Globe: A world without nukes - Karl F. Inderfurth and Bruce Riedel November 24, 2007 A NEW era in US-India cooperation was unveiled at the White House in July 2005 when President Bush told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he would work to achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India, despite over a quarter-century of disagreements between the two countries over nuclear issues. The overwhelming bipartisan support for the US-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement that Bush signed last December reflected the consensus of American foreign policy strategists that India will be one of America's most crucial partners in the 21st century. Eleven months later that agreement is in political trouble, only barely moving forward. The effort to finalize the deal has foundered in part because of the inertia of a US administration preoccupied by Iraq. More recently it has run into stiff opposition from members of the leftist parties in Singh's ruling coalition who are allergic to any suggestion of outside interference in India's internal affairs, especially by the United States. Opponents in New Delhi and Washington are hoping the clock will expire on a lame-duck Bush administration before it is able to obtain final congressional approval for the agreement. This would be a most unfortunate outcome. Paradoxically, a nuclear-free world may be one of the casualties. It has long been a goal of the United States to bring India closer as a partner in global efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons. The civil nuclear agreement is an important step forward in that direction. That is why Mohamed ElBaradei - the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency - says it is "a milestone, timely for ongoing efforts to consolidate the nonproliferation regime, combat nuclear terrorism, and strengthen nuclear safety." With this agreement, the United States explicitly recognizes India's status as a full-fledged nuclear power and commits itself to a partnership in the realm of civilian nuclear energy. That may open the door to an even broader nuclear agenda the two nations could pursue, one that is attracting increasing international attention. In an article published earlier this year titled "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons," George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn argue that the world is entering a new nuclear era, more dangerous than before, with nuclear know-how proliferating and nonstate terrorist groups seeking to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction. They said a bold new vision is needed to reverse this trend and cited two world leaders as inspiration for their declared goal of a "nuclear-free world" - Ronald Reagan and Rajiv Gandhi. Both leaders shared an abhorrence of nuclear weapons. Reagan called them "totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing." Both leaders proposed their total elimination - Reagan at his summit with Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986 and Gandhi in a dramatic address to the United Nations in 1988 in which he proposed their elimination by 2010, adding the world must "put a stop to this madness." Shultz, Perry, Kissinger, Nunn, and others propose a number of urgent steps that would lay the groundwork for a world free of the nuclear threat, including US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and efforts to secure ratification by other key states; providing the highest possible standards of security for all stocks of weapons and nuclear material everywhere in the world; and halting the production of fissile material for weapons globally. But, first and foremost, they say, "is intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to turn the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise." India is a strong candidate to become part of that global effort. Last month at the UN, Indian delegate (and member of Parliament) Sushma Swaraj warned about the possibility of terrorists and nonstate actors acquiring nuclear weapons. She said India has long sought the total elimination of nuclear arms backed by an international security system in which states do not feel the need to develop, produce, or stockpile them. This month, India's external affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee, reiterated his country's commitment to global nuclear disarmament, "based on the principles of universality, nondiscrimination, and effective compliance." This could be the beginning basis for a new US-India nuclear partnership, if American officials avoid what Indians referred to in the past as "the three D's" of US nuclear policy - dominance, discrimination, and double standards. In this regard, it would also be appropriate for the United States to lead by example, beginning with further substantial reductions in US nuclear forces, taking nuclear weapons off high alert status (thus reducing the danger of accidental or unauthorized use), and Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. With or without finalizing the civilian nuclear agreement, the United States and India should pursue this new nuclear agenda, but it will have more credibility if that deal is consummated. Recently Singh said his government remains committed to the deal and that, even with the delays, "We have not reached the end of the road." Let's hope so. It could lay the foundation for a partnership between the two countries to seek a nuclear-free world. Karl F. Inderfurth, a professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, served as US assistant secretary of state for Southasian affairs from 1997 to 2001. Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, served as special assistant to the president and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council from 1997-2002. © Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company. ***************************************************************** 9 ajc.com: Nuclear foes protest Plant Vogtle expansion Indigo Girls singer among those opposed to Georgia Power plan By MARGARET NEWKIRK The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 11/27/07 Holding signs, applauding and shivering in the wind outside the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's office in Atlanta, 21 staunch opponents of nuclear power, including one Indigo Girl, made their case Tuesday. Johnny Crawford/Staff Indigo Girl Emily Saliers: 'Nuclear energy is not the answer.' The comment period on an environmental impact report on that plant closes at the end of the day Wednesday. Georgia Power wants to add two more units to the two units already at the plant. The group outside the NRC wants the public to weigh in against that expansion — or any nuclear expansion. "We're few but we're strong," said Emily Saliers, the Indigo Girls member in the small crowd. "Nuclear energy is not the answer," she said. "It's not clean, it's expensive, it's dangerous and its highly subsidized by the federal government." Georgia Power and its parent, Southern Co., are among a number of utilities now pushing to build nuclear units for the first time in decades. The push has heavy support — including financial support — from Washington. Of the 21 opponents on hand, 11 took the mike. Some had been fighting nuclear power since the first two Vogtle units were finished at great expense in the 1980s. Some had been at it since the 1970s. Their issues haven't changed much. The United States still has no final, central resting place for the radioactive waste reactors produce, for instance. Nuclear plants remain costly to build. The activists passed out fliers showing the huge cost overruns that plagued the original Vogtle units. The activists strongly opposed increased subsidies for nuclear builders now pending in Congress. Those proposed subsidies include $50 billion in tax dollars to guarantee nuclear builders' loans. A newly prominent issue is water. Nuclear power consumes lots of river water, now at a premium because of the region's drought. Sara Barczak, of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said an expanded Vogtle would consume as much water per day as is used by every resident inside the city limits of Atlanta, Macon, Augusta and Savannah. Southern Co. said it couldn't vouch for Barczak's numbers, but said Plant Vogtle uses less than one percent of the Savannah River's average flow now and will use less than two percent of that flow if expanded. The company said it has safely stored waste for decades at pools and casks at its plant, and will continue to do so until a long-promised central repository opens at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The company has yet to give an estimate of what its proposed new nuclear units will cost customers. But it's getting closer. The company expects to have a price from its vendor, Westinghouse, on Friday. Beth Thomas, a spokeswoman for Southern's nuclear subsidiary, said that though Southern supports federal loan guarantees for the industry at large, it isn't counting on them for Plant Vogtle. However, it would take advantage of them if they became available, Thomas said. © 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ***************************************************************** 10 Newsday.com: Connecticut Yankee plant is officially decommissioned -- November 27, 2007 HADDAM, (AP) _ Eleven years after it stopped producing electricity, the Connecticut Yankee nuclear plant has been officially decommissioned. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission informed the plant owner Monday that the majority of the site can now be used for unrestricted public use. Federal officials say any residual radiation contamination on the land most recently tested _ about 210 acres _ is below NRC requirements and poses no threat to public safety. The NRC allows a maximum radiation dose of 25 millirems a year. That is still well below the 300 millirems a year the average American gets from background radiation, according to federal authorities. The entire Connecticut Yankee property is about 500 acres. Haddam First Selectman Anthony Bondi said he's been assured by state and federal officials that the site is safe. "You need to put your trust in agencies whose job it is to oversee these things," he said. Rep. James Spallone, D-Essex, said he has followed the closure closely, toured the site and spoken with the officials. "You need to rely on the regulators, the DEP (state Department of Environmental Protection) and science as to the safety," he said. "And so far, it appears, while there were some stumbles along the way, it's been a pretty thorough job." The plant owner, Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co., must still maintain a federal license for five acres on the site to cover a dry cask storage facility. About 1,000 spent nuclear fuel rods that contain uranium are stored there. Connecticut Yankee must maintain $100 million in nuclear liability insurance for the storage until the waste has been removed. Bondi said he expects the rods will remain at the site for 20 to 30 years, unless the federal government ultimately opens a long-term repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Officials oppose any efforts to move waste from elsewhere to the site for storage. Connecticut Yankee began operating commercially in 1968. The dismantling and cleanup were completed this past July. Bob Capstick, a spokesman for Connecticut Yankee, said the company has hired a consultant to look at possible uses for the property. No decisions have been made. Bondi said the town of Haddam could be interested in hosting a non-nuclear power generating plant on the site. There is also interest in using some of the property for open space and recreation. "It's a closing chapter in the history of Haddam. It was a good source of revenue for us for a whole bunch of years," Bondi said. "If we could do that again, and if we could have a beneficial use or mutual use, I look forward to that." Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material ***************************************************************** 11 London Times: French seal $12bn Chinese nuclear deal Site last Updated: Nov 26 2007 1:01AM Published:Nov 24, 2007 Jane Macartney in Beijing and Robin Pagnamenta President Sarkozy helped to clinch the world's largest commercial nuclear power contract yesterday, winning an agreement to sell French-designed reactors and atomic fuel worth nearly $12 billion to China. The deal with Areva, the state-owned French nuclear energy giant, forms part of an ambitious Chinese drive to satisfy the country's growing hunger for energy. Areva said that the $11.86 billion (ś5.7 billion) contract to build two European pressurised water reactors (EPRs) and to supply more than a decade's worth of fuel was a global record for the industry. The EPR is the world's most powerful nuclear reactor design. Each unit is capable of generating 1,700 megawatts of electricity. After Finland and France, China will be home to only the third and fourth EPRs to have been built. Related Links * Sarkozy paves way for Areva privatisation * Sarkozy angers Germany with nuclear scheme Areva has asked to be paid partly in euros to protect itself against the fall in the dollar. Indeed, the strength of the euro, which hit a record against the dollar last week, overshadowed the main business section of Mr Sarkozy's three-day visit to China. Sitting side by side with President Hu Jintao, Mr Sarkozy eschewed diplomatic niceties and tackled the question of the day, making a public appeal to the Chinese leader to allow the yuan to rise more quickly against Europe's single currency. Yesterday's statement by Mr Sarkozy marks the start of a difficult week for China. Today it will welcome a high-powered European Union delegation, which will emphasise to China the need for the yuan to climb, not only to ease global trade imbalances but also to cool its own economy and dampen down inflation. Mr Hu sat by impassively in one of the ornate rooms in the Great Hall of the People while his French guest told him of China's growing responsibilities on such issues as the environment and exchange rates. Mr Sarkozy said: "We need to arrive at currency rates that are harmonious and fair. This means that, for its own sake as well, China needs to accelerate the appreciation of the yuan against the euro." While the Chinese currency has climbed 9 per cent against the dollar since its landmark 2.1 per cent revaluation in July 2005, it has fallen about 11 per cent in total against the euro. The euro's strength is causing growing consternation in the EU, whose trade deficit with China is soaring. France alone had a ?16 billion (ś11.5 billion) deficit with China last year. Greater bonhomie was on display as the two leaders presided over a raft of business deals, including the Areva deal and a decision by China to place the biggest order to date for Airbus aircraft. Representatives signed a framework deal to buy 160 aircraft - 110 single-aisle A320s and 50 twin-aisle A330s - worth $17 billion before discounts. It exceeded an order last year for 150 aircraft from the country with the world's fastest-growing fleet of airliners. China will also take a 5 per cent risk-sharing stake in the development of the A350, a ?10 billion project that is an attempt by Airbus to catch up with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner in the fast-growing mid-sized airliner market. There was no sign of interest from China, despite earlier reports, that it would buy one of the giant A380s. Louis Gallois, chief executive of Airbus's parent company EADS, said that the strength of the euro could lead to a huge increase in outsourcing of production to lower-cost countries if it was not reined in. Airbus sells its aircraft in dollars, but nearly half of its costs are in euros. He said: "It is a vital danger, which means it is eating the margins of the company, but it is not an immediate one." Mr Sarkozy did save a few euros. He was given an 80 per cent discount for his stay in the ?6,800-a-night State Suite at the Beijing Sofitel hotel. All material copyright The Times. © Johnnic Media Investments Limited 1996-2007. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 12 Evening Star: New nuclear plant for Sizewell? 28 November 2007 | 07:12 Sizewell could get a third nuclear power station SIZEWELL on the Suffolk coast is one of four sites at the top of the list for a new nuclear power station if the government gives the go-ahead for an expansion of the industry next year. Four sites in the south of England have been identified by British Energy, the company that operates Sizewell B, as potential sites for new stations. The others are Hinkley Point in Somerset, Dungeness in Kent, and Bradwell in Essex. British Energy has commissioned a report from the Halcrow Group looking at how sites it owns could be used as locations for new nuclear stations. It recommends that Sizewell could be suitable for another station because the existing coast defences could be used. However a third station on the site should be set slightly further back from the coastline itself. British Energy chief executive Bill Coley said: “Our existing sites all have potential for replacement nuclear and indeed we have suitable land at all locations. “But it's about much more than land. We are building the foundations for replacement nuclear by continuing and strengthening our excellent relationships and dialogue with local communities. “Our skilled and experienced staff also live locally and provide a healthy flow of skills and talent into the business.” A spokesman for the company said British Energy had been in contact with potential business partners to ensure it was able to go ahead with building new nuclear plants if the government gave the go-ahead in the new year. French government-owned EDF Energy has already said it would like to build new nuclear stations in Britain, probably in partnership with another company. However objectors warned that building more nuclear plants would be an expensive folly. Ben Ayliffe, from Greenpeace, said linking the new reactors to the National Grid would cost the taxpayer huge amounts of money - money that would be better spent on renewable energy. Copyright © 2007 Archant Regional Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 13 AfricaNews - Ghana paves the way for nuclear energy - AfricaNews.com - 1. Posted on Monday 26 November 2007 - 11:01 Francis Ameyibor, AfricaNews reporter in Accra, Ghana A round table discussion on the Draft Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) Bill begun at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission on Tuesday with the hope that a common platform would be reached on how to improve regulatory effectiveness as well as improve protection for the public. The day's meeting, which discussed the establishment of the NRA, its functions and powers, staffing, structure, and financial provisions attracted about 50 participants including Ministers of State, Parliamentarians, Nuclear Scientists, officials of the Attorney Generals Department, Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drugs Board, Volta River Authority and some members of the academia. The meeting was also to meet the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency for the establishment of a Legal Infrastructure for Nuclear Energy Programme and Radiation Protection in Ghana. Professor John Humphrey Amuasi, Dean, School of Nuclear and Allied Sciences, University of Ghana, Atomic Energy Campus said the introduction of a nuclear power programme in Ghana and its successful execution would depend largely "on our ability to master local and international infrastructure covering a wide range of activities". The activities, he said should include how to operate a reliable and adequate electric power generation, transmission and distribution system and how to implement necessary expansion when needed. Prof Amausi said; "there was no gain saying how much Ghana needs a nuclear infrastructure to move us from a typical consumer oriented country which imports everything from power generators to toothpicks from other countries who some 50 years ago were on the same level with us in terms of development". Nuclear energy and radiation infrastructure hold the key for agricultural and industrial growth, he said. Dr Yaw Serfor-Armah, Deputy Director-General, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission said the meeting would preview the draft Nuclear Regulation Authority Bill to address issues such as the renewed interest in the use of nuclear energy for electricity generation; the changed global security situation and the consequential need for safety and security to be more closely integrated among others. He said Ghana already had a Radiation Protection Board but its resources were inadequate and these needed to be enhanced to include the aspect related to the regulation of nuclear power facilities. "The achievement and maintenance of a high level of safety and security in the use of nuclear and radiation sources and radioactive waste management, will obviously depend on a sound legal and governmental infrastructure comprising an independent and appropriately organised regulatory body with well-defined responsibilities and functions, and staff with access to adequate resources," he said. Copyright Africa Interactive 2007 | mail@africanews.com ***************************************************************** 14 Earth Times: New accident at Bulgarian nuclear plant leads to reactor shutdown : General Posted : Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:53:00 GMT Author : DPA Category Sofia - A fresh incident at Bulgaria's Kosloduj nuclear power station on the river Danube led to a 1,000-megawatt reactor being shut down overnight, the power station reported Saturday. The reactor had to be shut down after steam escaped from a pipe in the conventional part of the power station. Elevated levels of radiation were not recorded during the incident. The second of two Soviet reactors at the plant was still operating. The defect was expected to be fixed within two days. As a condition for joining the European Union, Bulgaria had to shut down two older 440mW models at the end of 2006 in response to safety concerns from Brussels. Copyright, respective author or news agency Mobile/PDA | News Alerts (c) 2007 Earthtimes.org, All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 15 Daily Yomiuri: Govt's G-8 priorities to include nuclear nonproliferation The government has decided to make nuclear nonproliferation--including issues regarding North Korean and Iran--one of the three major topics to be discussed at the Group of Eight summit meeting to be held in July at the Lake Toya hot-spring resort in Toyakocho, Hokkaido. The government will notify G-8 member countries of the topics--also to include climate change and assistance to Africa--before it takes over the presidency from Germany in January. Key topics for each annual G-8 summit meeting are presented well in advance, allowing time for the direction of the discussion to be determined. Apart from the main topics, the summit meeting will address immediate political and economic issues. The government had planned to focus mainly on climate change and aid to Africa at next year's summit. As a neighbor of North Korea, however, it concluded that it was important to make nuclear nonproliferation issues a key issue in the summit. Europe and the United States have also have expressed strong concern over nonproliferation issues involving Iran. Now the government wants to use the summit to show that it is taking the initiative to establish a new disarmament and nonproliferation regime, in line with the wishes of the international community. Regarding climate change, the government will address long-term goals and a new framework for cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. The government will invite newly emerging economies such as China and India to attend the summit meeting, and seek to build consensus among participating countries for the formulation of a post-Kyoto Protocol framework. On the subject of assistance to Africa, the government plans to discuss such issues as sustainable economic growth on the continent and poverty eradication. The government also plans to reflect the opinions of leaders from about 30 African countries who are due to participate in the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development, to be held in Yokohama in May. The government hopes to reach agreement on new action guidelines aimed at reducing mortality rates among infants, pregnant women and new mothers, and also on measures to tackle infectious diseases. The Daily Yomiuri, The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 16 Bulletin Online: Time for a U.S. energy strategy | By Daniel M. Kammen | 27 November 2007 Over the next 50 years, progress to meaningfully address the risk of significant climate change will require an estimated 80-percent or more reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions. Global emissions now include more than 7 billion tons of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere annually, three-quarters of which come from fossil fuel combustion (with the remainder largely from land conversion and forest burning), and their rate of accumulation is increasing. It is now clear that through action or inaction, our collective climate future is strongly tied to what course the United States steers in the beginning of the twenty-first century. As the largest source of accumulated greenhouse gas emissions in Earth's atmosphere, but more importantly as the nation with the largest energy resource and research base to affect change, the United States is positively poised to play a, if not the critical role. A range of technologies exist that can protect the environment and improve our economic and political security, in many cases with political and economic benefits to the nation in the form of technological and financial leadership, increased geopolitical stability and flexibility, and job growth in the clean energy sector. To accomplish these goals, we must recognize that replacing the vast infrastructure and economic machinery built to exploit fossil fuels will be a central challenge of the twenty-first century, and one where the paradigm of large, centralized energy monopolies will need to evolve to one of a decentralized, clean-energy marketplace. More than any set of technologies or economic incentives, this is the issue where climate change causes the most uncertainty--and in some cases, fear and pushback. Despite a great deal of sound and fury, it is critical to recognize that we currently do not have an energy strategy. In the United States, arguably, there has not been anything even remotely resembling an energy strategy since the efforts by Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter 30 years ago. Recently, however, integrated planning on climate and energy has begun to emerge at the state and regional level, setting a precedent for changing the course of national energy policy. In 1932, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote a line that is often quoted in Supreme Court opinions, "A single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel economic and social experiments." Courageous experiments are now taking place in a number of U.S. states, and can form the basis of needed federal legislation and leadership. The 2006 California Global Warming Solutions Act, which mandates a 25-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, as well as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States, another cooperative effort to create a carbon cap-and-trade system, are such examples. By contrast, the federal government's carbon emission reduction target for 2012 will require only a slight constraint on business-as-usual projections, merely slowing emissions rather than reversing them. This target would actually allow for an increase in emissions over the next five years greater than the 10-percent increase that occurred in the previous decade. z If we are serious about meeting the climate challenge, we need to set a goal consistent with the Energy Department’s Climate Change Technology Plan (CCTP) objective of moving in the long term (by 2050) toward an 80-percent reduction in net emissions. In fact, the CCTP actually mentions a zeroing of net emissions at some time after mid-century. The California climate change protection plan is one to carefully consider in developing a comprehensive federal climate plan. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's strategy to mandate a 25-percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, followed by a further 80-percent reduction target for 2050 includes both near- and longer-term goals--including market-based cap-and-trade mechanisms--that delineate a path of emissions reductions toward climate stabilization. The plan includes a set of mutually reinforcing laws and executive orders. The heart of the plan is to cap emissions statewide and reduce them to 1990 levels by 2020 by aggressively deploying energy efficiency at the home, business, and industrial levels; reducing the carbon content of our transportation fuels; deploying solar and biofuels on a large scale; and insisting that all out-of-state electricity we import comes from low-carbon sources. California's strategy represents only one such path to a low-carbon society, but it embodies the key features that are required in federal legislation: an integrated, consistent approach that both initiates early action and clarifies the long-term road map to a decarbonized future. Any low-carbon strategy will also require an ongoing commitment to research. California has the largest state-led energy research program in the nation, and is today developing a plan for a 10-year, $600-million California Global Warming Solutions Institute to put emerging clean energy technologies into practice. As a nation, however, the United States has underinvested in energy research, development, and deployment for decades, and sadly the fiscal 2008 budget request is no exception. Today, federal energy research and development investment is back at levels lower than before the oil embargo of the 1970s--despite the fact that energy dependence and insecurity and the climatic impacts of our energy economy are dominating local economics, geopolitics, and environmental degradation. As an example of the U.S. government's lack of serious and sustained commitment to clean energy, consider the Energy Department's Advanced Energy Initiative budget: At $2.7 billion, the United States invests about $1 billion less in energy R&D today than it did a decade ago. The overall federal energy research and development budget request for 2008 is only $685 million more than the 2007 appropriated budget. Half of that increase is requested for nuclear power research; the rest would moderately increase funding for biofuels, solar, and FutureGen (a clean coal initiative), less $147 million for research on hydrogen fuel cells. The larger issue, however, is that the U.S. government invests less in energy research, development, and deployment than do a few large biotechnology firms with their own private R&D budgets. This is unacceptable on many fronts, especially since we know that investments in energy research pay off at both the national and private sector levels. My students and I have documented in a series of papers a disturbing trend away from investment in energy technology--both by the federal government and the private sector, which largely follows the federal lead. This trend is remarkable for two reasons: First, the level of investment in energy R&D in the mid-1990s was already dangerously low, and second, as our analysis indicates, the decline is pervasive--across almost every energy technology category, in both the public and private sectors, and at multiple stages in the innovation process. In each of these areas, investment has been either stagnant or declining. Moreover, the decline has occurred while overall U.S. R&D has grown by 6 percent per year--investments in health and defense have grown by 10 to 15 percent per year, respectively. As a result, the percentage of all U.S. R&D invested in the energy sector has declined from 10 percent in the 1980s to 2 percent today. Developing a balanced portfolio of energy research, development, and deployment projects is central to meeting the challenge of climate change, but it is equally clear that "technology push" projects must be accompanied by "demand pull" measures. Among the most important demand-pull (market creating or enabling) options available to us today are: * A national commitment to saving money and energy through energy-efficiency measures (some states, including California, are 40 percent more efficient than the national average); * Diversified energy portfolios that require increasing percentages of renewable sources; * Low-carbon fuel standards that evolve in time into sustainable fuel standards; * Carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems under which carbon emission rights are limited; * Carbon footprint analyses for business, industry, municipalities, and (critically) personal purchases; * and international collaborations and public-private partnerships designed to commercialize (or at least open market space for) clean energy and energy efficient technologies. This is a remarkably simple list, but one that has enough teeth and economic opportunities to harness the innovative power of the superpower economy. A suitably committed president--or presidential candidate--could put it into action. We are now in a moment--perhaps a first--where a growing view exists that energy and climate could be front-burner issues for candidates and voters. The time is right to focus on the energy system we want, not on the one we had, and sadly, still have. © 2007 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Remote Address: 206.130.124.74 · Server: www.thebulletin.org ***************************************************************** 17 BBC NEWS: Arrests in Slovak 'nuclear plot' Last Updated: Wednesday, 28 November 2007, 18:25 GMT Police in Slovakia and Hungary have arrested three people for allegedly trying to sell 1kg (2.2lb) of radioactive material, officials said. Slovak police spokesman Martin Korch said the three were planning to sell the unspecified material in Slovakia for $1m (Ł483,000). He said Slovak and Hungarian police had been working together on the case for several months. Mr Korch said experts were examining the radioactive material to determine exactly what it was. * BBC Copyright Notice MMVII ***************************************************************** 18 Sunday Herald: Top police officer warns that nuclear attack is inevitable Scotland's award-winning independent newspaper November 26, 2007 By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor Scotland must prepare for ‘absolute terror’ A NUCLEAR attack by terrorists causing widespread panic, chaos and death is inevitable and will happen soon, a senior Scottish police officer has warned. Ian Dickinson, who leads the police response to chemical, biological and nuclear threats in Scotland, has painted the bleakest picture yet of the dangers the world now faces. Efforts to prevent terrorist groups from obtaining materials that could be made into radioactive dirty bombs - or even crude nuclear explosives - are bound to fail, he said. And the result will be horror on an unprecedented scale. "These materials are undoubtedly out there, and undoubtedly will end up in terrorists' hands, and undoubtedly will be used by terrorists some time soon," he declared. "We must plan for failure and prepare for absolute terror." Dickinson is assistant chief constable with Lothian and Borders Police, and has responsibility through the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland for protecting Scotland from chemical and nuclear attacks. He has been closely involved in co-ordinating the country's counter-terrorism response. He said: "An incident will continue for days and all the public will see is people dying without reason. What will we do when our children come home from school with blisters on their skin and their parents don't know what to do? "What happens if 10 deaths, 50 deaths, 100 deaths start occurring in an unconnected and random way all over the country? The public will be rightly and understandably terrified." Casualties caused by radiation, which most people don't understand, would trigger widespread "panic and fear", said Dickinson. And the response of the emergency services "would be chaotic" because of a shortage of resources. The police capability for dealing with the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threat - known as CBRN - needs to be increased, he argued. "I haven't got as many officers with protective equipment as I would like," he added. "We must prepare for the worst." Dickinson delivered his dire warnings to an international conference in Edinburgh last week. More than 300 experts from 70 countries were taking part in a high-level meeting organised by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency on the risks of nuclear terrorism. The police response to a CBRN incident when it happened would have a "profound effect on our communities which should not be underestimated", he said. The protective clothing that officers would have to wear would look "terrifying". As Dickinson made the point in his speech on Wednesday, one of his fellow police officers appeared dramatically on the stage dressed head to toe in a regulation black protection suit. With his face completely obscured by a gas mask, the officer then walked slowly through the delegates seated in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. Decontamination after a radiation attack would be an "enormous cost", Dickinson contended. It would far exceed the multi-million pound bill for cleaning up the 50 premises contaminated with polonium-210 after the poisoning of the former KGB agent, Alexander Litvinenko, in London last year. There would also be a huge drain on resources from having to reassure many people who were unharmed but worried. The additional monitoring and clean-up work would be "a major problem", he said. Worldwide efforts to stem the spread of radioactive materials by the governments represented at the conference were vital, Dickinson concluded. "But the sad fact is that your work will fail." Dickinson's nightmare analysis was backed up by Dr Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant who used to work at the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire. "The amazing thing is that this hasn't happened already," he told the Sunday Herald. "We should expect it any minute. It's an obvious thing for a terrorist to do. A primitive nuclear explosion would simply eliminate the centre of a city like Glasgow or Edinburgh." The Edinburgh conference heard a series of other warnings about the risks of radioactive materials being stolen and used to cause devastation. "As the terrorists look for the next spectacular attack, we know that al-Qaeda in Iraq is calling on nuclear scientists to join in the jihad," said William Nye, director of counter-terrorism and intelligence at the Home Office in London. Richard Hoskins, from the International Atomic Energy Agency's Office of Nuclear Security in Vienna, revealed that there had been 1266 confirmed incidents in which radioactive materials had been stolen or lost around the world since 1993. Most involved radiation sources that could be made into dirty bombs, although in 18 instances small amounts of bombs-grade uranium or plutonium had been seized. Posted by: Jimbo on 9:18pm Sat 24 Nov 07 ©2007 newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 19 AU ABC: Uranium group wants more mines under Labor - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Updated November 26, 2007 09:00:00 A business lobby group is calling on Federal Labor to speed up the development of Australia's uranium industry. The Australian Uranium Association says the industry is constrained by laws banning uranium mining in some states. Spokesman Michael Angwin says Kevin Rudd indicated the removal of business regulation constraints would be a priority in his first year of government. "It will mean the industry is able to expand at its natural pace and become internationally competitive, bearing in mind Australia's got 38 per cent of the world's resources and is competing with other countries to meet the world's demand," he said. © 2007 ABC Privacy Policy ***************************************************************** 20 Casper Star Tribune: Judge: Drilling can go on Jackson, Wyoming - Sunday, November 25, 2007 [oas:casperstartribune.net/news/regional:Middle1] RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) -- A Rapid City judge says exploratory drilling for uranium can continue in southwest South Dakota. Circuit Judge Jack Delaney ruled in a challenge by Defenders of the Black Hills on a permit given to Powertech Uranium Corp. by the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Powertech is drilling 155 test holes and has staked 165 mining claims 8 miles southeast of Edgemont. The firm hopes to use a technique known as solution mining in which a mixture of water, bicarbonate and oxygen is injected into the ground to dissolve uranium and pump it out from nearby wells. Powertech also is exploring for uranium in northeastern Wyoming. Copyright © 2007 by the Casper Star-Tribune published by Lee Publications, Inc., a subsidiary of Lee Enterprises, Incorporated ***************************************************************** 21 DailyBulletin.com: Stop the plume's spread ... now OUR VIEW: Rialto can't wait for the courts; it needs state and federal help to clean up groundwater contamination as quickly as possible. For Rialto's leaders, it's becoming apparent that the battle against perchlorate contamination is more than the city can handle on its own. Not that the city hasn't been trying to get help in its quest to clean up the groundwater. But those efforts haven't yielded much, so now Rialto is taking more definitive steps to corral some high-powered assistance. Rialto City Council declared a state of emergency last week to deal with the city's dwindling supply of water. The council hopes that move will be a precursor to a similar declaration by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which could make state funds available to help clean up the perchlorate. Also last week, Councilman Ed Scott said he was inviting a federal Environmental Protection Agency official to come to Rialto and tell council members just how EPA's Superfund program works. Until recently, Scott, a member of the City Council's perchlorate subcommittee, has opposed a Superfund designation for Rialto, fearing that the "stigma" would depress property values and scare away potential business enterprises. Saying that state agencies have thus far failed the city in its efforts to clean up the toxic underground plumes, Scott said he would ask his fellow council members to vote on asking the governor's office to request that the 160-acre site in northern Rialto be considered for a Superfund cleanup. That's the right course of action at this point. Rialto has spent more than $13.5 million on legal fees, but the city's every thrust has been parried in court by the corporations that Rialto claims are responsible for the pollution; the legal fight drags on with one court delay after another. Meanwhile, the perchlorate relentlessly moves "downstream" in its underground plumes. Rialto says 360 million gallons of water a month are contaminated. That's the crux of the matter after all: The contamination must be cleaned up and the spread of perchlorate stopped. The legal wrangling over who ultimately pays how much may drag on for years - the estimates for cleanup costs run as high as $300 million - but the cleanup itself ought to start now. The EPA should be able to help. Wayne Praskins, a Superfund project manager whom Scott hopes to bring to Rialto, said his agency could begin its cleanup orders to suspected pollutions even before the site might be added to the federal Superfund list. We'd like to see the governor declare an emergency and the U.S. EPA get involved as soon as possible. The city discussed a possible state of emergency and a request for $23 million in state cleanup funds in September. City officials met with Praskins about EPA involvement back in August. Sure, there's a federal lawsuit scheduled for October, but that's when it might start - who knows how long it could drag on. In the meantime, Rialto needs state and federal authorities to help get the contamination cleaned up. For more local Southern California News: Copyright ©2007 ***************************************************************** 22 SWRM: More radioactive waste in Ontario landfills solidwastemag.com - Solid Waste & Recycling Magazine - 11/26/2007 Canada's Magazine on collection, hauling, processing & disposal According to a CBC news report, the Ontario government must do more to monitor the disposal of radioactive waste because it's turning up more often in landfills. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission said alerts about radioactive waste went off 119 times across the country last year, up from 13 in 2005-06. The majority of those alerts came from southern Ontario landfills. The report says the bulk of the alerts are from small quantities of radioactive substances that have a medical origin "which pose little or no risk." Ontario environmental commissioner Gord Miller is concerned about the lack of details in the report. The province's Environment Ministry said the increase in alarms is simply a reflection of increased monitoring and doesn't signify a growing problem. © 2007 Business Information Group. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 ANI: Las Vegas sitting on an explosive sleeping earthquake fault line From our ANI Correspondent Washington, November 24: A sleepy earthquake fault near Las Vegas may wake up someday, according to a report published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin. The Stateline Fault runs within 30 miles of Las Vegas and the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, north of Vegas. It also runs right through backyards in the fast-growing community of Pahrump, Nevada, to the west. "Big faults, in between earthquakes, are generally very quiet," Discovery News quoted Caltech geophysicist Brian Wernicke, as saying. The researchers said that the Stateline Fault could move more than previously reported. He corroborated this with evidence that some debris from a small volcano along the fault had been shifted more than 20 miles away from the volcano over the last 13 million years, which suggested that the real rate of lateral "strike-slip" movement on the Stateline Fault could be twice the earlier estimates. "The strike-slip story is just emerging," Wernicke said. Geophysicist Terry Pavlis, from the University of Texas in El Paso, said: "Ninety-nine percent of the population of Pahrump has no idea that they're right on top of the fault. This is close enough (to Vegas) that you'd get a pretty good shaking if this thing were to go." The report also refers to the historic measurements of slip along the Stateline Fault, which suggest that the fault was slipping laterally at a gentle rate of a millimetre or so per year. According to the researchers, more data on the current movements along the faults are possible because of a recently installed GPS survey system for the Yucca Mountain Project. However, funding for analysing data form the GPS system was recently cut by the Department of Energy, revealed Wernicke. Copyright Dailyindia.com/ANI Copyright © 2004-2007 DailyIndia.com ***************************************************************** 24 Gallup Independent: Groups air uranium concerns; Seek moratorium on new uranium development in region November 19, 2007: Residents of the Red Water Pond Road community hold signs near their homes on Tuesday, July 10. A number of state representatives from various agencies visited the area to determine how much of a role the state will play in determine whether or not uranium companies will return to New Mexico to mine. [Photo by Brian Leddy/Independent] By Kathy Helms Diné Bureau WINDOW ROCK ? Representatives of grassroots groups and nongovernmental organizations from New Mexico and Arizona told members of Congress last week that they want a federal moratorium on new uranium development in the region until the widespread environmental and public health damages from past mining and milling are resolved and workers and communities are fully compensated. The organizations were in Washington to participate in the Navajo Uranium Roundtable sponsored by Rep. Tom Udall of New Mexico, and co-hosted by Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah, Rep. Rick Renzi of Arizona, and Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr. The groups, which represented communities in the Eastern Navajo Agency, Acoma and Laguna pueblos, and the Milan and Grants area, supported the Navajo Nation?s requests for funding to clean up hundreds of abandoned mines in Navajo communities, fully compensate uranium workers, conduct health studies in uranium-impacted communities, and honor and respect the Navajo Nation?s 2005 law banning uranium mining and processing in Navajo Country. Speakers for the grassroots groups joined President Shirley, other Navajo Nation officials, and Laguna Pueblo Gov. John E. Antonio, in calling for a federal moratorium on new uranium mining. Mitchell Capitan, founder of Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining, based in Crownpoint, said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is ?tilted toward industry? and cannot be trusted to properly regulate uranium in-situ leach mines and new uranium mills. He charged that the NRC did not give fair consideration to ENDAUM?s technical and legal arguments challenging NRC?s 1998 licensing of Hydro Resources, Inc.?s proposed ISL mines in Churchrock and Crownpoint. To illustrate his point, Capitan provided copies of a photo from the NRC?s web site showing agency officials smiling and shaking hands with executives of a Wyoming uranium company which had just submitted an application for a new ISL mine ? long before the proposed facility is subjected to NRC staff review and approved by the Commission. Larry J. King, an ENDAUM member and Churchrock Chapter resident, said his community recommends a federal uranium mine clean-up program that would address legacy sites throughout the West. He also called for Congress to force NRC to return to its mission to protect public health and safety. He cited an NRC ruling in 2006 that classified high levels of radiation from mining wastes at a proposed ISL site across the highway from his home as ?background? radiation. Robert Tohe, environmental justice organizer for the Sierra Club in Flagstaff, said Congress should give federal land management agencies the authority to deny exploration and mining permits on Native American sacred sites and in sacred places. He noted that several mining companies are exploring for uranium on and around Mtount Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains of the Navajo people and a sacred place for Acoma and Laguna pueblos. Long-time Diné uranium worker advocate Phil Harrison Jr., now a delegate to the Navajo Nation Council, Paguate resident Alvino Waconda, and Milan residents Linda Evers and Liz Lucero, all of whom are former uranium workers, supported Grand Junction attorney and Navajo Nation consultant Keith Killian in calling for amendments to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. They want to see RECA amended to include people who worked in the uranium industry after 1971. Evers said her group has collected nearly 1,500 surveys of post-1971 uranium workers, and that the vast majority of workers are reporting a wide range of cancers, respiratory diseases and kidney disease. Evers said she expects to report the first results by the end of the year. Milan residents Candace Head-Dylla, Milton Head and Art Gebeau, representing the Bluewater Valley Downstream Alliance, handed out information packets showing how groundwater contamination around the Homestake Uranium Mill north of Milan has spread to three aquifers covering several miles of land since first detected in 1961. They said the plumes contain high levels of uranium and other toxic substances and are inching toward Milan?s municipal water wells, yet no groundwater monitoring is being conducted ahead of the contamination plume. Dozens of private wells in communities near the mill have been shut down, but until very recently some residents were unknowingly still drinking tainted water from private wells, the BVDA members said. They recommended Congress amend federal laws such as the Clean Water Act to ensure that that uranium mine and mill wastes and associated discharges are regulated as toxic pollutants. The grass-roots people were assisted by staffs of Southwest Research and Information Center, Natural Resources Defense Council, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, Earthworks, and The Raben Group. Dr. Johnnye Lewis, a University of New Mexico toxicologist who was invited by the Navajo Nation and Udall staffs to provide scientific guidance, spoke to the need for a comprehensive health study, noting that the lack of health data is often misconstrued as a lack of effect. Dr. Lewis, who is the principal investigator for the first community-based health and exposure study in Navajo communities, emphasized the need for health studies to be conducted by independent investigators to ensure the validity and scientific integrity of results. 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 ***************************************************************** 25 barrow in furness: Union worry over plan for future of Sellafield Mon 26 Nov 2007 Published on 26/11/2007 CLEANING up Sellafield will not make way for money-making ventures, the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency has said. Sellafield is looking to get cash from commercial ventures but bosses at the NDA are adamant that reprocessing work is an “End Game” scenario. Unions have been urging the site operators to press for more contracts from Japan and Europe to help keep production going as long as possible and maintain high employment levels. Reprocessing has been Sellafield’s main breadwinner since the early 1950s, but the NDA is concentrating on decommissioning and clean-up. Earlier this month the NDA released a draft three-year business plan which outlined a spend of ÂŁ8.5bn over the next three years – an increase of ÂŁ671m on the previous three-year period. This is the largest amount of money ever to be spent on the UK civil nuclear clean-up, with a hefty proportion of the cash going to Sellafield and Scotland’s Dounreay. But Sellafield’s biggest industrial union, the GMB, is not happy about the plan. GMB spokesman Gary Smith said: “What we are particularly concerned about is there is no real strategic vision of a viable future for Sellafield.” This was refuted by Bill Hamilton of the NDA. He said: “We do have a clear vision for Sellafield, which we are developing with Sellafield Ltd. “The end game will see the finish of reprocessing, but before that happens maximising commercial operations will contribute to funding the clean up and, subject to the outcome of the government’s consultations on nuclear power, there could be opportunities for generating additional revenue.” A spokesperson for Sellafield Ltd said: “We are not actively seeking new reprocessing work because those decisions are outside our remit – decisions on any future reprocessing would need to be determined by government after extensive consultations. “What we’re saying is that if the NDA and the government decide that further reprocessing is a viable option for the site then we have the skills and experience here to deliver that work programme.” Sellafield spokesman John Reynolds said the introduction of the three-year funding cycle will allow for the planning of a work programme with more certainty and security. He said the number one priority will be to continue the reduction of high level hazards on site but added that the future will involve change. He said moves will have to be made to improve productivity, cut costs based over time and look to work in partnership with the workforce and the supply chain. ***************************************************************** 26 News & Star: Lack of vision on future of n-plant, say union chiefs Published on 27/11/2007 TRADE unions fear there is a lack of vision about the future for the sprawling Sellafield nuclear complex. They have been urging Sellafield Ltd to pursue more reprocessing contracts from Japan and the continent to maintain production and retain jobs. But the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has revealed that the clean-up of the west Cumbrian site will not make way from commercial ventures. Officials at the agency, responsible for cleaning up the country’s atomic power stations, say that reprocessing work is an “end game” scenario. Reprocessing has been Sellafield’s main breadwinner since the early 1950s, but the NDA is concentrating on decommissioning and clean-up. Earlier this month the NDA released a draft three-year business plan which outlined a spend of ÂŁ8.5bn over the next three years – an increase of ÂŁ671m on the previous three-year period. This is the largest amount of money ever to be spent on the UK civil nuclear clean-up, with a hefty proportion going to Sellafield and the former Dounreay power plant in Scotland. Sellafield’s largest industrial union, the GMB, is not, however, happy about the plan. Spokesman Gary Smith said: “What we are particularly concerned about is there is no real strategic vision of a viable future for Sellafield.” NDA executives have denied the claims and say they do have a clear vision, which they are developing with Sellafield Ltd. Spokesman Bill Hamilton said: “The end game will see the finish of reprocessing, but before that happens maximising commercial operations will contribute to funding the clean up and, subject to the outcome of the government’s consultations on nuclear power, there could be opportunities for generating additional revenue.” A Sellafield Ltd spokesman said: “We are not actively seeking new reprocessing work because those decisions are outside our remit – decisions on any future reprocessing would need to be determined by government after extensive consultations. “What we’re saying is that if the NDA and the government decide that further reprocessing is a viable option for the site then we have the skills and experience here to deliver that work programme.” ***************************************************************** 27 ReviewJournal.com: NRC puts (Nevada) complaint about Yucca on hold Nov. 28, 2007 Officials say it's too soon to judge request for probe By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has shelved another Nevada complaint about government management at Yucca Mountain. Officials with the nuclear safety agency said it is too soon to judge a request that Sandia National Laboratories, a major contractor at the nuclear waste site, be investigated for safety and suspended from the project in the meantime. The petition filed by Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto on Oct. 16 was based on documents that she said suggested Sandia managers were putting repository safety behind a rush to meet deadlines set by the Department of Energy. DOE and Sandia officials responded that the complaint was baseless. The NRC can't take action on the Nevada complaint because the Energy Department has not yet applied for a license to build the repository, said Aby Mohseni, deputy director in the Division of High-Level Waste Repository Safety. "NRC will not prejudge the adequacy of a potential license application, or the safety analyses it may contain, before an application is received," Mohseni said in a letter sent to Cortez Masto on Nov. 15. Sandia National Laboratories is preparing safety analyses that Energy Department officials will rely on to argue that highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel and other forms of high-level nuclear waste can be stored within Yucca Mountain and shielded from the elements for thousands of years. In October, the NRC set aside a Nevada request to limit the amount of nuclear waste that could be stored above ground while awaiting burial at the Yucca site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Agency officials similarly said they could not judge that matter before receiving a DOE repository application. In September, a complaint by the state and by environmental groups that the Energy Department was withholding key documents from scrutiny also was declared premature by the nuclear agency. Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or (202) 783-1760. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2007 ***************************************************************** 28 Indybay: Building 606 points to a time and direction when things were done without any transparency by Francisco Da Costa Tuesday Nov 27th, 2007 1:17 AM There was a time when things were done with little accountability and less transparency. It started around 1996 when the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was appointed by the then Mayor. The CAC prior to that was told to take a hike. Choice buildings were given to choice folks. Nancy Pelosi pretended to fight for the Artists - so their gift was a good dose of radiological and other toxic exposure. The SFPD was given given the spacious building 606 - with less Transparency - but a chance to go ballistic. Politics make strange bed fellows and today - we see it unfolding before our eyes much of it still un-transparent but all the signs of Karma - to show for it. Aho. When Lennar BVHP LLC was given the chance to be the lead developer - this choice was NOT made by San Franciscans but by the ruling class of "thugs" most of whom live in Pacific Heights and in other classier neighborhoods - with an eye on "Land Banking". From around 1996 when the demons from Sacramento were transfered to City Hall in Room 200 in San Francisco - all hell has been let loose. There has been wheeling and dealing behind close doors mostly - and now it has all come to bite - most of the "thugs" in the butt. I have said it before and will say it one more time: " no good will ever come at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard". No one can desecrate the Sacred Burial Grounds and thinks they can just make hay while the sun shines. It does not work like that. There is a kind of retribution that those that have lost their "moral compass" - find very difficult to comprehend. But, this time around they all will experience the real thing. In the case of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard - it is all about greed. Lennar Corporation is about greed and doing injustice to home owners. For years, Lennar has lied and played every dirty trick and that is what brought them to California and San Francisco. If it was NOT for Willie L. Brown Jr. - his dire machinations - Lennar BVHP LLC would not stand a chance. Just bring in Roy Willis and ask him - Willis came, he saw, he took his share - and bid adieu. He played the game and when his butt was about to be laid on hot coals - he took that one delightful flight to Alaska in Winter - better Alaska then Parcel A on Hunters Point and all the machinations! Sophina Maxwell and others are wondering what is happening to Parcel A?. Mayor Gavin Newsom - the poor guy has lost his marbles. Treasure Island is stinking and now with Parcel A in dire doldrums - poor Mayor Gavin Newsom does not know what to do. You ain't seen anything yet. We all know that Lennar Stock and Shares are reduced to Junk Status. Yes, triple Junk Status and this is all that matter to drown the greedy corporation and send them down the precipice - into a stinking, putrid cesspool of their own making. Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, other crooks - dubious in nature lick your chops and pray they are not hog chops - that is not kosher. How can some policy making hogs be so cruel - to permit a Corporation like Lennar to with INTENT kill our children, slowly - and not have any conscience. Talk about a Holocaust - it is happening - right here in our back yard - in and around Parcel A. For God's sake - the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is a Superfund Site. One of the ten worst in the Nation. I say one of five worst in the United States. People talk about depleted Uranium - do a simple search of Depleted Uranium and you will find out where is was manufactured - and if you do not manage to stumble upon Hunters Point Naval Shipyard - you will be totally mistaken if not blind. Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was and is a toxic cesspool. And, when you see a cesspool you stay away from it. We all know - that thousands of animals were radiated and buried all over the place. We know of hundreds of large animals cows, horses too were radiated and buried all over Hunters Point Naval Shipyard - including Parcel A. We know of sewer pipes contaminated with radiological elements. And we know of these cracked sewer pipes on Parcel A that have radiological elements - and how Tetra Tech long after - Parcel A was conveyed were call in - and asked to help with the clean up of Radiological Elements on Parcel A. The City and County of San Francisco knows this but did not reveal it to the Public at large. Our Main Media has been sleeping and helping the thugs the Pelosis, the Blums, the Fishers. We know that the Restoration Advisory Board - did not agree convey to Parcel A. has the Main Media - written about this fact. Did the Mayor mention this one single time - Mayor Gavin Newsom? We, how ever know that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, so called Senator water-boarding Diane Feinstein, Willie L. Brown Jr, Sophina Maxwell, Linda Richardson, SF Redevelopment Commissioner Morales, others mostly jerks - including Mayor Gavin Newsom - wanted Parcel A badly - because some devil stated it was - "clean". All of the above jerks wanted to develop a toxic, radiological infested, dirty polluted Naval Base - to make money at the expense of other human beings. This will NOT work - ever. Let me state is very clearly - Parcel A is still "dirty" and what is more surrounded by even dirtier parcels. To think of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard - one must think Cumulative Pollution. It is a shame we have morons as so called Legislators the type of Jake McGoldrick, Sophina Maxwell, Bevan Dufty, Aaron Peskin, Sean Elsbernd - despicable and idiotic to the point that they permit - blatant "racism" and "ignorance" to cloud their judgment. How - could these vermin ever think of allowing Lennar BVHP LLC to continue polluting when all the evidence was brought before them. Those Supervisor that voted against the people - will go to their death beds - with blood on their hands. Today, Susan Leal and those involved with the infrastructure are aiding and abetting Lennar BVHP LLC on Parcel A. There is evidence that crushed Ultramaphic Serpentine Rock is all over the place- on Parcel A. As the infrastructure is being laid - practically every single day there are exceedences when Asbestos Structures are registered - over the cap of 16,000 structures - Notice of Violations are issued - and the project is stopped - some what. On some days there have been readings of over 60,000 structures per cubic meter. Reading of over 40,000 structures per cubic meter - on many more days. We now have a contractor who is Irish in origin - working his men without proper safety gear and I hope his men - know sooner then later of Ultramaphic Serpentine Rock and the tons of it that were crushed and used as fill in. Constant exposure will invite Cancer - and Cancer is death. Be warned. Where is Doctor Rajiv Bahtia from the SF Health Department on this one? Where is Doctor Mitch Katz on this one? Where is Mayor Gavin Newsom on this one? Where is anyone on this one with a moral compass? We keeping warning about hell - but these scum bags have an infinity to hell. In the interim - ever since the head huncho representing Lennar Corporation visited San Francisco and some other projects in California - many Lennar follks that once held high positions - have been told to take a hike. Most of them were not given a warning - the only person warning them was me. Today, these laid off - fired folks - are high and dry. That is how the devil treats you - one day, he is laughing and smiling and the second day - he is foaming at the mouth trying to breath fire into your nostrils - and out the door you go. Lennar BVHP LLC is very bad news. The foundation Lennar has laid on Parcel A and in San Francisco - stinks - to high heaven of the worst type of corruption. The Disposition and Development Agreement linked to Parcel A - was agreed upon and incorporated were "rental units" for the community - Lennar VHP LLC - had those elements removed, through an amendment - because of dubious reasons. The SF Board of Supervisors agreed to this crap. To this day most of the SF BOS agree to back Lennar especially those that took blood money from Lennar BVP LLC. Two among the many Sophina Maxwell and Aaron Peskin - scum bags. Remember, Lennar did not pay one single dollar for the land - remember, the SF Redevelopment Agency under Marcia Rosen - handed millions of dollars to Lennar BVHP LLC. The tax payers knows little if nothing about these transactions - as the day comes near - and as many will be called to testify in Court - the corrupt folks are jumping ship - Marcia Rosen is history, Jessie is going, and others will follow in droves. SF Redevelopment Agency has been a place where all the devil go to - to do their evil work - the former acting director of the Building Inspection has made her abode at the SFRA - and many more. All this under the watchful eye of Jessie Blout and Mayor Gavin Newsom - two suspects that we are watching - as the depositions in Court linked to the Lennar Discrimination Case - get deeper and the culprits find themselves sitting on very hot coals. Mayor Gavin Newsom - will NOT have peace - not one single day - as long as he condones the slow death of our children. Not one single day - will the rascal be sleeping in peace - he will be turning and tossing in bed - experiencing the worst qualms of conscience - because, he has lied and done all in his power - to aid and abet the DEVIL himself. Some, may think very harsh words - but I tell you - it is the truth and when you speak the truth - it hurts but some one must say it and say it and spell it out - as it ought to be spelled out. Kudos to the San Francisco, Board of Education and especially Eric Mar for taking the lead , listening to the community and putting forward a detail, first class resolution. This resolution was voted unanimously by the SF Board of Education. The resolution called to stop the project on Parcel A operated by Lennar BVHP LLC and test our children. Judging from the thousands of hits on this topic - the world now knows - NOT to do business with Lennar BVHP LLC. Our Mayor Gavin Newsom clouded by ignorance and fed half-truths by his crones has fallen in a trap of this own making. Every single day he fails to recognize the truth - he sinks - deeper and deeper and his has four more years of real trauma in the making. The SF Police Department with intent chose building 606 and anyway - any one looks at it - made a wrong choice. The sooner SFPD cuts its losses - especially linked to the personnel working on the polluted Hunters Point Naval Shipyard - the better. There is Karma - and what goes around comes around. This time - Karma - has laid its hands and claws on those that have chosen to be demonic in their behavior, satanic is their speaking, dubious in nature - and for sure with no moral compass. Those, invisible radiological elements, the depleted uranium and tons of it - heavy metals, toxic dust, Asbestos Structures - will get your asses and all because you devils deserve it. Those that harm our children - will suffer a million fold - and I am not kidding. http://www.hunterspointnavalshipyard.com Call: 1.866.475.6907 Francisco Da Costa Director Environmental Justice Advocacy © 2000–2007 San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center. ***************************************************************** 29 NYMHM: Japan's nuclear victims, Kosovo independence, Kenya's Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:10:32 -0800 ============================================================================= NEWS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED * November 28, 2007 * Vol. 6, No. 48 Important but overlooked news from around the world. NYMHM is a free service of Newsdesk.org. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Online this week: http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/004481.html - RSS: http://newsdesk.org/news/atom.xml - Donations: http://artsandmedia.net/contribute/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- QUOTED: "The Chinese government is closely monitoring and is intensifying repair work, and I think we can avoid losses as far as possible." -- Wang Xiaofeng on landslides and pollution around China's largest hydroelectric project (see "Three Gorges Dam," below). CONTENTS: *Top Stories* Japan to expand atomic bomb victim definition Kosovo threatens unilateral independence Tear gas for ethnic protest in Malaysia *Three Gorges Dam* Cracks at the seams? China bolsters Three Gorges *Kenya* Sex on the beach or birds in hand? Kenya's tourist trap ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- TOP STORIES ............................................................................. > Japan to Expand Atomic Bomb Victim Standards More than 50 years after the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a string of court losses has forced Japan's government to create a new standard that will recognize 20,000 new victims of diseases and health problems related to the blasts. The Kyodo news wire notes that nine kinds of diseases, including cancer and leukemia, will be recognized among the 250,000 registered bomb survivors in ... GET THE WHOLE STORY: http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/004482.html > Kosovo Threatens Unilateral Independence Ethnic Albanian negotiators rejected a proposal for increased autonomy for their home province of Kosovo, and threatened a unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia if no deal is struck by a December 10 U.N. deadline. According to Agence France-Presse, the deal would have ensured self-governance in all of Kosovo's economic, legal and "daily" affairs, while Serbia would retain possession of ... GET THE WHOLE STORY: http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/004483.html > Tear Gas for Ethnic Protest in Malaysia Riot police greeted thousands of minority protestors in Malaysia's capital of Kuala Lumpur, turning back their calls for increased social benefits with water cannons and tear gas. The protestors, primarily Tamils, seek business licenses, access to scholarships and "other privileges reserved exclusively for native Maylays," reports Asia Times Online. Tamil activists also sought reparations from the United Kingdom for relocating their ancestors to Malaysia as indentured ... GET THE WHOLE STORY: http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/004484.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- THREE GORGES DAM ............................................................................. > Cracks at the Seams? China Bolsters Three Gorges Everything about the Three Gorges Dam seems larger than life. It was built at a cost of $15.6 billion, caused the relocation of 1.2 million people, and has 19 hydropower generators that are expected by 2009 to produce 84.7 million megawatt-hours of electricity each year. And now, with increasing reports of landslides and environmental problems around the dam, thoughts of a larger-than-life disaster have come to the fore. China's project director for the dam, Wang Xiaofeng, said in a press conference that the current environmental problems caused by the dam have been anticipated and ... GET THE WHOLE STORY: http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/004485.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- KENYA ............................................................................. > Kenya's Tourist Trap: Sex on the Beach and Birds in Hand Miles of shoreline, coastal forests, mountains, plains and the continent-spanning Great Rift Valley all make Kenya a world-class tourist destination. But the complications of this burgeoning trade are abundant. Kenya's beach towns, notorious for an illicit sex industry involving thousands of regional girls and boys, now have a new wrinkle to consider -- older caucasian women seeking uncomplicated dalliances with young African men. Critics say the practice revives a colonial past of white women "serviced" by "black minions," reports the Mail & Guardian of South Africa, and also note the health risks of casual encounters in a nation with a high incidence of ... GET THE WHOLE STORY: http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/004486.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- DEDICATION ............................................................................. George "Vernon" Porter, 1941-2007 This edition of News You Might Have Missed is dedicated to the memory of George "Vernon" Porter of Soldotna, Alaska, by his son, Virgil Ward Porter. Obituary, Nov. 4, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/3bf4lf ============================================================================= Editor: Josh Wilson ............................................................................. SUPPORT PUBLIC-SERVICE MEDIA Newsdesk.org and News You Might Have Missed are commercial-free, and available at no charge. We welcome your tax-deductible contributions: https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=695 ............................................................................. 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Independent Arts & Media does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations and does not have a copyright on any of the content located at these sites. ============================================================================= _______________________________________________ NYMHM mailing list NYMHM@lists.artsandmedia.net http://lists.artsandmedia.net/mailman/listinfo/nymhm ***************************************************************** 30 [NYTr] Planting Nuclear Evidence in Iran the Hard Way: Discussion Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:13:27 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [The best response and most optimistic forecast is by the very intelligent and politically astute Robert Knight, former news director at WBAI and host of "Earthwatch." The rest of the posts just introduce the topic. See last item below for Robert Knight, with references. We have removed all the e-mail addreses that were in the original sent. -NYTransfer] sent by Ed Pearl [Hi. Here's an exchange which should interest all. Sadly, they're all correct. Its actual sequence is from the bottom-up but either direction has value. It's from a Pacifica Radio blog for stalwarts. I mostly just read and follow events, nowadays. -Ed] Nov 26, 2007 Planting Nuclear Evidence in Iran the Hard Way: A Discussion Among Robert Knight, F. Frank LeFever and Liam Kirsher (WBAI blog) F. Frank Le Fever, Ph.D. wrote: If Bush uses "tactical" nuclear weapons in Iran, he can say he used conventional explosives and the radioactive residue is proof that he hit a nuclear-arms [something - chopped off] Frank LeFever WBAI Listener *** Frank, I'm pretty sure the fallout from a nuclear explosion would be very different from radioactivity that was dispersed by the impact of a conventional explosive. Also, a nuclear explosion has other effects -- Blast damage Thermal radiation Electromagnetic pulse Ionizing radiation And, of course, it would be big. I believe they leave a telltale seismic footprint. I read recently that there was money approved to refit airplanes so they could carry large conventional bunker busters. Liam Kirsher *** On 11/26/07, F. Frank Le Fever, Ph.D. wrote: Bush would say--"details, details! who needs those details? The place we hit is radioactive, what more do you need to know?" Liam Kirsher PGP: http://liam.numenet.com/pgp/ *** Robert Knight replies: The "frame Iran with a tactical nuclear weapon" scenario is sufficiently implausible to deter the Bush administration from accepting even Israel's urging for such an attack on Iran's Natanz nuclear energy development site. A US first launch of nuclear weapons would arouse such global opprobrium and protest that professional military officials would be strongly opposed to crossing that Rubicon. Moreover, as others here have amply intimated, such an attack would likely be ineffective in (1) breaching Natanz' hardened subterranean walls, and (2) "framing" Iran with the claim that the residual fallout was from a reactor, rather than an American nuclear weapon such as the B61-11s currently in the US stockpile. Here's why: (1) The laws of conservation of momentum limit so-called "penetrator" weapons to a maximum depth of ~100 feet before impact threatens to prematurely destroy the nuclear warhead contained within the delivery shell. As a result, such an imagined attack would likely be ineffective in destroying the target; and the effective detonation depth would inevitably release its telltale fallout into the atmosphere, where the IAEA, and innumerable official and private nuclear researchers in the region would pounce on the evidence of the airborne fallout plume. (2) The fallout signature of the tactical nuke would be profoundly different from Iran's uranium fuel designed for subcritical reactor fission rather than a nuclear explosion. Nuclear weapon isotope signatures would contauin a much higher proportion of short-half-life isotopes peculiar to the detonation. The neutron flux and other artefacts would easily identify the bomb fallout for what it is. In summary, it's not that the Bush administration is insufficiently evil to enact the suggested scenario. It's that they are insufficiently stupid to do so. Those seeking a scientific assessment of the scenario may benefit from perusing: "Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons" By Robert W. Nelson http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm Wikipedia's "Nuclear Fallout" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout and "B61-11 Earth-Penetrating Weapon" http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b61-11.htm -Robert Knight * ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 31 BBC NEWS: Missile plan sneaked out, say MPs Last Updated: Sunday, 25 November 2007, 15:09 GMT Menwith Hill is the largest electronic monitoring station in the world Plans to use an RAF base for a US ballistic missile defence system were sneaked out by ministers and should be debated in Parliament, MPs have said. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee criticised the way plans were announced as MPs left Westminster for the summer. The RAF base at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire will host a tracking system linked to US satellites and interceptor missiles based outside the UK. "We regret the manner and timing of the announcement. And there's a resulting lack of parliamentary debate on the issue," said Mr Gapes. "And our job as a select committee regardless of which government it is at any time is to hold the government to account and to scrutinise its behaviour and we are not happy with the way they have dealt with this issue." The Ministry of Defence says there was "no intention" to bury the plans. 'Lack of debate' On 25 July, Defence Secretary Des Browne revealed in a written statement that he had approved the US request to use the base for the ballistic missile defence (BMD) system. We recommend that the government inform us of the date on which it received the formal proposal from the US to include Menwith Hill in the BMD system Foreign Affairs Select Committee The committee of MPs went on to demand to know the exact date approval for the plans had been given to the US. "We recommend that the government inform us of the date on which it received the formal proposal from the US to include Menwith Hill in the BMD system," its report said. "We recommend that there should be a full parliamentary debate on these proposals." Anti-nuclear campaigners CND also criticised the announcement, calling it "outrageous" and saying it was made with "total contempt for democracy and consultation". Arms race hint Washington says the aim of the anti-ballistic missile system is to confront the future threat of incoming missiles from what it calls "rogue states" such as Iran or North Korea. But Russia has objected to the plans, believing the system is aimed at its own arsenal. President Putin has even hinted at a renewed arms race and a revival of the Cold War. There was absolutely no intention to 'bury' this announcement Ministry of Defence In their report the MPs also warn of Russia's renewed strength on the world stage, fuelled by high oil revenues. Liberal Democrat leadership contender Nick Clegg said he was pleased that the "duplicitous publication" of the decision had been highlighted, adding that he believed the plans would not improve security. "It is time for Britain to wake up to the damaging geo-strategic effects of this missile defence scheme and pull out of our deal with America. "It will never be possible to construct a global system of governance to deal with external threats if powerful nations simply act unilaterally whenever it suits them." 'Good for UK' The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has denied it buried the announcement of the missile defence plan. A spokesman said the government's approach to missile defence had not changed and that in 2003, after receiving a request from the US to upgrade the missile-tracking radar at RAF Fylingdales in North Yorkshire, the government had given Parliament the chance to debate the issue. He added that despite the changes at the Menwith base "being minor in nature", the government had made a written ministerial statement "to ensure that Parliament had full visibility on all elements of this issue". "It was also announced via an MoD press release. There was absolutely no intention to 'bury' this announcement." The defence secretary has insisted the system will be good for both UK and European security. Speaking in July, he said it was "a building block to enhance our national and collective security". * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 32 Guardian Unlimited: Russia Criticizes US Missile Plans From the Associated Press Tuesday November 27, 2007 7:46 AM MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's foreign minister sharply criticized U.S. proposals for cooperation on missile defense in Europe after a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in remarks broadcast Tuesday on state-run cable channel Vesti-24, said that formal proposals submitted last week represent ``a significant rollback from what American representatives said'' when he met with Rice in early October. Deep disagreements remain despite several rounds of talks aimed to ease the dispute between the Cold War foes over U.S. plans to deploy missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Speaking in Washington, Lavrov suggested the United States is determined to implement its own plans and merely wants Russian help, rather than real cooperation in defining and opposing threats. ``If by joint work they mean pursuing unilateral plans to install missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe, and inviting us only to help them and provide information we have, that's not what we have in mind when we propose ... together conducting analyses to determine threats and together discussing measures to neutralize them,'' he said. The United States says the system would counter a potential Iranian threat, but Moscow says it believes the real aim is to weaken Russia's nuclear deterrent. Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered an alternative involving joint use of a Russian-operated radar station in Azerbaijan, but has cited the U.S. plans as a factor in his decision to suspend Moscow's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which limits regional military deployments. The Bush administration welcomed Putin's offer but pushed ahead with its plans for Eastern Europe while continuing talks with Russia on missile defense cooperation. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 33 SN: Is Nuclear Waste Seeping From Hanford Waste Site To The Columbia River? Science News ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2007) ? Millions of gallons of hazardous waste resulting from the nation's nuclear weapons program lie in a remote location in southeastern Washington state called Hanford. Beneath this desert landscape about two million curies of radioactivity and hundreds of thousands of tons of chemicals are captured within the stratified vadose zone below which gives rise to complex subsurface flow paths. These paths create uncertainties about where the contaminants go and what happens to them. With the mighty Columbia River bordering much of the site, where these nuclear wastes migrate, their composition and how fast they are traveling are of vital importance to both people and the environment. The November issue of Vadose Zone Journal features a series of papers addressing the mysteries within the vadose zone beneath Hanford. The series outlines scientific work funded by the Department of Energy and carried out by scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and contributing associates with other national laboratories, universities and contractors. The detailed series outlines how researchers have investigated Hanford's vadose zone to better understand the migration of these contaminants, ultimately reducing or stemming their flow toward the Columbia River, thereby protecting the river and the people living downstream. By studying the geologic, biologic, geochemical and hydrologic conditions at the Hanford site, the researchers seek to understand and manipulate the factors that control contaminants' fate and transport. To date, studies show that fine-grained sediment layers along with rain, snowfall and other climatic conditions affect contaminant transport. For three decades, scientists have studied what happens when water enters and exits the soil, particularly how it affects the movement of the contaminants under various conditions. "Understanding how hydrology and chemistry are interacting below the land surface in the vadose zone and the factors that control those interactions are keys to ultimately dealing with the legacy from nuclear waste production at the Hanford site," said Glendon Gee, Laboratory Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Gee is lead author on the overview paper of the series. Chemical studies indicate that a number of contaminants, such as cesium, react strongly with Hanford sediments and move only under extreme conditions. Researchers found that another contaminant, uranium, reacts with the sediments in complex ways and its migration varies under different conditions. Other contaminants, such as tritium and nitrate, are relatively mobile. These contaminants have been transported deep into the vadose zone and reached the groundwater. Carbon tetrachloride and other organic compounds have moved in complex ways, as both vapor and liquid, and reached the groundwater. Additional studies of the fate and transport of contaminants in the vadose zone are ongoing at the Hanford Site. These studies will characterize the extent of contaminant plumes, determine how fast or slow they are migrating and evaluate remediation solutions. Adapted from materials provided by Soil Science Society of America. Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats: Millions of gallons of hazardous waste resulting from the nation's nuclear weapons program lie in a remote location in southeastern Washington state called Hanford. (Credit: SSSA) Glass Containers May Be The Answer For Nuclear Waste Disposal, Researcher Says (Dec. 10, 1997) ? Glass may be the answer to safely dispose of nuclear waste, says a University of Missouri-Rolla scientist who recently received a patent for his research efforts to encapsulate plutonium in a special ... > read more Unusual Minerals Formed On Stored Nuclear Waste (Nov. 27, 2003) ? Nuclear fuel waste in long-term storage could form mineral phases that are not well understood, according to research by chemists at the University of Notre Dame and UC Davis and recently published ... > read more DOE Should Consider Enhancing Cleanup And Stabilization, National Academies Study Says (Aug. 6, 2005) ? Tanks containing radioactive waste at the U.S. Department of Energy Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons facility in South Carolina, should not necessarily be sealed as soon as the bulk of the ... > read more Sustainable Nuclear Energy Moves A Step Closer (Dec. 12, 2006) ? In future a new generation of nuclear reactors will create energy, while producing virtually no long-lasting nuclear waste, according to research conducted by Wilfred van Rooijen, who will receive ... > read more Lab Works To Make Nuclear 'Gunk' Environmentally Safe (Dec. 25, 1997) ? A "drum-thunker" and a high-temperature electric torch are helping a Mississippi State laboratory develop ways for America and the world to reduce and safely store nuclear wastes. ... > ScienceDaily Copyright © 1995-2007 ScienceDaily LLC — All rights reserved — Contact: editor@sciencedaily.com ***************************************************************** 34 Bellingham Herald: Hanford reactor envisioned as part of national park RICHLAND — He was simply known as Mr. Farmer, and for three days he sat at a drafting table in a small office off the control room and used a slide rule and graph paper to try to figure out why the world’s first nuclear reactor wasn’t working. It was the dawn of the nuclear age and the B Reactor, at the Hanford Engineer Works in the desolate sagebrush prairie of southcentral Washington state, was the cornerstone of the secret Manhattan Project to build a bomb and end World War II before the Nazis and Japanese could. Mr. Farmer was the cover name for Enrico Fermi, the Italian physicist who’d helped design the reactor from scratch — a pile of 75,000 graphite blocks, 36 feet high, 36 feet wide and 28 feet deep, drilled through with 2,004 tubes holding enriched uranium fuel for a nuclear chain reaction that would produce plutonium. It was built in 11 months, a sort of seat-of-the-pants engineering feat that no one had done before. Fermi and other scientists and engineers believed it would work. But no one was sure. The start-up problem was diagnosed as xenon gas curbing the nuclear reaction. Less than a year later, the problem solved, plutonium produced by the B Reactor was used in Fat Man, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. Japan surrendered days later. For more than 20 years, through the tensest days of the Cold War, the B Reactor produced plutonium for the nation’s nuclear stockpile before it was shut down in 1968. “It was an engineering miracle, and the fact that it worked was mind-boggling,” said Hanford historian Michele Gerber. The reactor sits abandoned on the banks of the Columbia River. Volunteers offer occasional tours. Black widow spiders, bats, snakes and mice are the only regular visitors. That could change. A National Park Service advisory committee will decide in early December whether to recommend placing the B Reactor on the list of National Historic Landmarks. Final listing decisions are made by the interior secretary. The National Park Service also is considering whether to include the reactor, along with the world’s first uranium enrichment plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Trinity test site at Los Alamos, N.M., where the first nuclear bombs were tested, in a national historical park that would tell the story of the Manhattan Project. A draft report is expected next spring and a final version at the end of 2008. Congress would make the final decision. The proposed park isn’t without controversy. Some are concerned that, in a rush to tell the story, the National Park Service might forget the downside of the development of nuclear weapons — ranging from President Harry Truman’s decision to use them on Japanese cities to the radioactive waste that’s the legacy of plutonium production at Hanford and elsewhere. The Park Service is grappling with the possibility of managing a site that includes a well-shielded but still radioactive reactor core in the 560-square-mile Hanford reservation, where billions of dollars are being spent to clean up contamination and tons of weapons-grade plutonium are stored in buildings requiring tight security. (Eleven pounds is enough to make a crude nuclear weapon.) “The National Park Service doesn’t really manage nuclear reactors,” said Keith Dunbar, chief of park planning in the service’s regional office in Seattle. One possibility is that local groups could form a partnership with the National Park Service and the Department of Energy to manage and offer tours. Though the reactor remains radioactive, it’s cloaked in an air-tight containment shell roughly 5 feet thick. Other contamination has been cleaned up or is stabilized underground. “We check for radiation every time we do a tour,” Dunbar said. “We know it is safe.” The Energy Department, which owns Hanford, has made clear that it isn’t in the museum business. The department wants a decision on whether the reactor will be preserved in the next year or so. Otherwise, it will be “cocooned” — wrapped in steel and concrete — for the next 75 years while scientists study how to dispose of it safely. Five of the nine reactors at Hanford already have been stabilized this way. “There’s no debate about the reactor’s place in history and the fact that it’s an engineering marvel,” said Colleen French, an Energy Department spokeswoman at Hanford. “The question is under what conditions a nuclear reactor could be made available for safe, long-term public access.” Les Blumenthal covers issues about Washington state from the McClatchy Washington, D.C., bureau. He can be reached at lblumenthal@mcclatchydc.com. Copyright ©2007 The Bellingham Herald All rights reserved. Any copying, redistribution or retransmission Bellingham Herald is expressly prohibited. The Bellingham Herald. 1155 N. State. St., Bellingham, WA 98225, Phone (360) 676-2600. Terms of Use | Privacy Statement | About The Bellingham ***************************************************************** 35 Tri-City Herald: Hanford topics voiced at State of the Site meeting Published Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 CHRIS MULICK HERALD OLYMPIA BUREAU SEATTLE -- Strenuous objections to importing more nuclear waste to Hanford and extending cleanup deadlines were voiced at a mostly civil State of the Site meeting Tuesday night. The annual event in a downtown meeting hall drew a familiar-looking crowd of 70 citizens, government officials and even a few Hanford workers. Fewer than 10 raised their hands when asked how many were attending their first Hanford meeting. The usual scolding of DOE was tempered at times with understanding and even a few compliments during the nearly three-hour meeting. But participants by and large expressed the usual frustration about not enough progress being made to clean up wastes. "We should have 10 million shovels digging that stuff up right now. All the money should be there," said Bill McQuaid. "I feel like I'm at wit's end. There's nothing I can do. The problem is so enormous it seems there's nothing many of you can do either." Perhaps the most constructive discussion came in the final hour when DOE's Office of River Protection Manager Shirley Olinger explained the agency's plans for considering Hanford and four other sites as candidates to collect and dispose of low level and mixed nuclear wastes. A decision could be made in 2009. And there are other proposals, including President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, that could bring more wastes to Hanford for processing. "I don't think this is for nothing," Lee Sargent said of cleanup efforts. "But if Bush thinks he's going to bring 100,000 trucks in here full of stuff there's going to be a whole lot of dissatisfaction." Olinger explained Hanford plans to send its own wastes to Tennessee, New Mexico and Nevada and that Hanford already has facilities where low level and mixed wastes are being stored. Several speakers also asked why DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Ecology are negotiating changes to the legal pact governing Hanford cleanup that would extend deadlines for removing tank wastes. All sides recognize a plant to turn the most hazardous tank wastes to glass won't be completed on time under current schedules. "Delays are unacceptable," said Tim Malloy. There also were complaints the agencies don't provide adequate notification for public meetings. "Your department stinks when it comes to this," Heart of America Northwest Director Gerry Pollet said to Dave Brockman, who heads DOE's Richland's Operations office. "We deserve better." There were an array of simple questions. What happens to underground tanks after they're emptied, Malloy asked. And Valerie Shubert said someone needs to publish a glossary of terms to define technical Hanford terms and "to spell out acronyms and stuff." Brockman said local DOE officials aren't necessarily advocates for policies bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., push for but will pass on citizen complaints. "We hear them," Brockman said, responding to complaints about proposals to import more wastes. "We put them up our chains of command." © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 36 Rocky Mountain News: Panel weighs new information in Rocky Flats case By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News (Contact) Updated 04:45 p.m., November 26, 2007 Federal scientists acknowledged Monday they have records suggesting workers from 19 buildings at the top-secret Rocky Flats site near Denver may have risked exposure to dangerous neutron radiation. But after they answered questions from a presidential advisory board, it was still not clear why the government didn't see that information as evidence those workers were eligible for automatic financial and medical compensation for work-related cancers. "This is certainly a concern to some people and we want to address it as quickly as possible," said Mark Griffon, who leads work on Rocky Flats for the White House Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. Earlier this month, the Rocky Mountain News reviewed data from a 2003 cancer study of Rocky Flats workers done by the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and the state health department. Data collected for the study show more than 3,000 workers in 19 buildings at the now demolished bomb making site were at risk of exposure to neutron radiation. That risk is supposed to earn ill workers a chance at streamlined aid if they meet other criteria. Most workers must prove a link between their toxic exposures and their illnesses, which can take years. But if records are missing and faulty, they can petition for streamlined aid. Rocky Flats workers did just that more than two years ago. The Labor Department, which oversees the compensation effort, ruled that only a small group who labored from 1952-1966 and were potentially exposed to neutron radiation would qualify. Brant Ulsh, a scientist for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, told the advisory board he had reviewed the CU study and found that it contained no information the government didn't already have. The study was not among the information Ulsh presented earlier this year to the Labor Department to use when determining which Rocky Flats workers would be eligible for automatic aid. Now, the issue is whether that decision should be revisited in light of the information about radiation in the 19 buildings. Ulsh argued it would be unlikely for most workers in the 19 buildings to be exposed to dangerous radiation. He noted, for example, that Buliding 333 was a paint shop where no neutron radiation would be expected. Under that view, paint shop workers would not be eligible for the special status. But Larry Elliott, who directs NIOSH's work on the compensation program, said the workers might have been assigned to one building, but performed work in others where neutron radiation existed. Worker advocate Terrie Barrie of Craig participated in the teleconference with the officials Monday. Afterward, she said anyone who worked in any of the 19 buildings should be eligible for streamlined aid. Barrie pointed out that the Labor Department recently ruled that everyone who worked in Building 881 between 1952-1966 is eligible for fast-track compensation simply because some workers there had measurable exposure to neutron radiation. Originally, those workers were not included. "The law requires that this process be claimant friendly," Barrie said. "If you can't tell from the records which workers should have been monitored for neutron radiation, you have to give all of them the benefit of the doubt." Advisory board members decided they will interview one of the CU study's authors to learn more about the records, then decide how to proceed. © 2007 The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 37 Rocky Mountain News: No clear answer on Flats ruling Scientists have info that suggests risk in buildings By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News (Contact) Tuesday, November 27, 2007 Federal scientists acknowledged Monday that they have records suggesting workers from 19 buildings at the top-secret Rocky Flats site near Denver may have risked exposure to dangerous neutron radiation. But after they answered questions from a presidential advisory board, it was still not clear why the government didn't see that information as evidence that those workers were eligible for automatic financial and medical compensation for work-related cancers. "This is certainly a concern to some people, and we want to address it as quickly as possible," said Mark Griffon, who leads work on Rocky Flats for the White House Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. Earlier this month, the Rocky Mountain News reviewed data from a 2003 cancer study of Rocky Flats workers done by the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and the state health department. Data collected for the study show more than 3,000 workers in 19 buildings at the now-demolished bomb-making site were at risk of exposure to neutron radiation. That risk is supposed to earn ill workers a chance at streamlined aid if they meet other criteria. Most workers must prove a link between their toxic exposures and their illnesses, which can take years. But if records are missing and faulty, they can petition for streamlined aid. Rocky Flats workers did just that more than two years ago. The Labor Department, which oversees the compensation effort, ruled that only a small group who labored from 1952- 66 and were potentially exposed to neutron radiation would qualify. Brant Ulsh, a scientist for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, told the advisory board he had reviewed the CU study and found that it contained no information the government didn't already have. The study was not among the information Ulsh presented this year to the Labor Department to use when determining which workers would be eligible for automatic aid. Now, the issue is whether that decision should be revisited in light of the information about radiation in the 19 buildings. Ulsh argued it would be unlikely for most workers in the 19 buildings to be exposed to dangerous radiation. But Larry Elliott, who directs NIOSH's work on the compensation program, said the workers might have been assigned to one building but worked in others where neutron radiation existed. Worker advocate Terrie Barrie, of Craig, participated in the teleconference with the officials Monday. Afterward, she said anyone who worked in any of the 19 buildings should be eligible for streamlined aid. Advisory board members decided they will interview one of the CU study's authors to learn more about the records then decide how to proceed. © 2007 The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 38 KOB.com - Groups criticize planned prescribed burn at LANL Posted at: 11/24/2007 05:50:05 PM By: The Associated Press LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - Watchdog groups are criticizing a plan by Los Alamos National Laboratory to set two prescribed burns. The groups worry about potential health impacts from the fires on areas once used for high explosives and depleted uranium experiments. The lab has denied there would be any impact on health. The fires are to be set Monday at Technical Area 36 in Potrillo Canyon and Technical Area 68 in Water Canyon. The idea is to burn out grass and brush to prevent catastrophic wildfires such as the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire that raced through parts of the community. Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, Tewa Women United and the Embudo Valley Environmental Monitoring Group want the lab to postpone the burns until further review and public comment. (Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************