***************************************************************** 11/07/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.288 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 The axis of confusion: undoing the N. Korea-Iraq analogies 2 World braces for 'triumphant' Bush.* 3 Japan ed: Too much reliance on whistle-blowers 4 U.S.: N. Korea Debates Are Intense 5 US: How the power shift will affect energy issues 6 North Korea Softens Its Tone on Nuclear Arms Agreement 7 US: Bigger, hairier problems call for new debate over uranium use 8 US: Speaker blasts possible war on Iraq 9 New weapons inspection plan unfair, says Iraq 10 EU Proposes Tighter Rules for Nuclear Safety 11 Brussels under fire over nuclear proposals 12 Document leaves way clear for war 13 Commission adopts nuclear energy package 14 US: NRC Staff Proposes $60,000 Fine Against U. S. Enrichment Corp. 15 An unsettling quest for truth in Baghdad 16 S. Korea Warns North on Nuclear Issue 17 Nuclear Issue Tops Agenda at Inter-Korean Economic Talks 18 Inter Korea Economic Talks Underway 19 US Opposes Kaesong Project Start 20 Q: Iraq resolution imminent 21 Both used and abused, the UN has lost its fundamental legitimacy 22 UN, Afghans spar over statues ruined by Taliban 23 Changes to Draft Resolution on Iraq 24 George Bush's poll win paves the way for an attack on Iraq. NUCLEAR REACTORS 25 Asia: How safe is nuclear energy?* 26 US: NRC hears of nuke plant's impact 27 Floating nuclear power plant to emerge in Russia 28 Nuclear plant near Austrian border resumes testing of second 29 US: 2 TVA programs not exclusive NUCLEAR SAFETY 30 Nuclear sub crash* 31 Depleted Uranium: UN addresses issue 32 Defence chiefs launch inquiry after nuclear sub runs aground 33 US: Fate of sick worker 'voice' unclear 34 Canada: Navy knew of sub's flaw NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 35 US: Duratek Signs Contracts Valued At $110.7 Million for Hanford Was 36 US: Razing recommended at Linde site 37 US: Envirocare's Victory 38 UK: FEARS OVER SAFETY INCENTIVES at Sellafield 39 USEC elects board, sets dividend 40 US: Utah waste vote: Unfinished Business 41 AU: Conservationists accused of waste dump scaremongering. NUCLEAR WEAPONS 42 US: Bunker-busters set to go nuclear* 43 UK: AL Kennedy: Invade us now, please 44 Bush wins hardline UN deal on Iraq 45 Straw to brief MPs on Iraq 46 AU: Boffins warn over mini-nuke 47 Pak-Saudi nuke nexus? 48 US: Panel talks war effects US DEPT. OF ENERGY 49 Y-12 employment numbers have spiked in past 2 years 50 U.S. backs off plan to cut Paducah cleanup workers 51 New conductor could provide answers for energy demand OTHER NUCLEAR ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 The axis of confusion: undoing the N. Korea-Iraq analogies Thursday, November 7, 2002 By Alan Isenberg North Korea and Iraq, though both members of the ?axis of evil,? are not alike. They pose different threats and merit different strategic responses. The only reason we think they?re similar in the first place is because President Bush told us to, and no one seems to be telling us otherwise. Indeed, many Americans are making the mistake ? a mistake thus unremedied by the Bush administration ? of internalizing a rhetorical construct that many of us disagreed with when first disseminated. They have used it as a basis to allege hypocrisy in the likely intent to attack Iraq (which presently has no nuclear capability that we know of) while leaving North Korea (which has or soon will have such a capability) alone. Speechwriters are sometimes the most powerful people in Washington. The turn of a phrase by an artful wordsmith can quickly become a part of the national vernacular. In perhaps his most moving speech to date, on Sept. 20, 2001, Bush inspired an emotional Congress and a wounded nation ? in words penned by his gifted speechwriter, Michael Gerson ? by declaring that terrorism would ?follow a path to history?s unmarked grave of discarded lies.? Less uniformly welcomed, however, was Bush?s portrayal, in his State of the Union Address, of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an ?axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.? The construction, intended to evoke images of the WWII axis powers, instantly ignited debate. For Europeans, the ?axis of evil? was but another in the string of uncouth blunders by the trigger-happy unilateralist cowboy, revealing much about the ?simplistic? nature of American foreign policy. The consensus in Washington (if such a thing ever exists) was that the speechwriter who coined the phrase had probably not anticipated the scope of the public?s reaction, but that the president was nevertheless prepared to stick by it. As a result, it stuck among the American people: For whatever we thought of the ?axis,? we bought it. But as of a few weeks ago, the administration must be wishing we hadn?t. When North Korea announced that it had been conducting a secret nuclear weapons program, in clear violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the 1994 bilateral agreement with the United States, the American public was abuzz with questions: Does this mean we have to attack North Korea? How is this scenario different from Iraq? Those who already objected to invading Iraq invited the announcement as an opportunity to assert that the administration has no reason to invade Iraq except that Saddam tried to kill the president?s daddy. All of these questions revolve around a faulty premise: the administration?s rhetorical mandate that we somehow connect the two. This is wrong. The phrase ?axis of evil? should be downgraded, immediately and forever, from strategic paradigm to catchy sound bite. Assuming that demotion, here are two important differences between Iraq and North Korea: We?re past the point of no return in North Korea. Simple but true: It?s much more dangerous to invade a country with nuclear weapons, because that country has nuclear weapons. An autocrat with the ability to do terrible things at the push of a button is harder to unseat than one who lacks such a capability. So, we?ve missed the boat on a non-nuclear North Korea, but Saddam can still be stopped if we act now. Kim Jong Il is evil and crazy, but maybe not as evil and crazy as Saddam. Make no mistake: The Korean despot is not a good guy. He starves his people so he can build weapons and uses repression to ensure compliance. If our executive order against political assassinations were repealed, Kim would be well-advised to invest in some Kevlar. But his strategic posture is primarily defensive and insular ? and has been (with a few nasty exceptions) since his father?s troops crossed back over the 38th parallel 50 years ago ? whereas Saddam?s is expansionist and aggressive. Kim?s forays into diplomacy of late ? he occasionally supports the ?sunshine? policy that increases openness in north-south relations on the peninsula ? suggest that his revelation about his nukes is as much intended to leverage his neighbors into a Cold War-style détente as it is to brandish his destructive abilities. While this dynamic may generate a level of regional stability on the Indo-Pak level ? which is by no means comforting ? it still poses a lesser danger than Saddam, who has already shown a willingness to use what weapons of mass destruction he has on his own people and to launch missiles at a neighbor without express provocation. Admittedly, these two reasons ? which advocate diplomatic deterrence with North Korea while calling for an opposite course in Iraq ? do not present a stellar justification. But experts on both sides of the aisle assert that North Korea (and Iran, incidentally), unlike Iraq, are places where negotiation should trump military action. It is time for the administration to better define and defend the actions we will take with respect to each state in question, and in doing so, to relegate ?axis of evil? to the grave of political rhetoric?s discarded misnomers. Alan Isenberg, a first-year law student, worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. before coming to Stanford. His column will return to its regular Wednesday slot in two weeks. His next column will address the question of military action in Iraq. E-mail him at ai5@stanford.edu. Copyright 2002 Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation ***************************************************************** 2 World braces for 'triumphant' Bush.* United Press International By Martin Walker UPI Chief International Correspondent Published 11/6/2002 1:05 PM WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The world now faces President George W. Bush triumphant after the midterm elections. His Republican Party is in command of both Houses of Congress, and Bush can claim a potent new mandate for an assertive foreign policy whose unilateralist "America First" implications have disconcerted friends and foes alike. "We are dealing with a power that has no limit in its dealing with foreign issues," said Mohammed Shaker, head of the Egyptian Council on Foreign Relations, whose wariness of a Bush administration unrestrained by any other branch of government was widely shared beyond U.S. shores. Diplomats in Washington Wednesday, while noting that the executive branch was always in charge of foreign policy, suggested that the Republican majorities in Congress would give the Bush administration even more self-assurance in foreign policy, and adding weight to its more hawkish voices and weakening the doves. "My guess is that one of the losers of this election campaign might be (Secretary of State) Colin Powell, who has been seen by most foreign governments as a voice of caution and of wisdom in an administration that otherwise seems largely filled with hawks," commented one senior NATO diplomat based in Washington. "When Powell and other administration officials go up to Capitol Hill to explain their policies, he will no longer be facing that internationalist Democrat, Sen. Joe Biden. The new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee could be a very different type of interlocutor. And certainly the majority on that committee, and the chairmen of the important sub-committees, will be very different," the NATO diplomat added. Other diplomats suggested the United States would become tougher to deal with on international issues and was likely to be more dismissive of the United Nations and cooler to traditional allies like Germany and France that are now perceived as critics of the Bush administration's policy on Iraq. "If there were much hope for any American compromises on international issues like the Kyoto Protocol (on global warming) and the International Criminal Court, this election result probably knocks all that on the head," commented one European ambassador. "This might not be an easy administration to work with in the sense of finding agreed solutions. I suspect we might hear rather more 'take it or leave it.'" On the whole, diplomats seem to expect a change in tone coming from Washington rather than any dramatic new shifts in policy. The executive branch always runs foreign policy, aside from big issues like war or peace or the ratification of treaties. And on the main issues, like threatening war on Iraq or the new national security doctrine that authorizes pre-emptive strikes, have already been decided. In Asia, officials were trying to assess what the elections could mean for their region. Taku Yamasaki, secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, concluded that America's War on terrorism would continue even more forcefully, since the Republican victory "confirms that public opinion remained united behind the Bush administration's policy." "In terms of foreign policy, Mr. Bush would gain much more leeway in dealing with the war on terrorism and the Iraq threat," said Singapore's Straits Times. In South Korea, some commentators saw the election result strengthening Bush's hands if he decided to get tough with North Korea over its admission that it was enriching uranium with a view to developing nuclear weapons. But they also feared the Korean issues might be on the back burner, after Powell called Foreign Minister Choi Sung-hong on Wednesday and said he had to cancel a planned visit to South Korea next week because of "unavoidable circumstances" related to the U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq. In Europe and the Middle East, media comment seemed to expect a tougher line coming from Washington over Iraq, with an agreed resolution in the U.N. Security Council said to be very close. "The prospect of waging war on Iraq looks to be increased," Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV said Wednesday. "Not quite elected in 2000, Monsieur Bush sees his political base reinforced by a remarkable electoral success that offers him an even greater freedom of maneuver in his strategy towards Iraq," commented France's leading daily, Le Monde. "The big loser of these elections, apart from the democrats, is none other than Saddam Hussein," commented the left-wing French daily Liberation. "An election setback for Bush would have been inevitably interpreted as a rejection by the American people of his threatening rhetoric against 'the axis of evil' whose pivot lies in Baghdad. Bush can thus henceforth claim a strong mandate of popular support for his politics of enforced disarmament of Iraq, and also in his dealing with the U.N." "The results staggered many pundits who saw Bush as a dimwit who had become president through good fortune and a court-managed technicality," said The Times of India Wednesday. "The president appeared to have erased that stigma. Pundits and pollsters saw the results as an affirmation of the American people's faith in George Bush in the face of the challenges he is facing. They also surmised that the events of 9/11 had a profound effect on America despite previews suggesting the elections would be based on local issues." Only in Israel did there seem to be little new deference to the Bush administration and its striking new mandate. Israel's new Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu marked his own return to government by asserting the Bush administration's latest "roadmap for peace" was "not on the agenda." Netanyahu also told Israeli TV Wednesday he thought the attack on Saddam would be a good time to expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, despite earlier promises from Israeli premier Ariel Sharon to President Bush that Arafat "would not be harmed." Copyright © 2002 United Press International ***************************************************************** 3 Japan ed: Too much reliance on whistle-blowers Nippon Meat Packers, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO)...the corporate scandals just keep on coming, and in each case the problem has been brought to light by internal whistle-blowers. Writing in Chuo Koron this month in an article titled "Reliance on Regulators Ruins Corporations," former Bank of Japan Executive Director Tatsuya Tamura begins by noting that lack of compliance with regulations is a major issue in Japanese corporate management and identifies the causes as (1) the vagueness of the link between authority and responsibility and (2) dependence on favorable treatment from bureaucrats. The Nippon Meat mislabeling scandal resulted in the resignation of the founder-chairman, but Tamura insists that forcing a top executive to take responsibility is just passing the buck. Instead, he says, we should be trying to analyze the process that allowed such malfeasance to occur in the first place. In the case of TEPCO's failure to report damage to a nuclear reactor, Tamura notes that it may have been partly due to overly strict safety regulations, but a bigger problem is that Japan retains many of the old attitudes of a "village society" in which loyalty to the group is valued above all else. Unlike Western society, Japanese culture has little appreciation for those who sound the alarm at the group's expense, tending instead to view them as snitches. Another point the Nippon Meat and TEPCO incidents have in common is the behavior of the regulators, who turned a blind eye to the companies' noncompliance until the scandals broke, at which point they began pointing fingers. Tamura warns: "Corporations cannot survive without a top executive willing to have everything out in the open, regardless of what bureaucrats say or do." (Kyodo News) November 7, 2002 Japan Today Discussion ***************************************************************** 4 U.S.: N. Korea Debates Are Intense Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Thursday November 7, 2002 1:30 PM SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - There is no ``easy and obvious'' solution to concerns about North Korea's nuclear weapons program, and Washington is engaged in intense debates with other countries about how to deal with the problem, a top U.S. official said Thursday. U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith also said during a visit to Seoul that the United States does not have a full picture of North Korea's nuclear program, including whether the communist country has succeeded in enriching uranium. ``There is much about the program that we don't know,'' Feith said in a meeting with journalists. ``I cannot answer with precision exactly what they have accomplished with their uranium enrichment program to date.'' In talks with Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly last month, North Korea admitted it had a uranium enrichment program in violation of nuclear pacts, including a 1994 deal in which it agreed to freeze a plutonium-based nuclear program in return for two light-water nuclear reactors to meet its energy needs. Construction of the reactors is years behind schedule. Under terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework, a shipment of fuel oil has left Singapore for North Korea. But the fate of the deal is uncertain, and the United States and its allies are debating whether futures shipments should continue. In Pyongyang on Thursday, South Korean negotiators told their North Korean counterparts that the second nuclear program could jeopardize joint economic projects. The North Koreans said they were ``seriously contemplating'' the issue, according to South Korean journalists. Feith said U.S. officials were conducting ``intense and broad-ranging'' discussions with South Korea, Japan and other countries over how to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. ``This is an authentically difficult subject,'' he said. ``It is not a problem that presents an easy and obvious solution. There are debates about the best way to proceed and how to make diplomacy effective.'' North Korea has said it will alleviate U.S. security concerns if the United States signs a nonaggression pact. U.S. officials want the North to scrap its nuclear program before any talks can take place. South Korean is anxious to avoid the collapse of joint projects with North Korea, which has accused the United States of trying to undermine reconciliation efforts on their peninsula. Feith said there was no ``fundamental disagreement'' between the United States and South Korea about the need for effective diplomacy on the North Korean nuclear issue. Feith, who visited the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas, flew to Japan later Thursday. About 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 5 How the power shift will affect energy issues By JOAN LOWY November 6, 2002 Key environmental and energy issues likely to be affected by the shift in the balance of power in the Senate in favor of the GOP: ENERGY: Congress is now more likely to pass a major energy bill, one of President Bush's top legislative priorities. The House and Senate have already passed separate bills, but legislation had become bogged down over differences between Senate Democrats and House Republicans regarding a number of issues, including $30 billion in tax cuts for the oil, gas, coal and nuclear power industries. ARCTIC DRILLING: Senate Republicans are likely to make another attempt to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, although success remains a long shot. The Republican-controlled House approved a plan to drill in the refuge, but it was rejected in the Senate. GLOBAL WARMING: Democratic proposals to regulate carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas responsible for global warming, are effectively dead. The Bush administration and the oil, coal, utility and auto industries have opposed regulating carbon dioxide as too costly for the U.S. economy. AIR POLLUTION: Bush's "clear skies" plan to reduce air pollution from oil and coal-burning power plants will get a more receptive hearing next year. Current Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., and Democrats had opposed the plan because it didn't go far enough to reduce dangerous mercury emissions and because it didn't include carbon dioxide reductions. LOGGING: Bush's plan to reduce fires in national forests through selective logging will almost certainly be revived. Environmentalists have criticized the plan as a giveaway to the timber industry. URBAN SPRAWL: Proponents of greater federal spending on road-building - a top priority of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbies - will have the advantage over "smart growth" advocates who favor more aid for mass transit when Congress considers major transportation legislation next year. (Reach Joan Lowy at lowyj(at)shns.com) The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 North Korea Softens Its Tone on Nuclear Arms Agreement The New York Times *November 7, 2002* *By DON KIRK* SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 6 ? A former American ambassador to South Korea said today that during a four-day visit to Pyongyang, a senior North Korean official had told him the 1994 Geneva framework agreement under which the North promised to stop developing nuclear weapons was "hanging by a thread." The language, while dire-sounding, is actually a step down from North Korea's earlier stance that the agreement had been "nullified." The former ambassador, Donald Gregg, who arrived here on Tuesday after his visit to the North Korean capital, was describing his conversations with Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju. James A. Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, visited Pyongyang in early October. He was the first high-level American envoy to visit North Korea since President Bush's election. He reported that Mr. Kang had declared the Geneva agreement "nullified," language that was repeated in a North Korean statement released at the United Nations late last month. Mr. Kelly has also said that, at those meetings, North Korea acknowledged that it was developing nuclear warheads with highly enriched uranium. Mr. Gregg, who served as ambassador to South Korea during the presidency of Mr. Bush's father, said that in nearly 10 hours of discussions with three senior North Korean officials, they also took a different stance. "The North Koreans said they had adopted a `neither confirm nor deny' policy toward the uranium issue," Mr. Gregg said. Some of their comments came "close to admission they had a program under way," he said, but none went beyond that. Mr. Gregg, who is president of the Korea Society in New York, was accompanied on the visit by Don Oberdorfer, a journalist and author who has written extensively about North Korea and is now a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. Mr. Gregg said that the North Korean officials emphasized the need for a nonaggression agreement that did not have to be as complex as a formal peace treaty. "They would like the United States to give some assurance we do not intend to blow them out of the water," he said. Copyright The New York Times Company ***************************************************************** 7 Bigger, hairier problems call for new debate over uranium use By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel Senior writer November 5, 2001 This threatening new period has restoked concerns about nuclear terrorism and brought fresh scrutiny to security of U.S. nuclear facilities, particularly nuclear power plants. It also has renewed debate about the use of highly enriched uranium - or other materials of bomb-making potential - as fuel in nuclear research reactors. The fear, of course, is that the fissile material could be stolen and ultimately converted into some type of first-generation atomic weapon by terrorists. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a conservative organization with an almost impossible oversight mission, last week acknowledged the risks of nuclear terrorism and pushed for upgrades in safety and security of nuclear facilities and nuclear materials. The Nuclear Control Institute applauded the international agency's position, but said it was way overdue and still inadequate. Not surprisingly, the institute called for bigger steps to combat nuclear proliferation and stem the potential for nuclear terrorism. "For more than two decades, we have urged the IAEA and the nuclear power industry to take seriously the risks of terrorists stealing bomb-usable nuclear materials and attacking nuclear plants," Paul Leventhal, the institute's president, said in a statement distributed to the news media. "The need for action, not rhetoric, is long overdue," Among other things, Leventhal urged the IAEA to call for elimination of highly enriched uranium from research programs. "Enormous progress has been made, with the vast majority of the world's research reactors having already converted to low-enriched uranium alternatives," he said. "However, the IAEA is silent about a new research reactor in Germany, to be licensed to use up to 360 kilograms of bomb-grade (uranium) fuel by the year 2010, equivalent to dozens of bombs." Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor is another facility often cited in these discussions. The Oak Ridge reactor uses a uranium fuel core with an enrichment level in the "high 90s," according to Larry Boyd of the U.S. Department of Energy's reactor oversight team at ORNL. That means the uranium consists of more than 90 percent U-235, the fissile isotope, and that's plenty of punch for a bomb. Generally speaking, the higher the enrichment the lesser amount of material needed for a crude device. By contrast, commercial nuclear reactors typically use uranium fuel with an enrichment level of only 2 to 4 percent. Although research reactors elsewhere have been converted to low-enriched fuel, that's never been a serious consideration with the High Flux Isotope Reactor. A fuel test was conducted at another lab reactor, the Oak Ridge Research Reactor, before it was shut down in 1987, and the results reportedly were not satisfying to scientists. "It would essentially cripple the reactor," Boyd said. "Even using the most advanced fuel-fabrication technology, it would result in a significant reduction in power level and (neutron) flux." The reactor would still be useful, the DOE official said, but it would no longer be a world-class research reactor. Along with a reactor in Russia, the ORNL facility has the highest neutron concentration available anywhere, and that's vital for scientific experiments, he said. The High Flux Isotope Reactor has been shut down for more than a year for maintenance, repairs and a series of upgrades, but the laboratory could receive approval for restart as early as this week. A DOE team from Washington was in town last week to evaluate final changes made following the reactor's operational readiness review. Ed Lee, the reactor manager, said the first few months of operation will be devoted mostly to testing and checking out systems - especially since new equipment has been installed. "You'll do things like take measurements around the beam ports and check what all the radiation levels are," he said. "You have to do a lot of testing because the reactor was torn down to a level it hasn't been since it was built (in the 1960s)." There will be a limited amount of isotope production during the first few months but probably not many neutron-scattering experiments, Lee said. Lee said the readiness review went well, and he said input from the DOE overseers will help make the operations better. However, he said he was uncomfortable discussing issues pertaining to the reactor's uranium fuel. James Roberto, associate director of ORNL, also declined comment. A federal audit in the mid-1980s lambasted the Oak Ridge laboratory for lax security regarding the fuel storage at the reactor. At the time, the highly enriched uranium was stored in a building near the reactor with little protection other than a chain-link fence. "We haven't done that in a long time," Boyd said. According to the DOE official, the reactor's barrel-like fuel assemblies are stored in a vault at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant (about 10 miles away) until it's time for reloading. With a fuel cycle of 22-26 days, the ORNL reactor is reloaded about every five weeks or so. Boyd said delivery of uranium fuel to the reactor is a high-security operation. The enriched uranium is transported from Y-12 in the same trucks used to haul nuclear weapons, and Boyd said armed guards and a SWAT team accompany the vehicle. "It's the appropriate security for that type of material," he said. The shipments take place at unannounced times to foil would-be onlookers. Boyd recalls a situation a few years ago where a security-cleared DOE worker involved in environmental monitoring happened to wander too close to the delivery truck and was quickly escorted out of the area, much to his dismay. "Given the current situation, I'm sure you'll probably see even bigger, hairier guards than before," Boyd said. Senior writer Frank Munger can be reached at 482-9213 or by e-mail at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This weekly column on science and technology also is available on our Web site at http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/. The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 Speaker blasts possible war on Iraq By Hayes Hickman, News-Sentinel staff writer November 7, 2002 Dr. Rania Masri repeatedly posed the question of "where is the threat?" as she made her case against a U.S. invasion of Iraq during a University of Tennessee guest lecture Wednesday night. And when Masri eventually opened the floor to questions from the audience, she encouraged anyone who disagreed with her to speak up. There were few takers. She attacked the Bush administration's call for a regime change in Iraq, as well as contentions of the Middle Eastern power's possible production of weapons of mass destruction. Rather than self-defense, America's real interest is oil, Masri contended. "We're not talking democracy," she said. "We're talking about taking control of other people's resources." Masri, a national board member of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, blamed United Nations sanctions and U.S. bombing attacks since the Gulf War for causing widespread disease and hunger among the Iraqi people. "Morphine, for God's sake, is banned by the sanctions," she said. She also accused the United States of using depleted uranium bombs during the previous war, which she said were responsible for leukemia cases that continue to rise among Iraqi people. "What if they use them again?" she asked. "These are questions that we're not asking." Masri went on to say that the war now being proposed in U.N. resolutions would affect Americans, too, in terms of monetary expense and personal freedoms. The cost could be better spent on health care for the uninsured and improvements in public education, she said. And as she argued that the war on terrorism already has threatened personal freedoms, she said that a new war would only heighten such a cost. "Yes, we suffered on 9-11, yes it was an act of terrorism. But will this war make us safer?" she asked. "The CIA says our chances of being attacked will increase if we go to war - not some beatniks in Berkley, but the CIA. Is Bush even reading these reports?" The free event at the University Center was sponsored by the UT Muslim Student Association, which hosted a similar lecture by Masri last year. She concluded the Wednesday night speech by describing her own experiences as an American who was raised to believe she should be willing to die for her country. And then Masri asked the audience of about 150 attendees, "What will you risk for peace?" Hayes Hickman may be reached at 865-342-6323 or hickman@knews.com. The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 9 New weapons inspection plan unfair, says Iraq Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Staff and agencies Thursday November 7, 2002 Iraqi government newspapers today denounced a draft US resolution on resuming weapons inspections as a pretext for a war "on the whole Arab nation". The ruling Baath party title, al-Thawra, said the UN security council should not bow to US demands. Babil, owned by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday, criticised the what it saw as the injustice of the resolution. "The new aggressive US draft resolution is full of dictation and demands - accompanied by war threats - that should be fulfilled by Iraq while ignoring a decade of Iraqi cooperation with the international body," it said. The US is pressing for a vote this week on a revised draft that was submitted yesterday following eight weeks of intense lobbying by the British government and the Bush administration. The revised draft demands that Iraq provide "immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access to any and all" areas and complies with its obligations under previous UN resolutions to give up its nuclear, chemical and biological warfare capabilities. It then sets a series of deadlines which the Iraqis must meet. Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector, could be in the country within a fortnight if the resolution is passed. The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, was today expected to brief MPs on the draft resolution. He was due to fly back early from a trip to the Balkans in order to make a statement to the Commons. British diplomats are hopeful that French objections to previous drafts have been overcome after 11 days of intense negotiations between Mr Straw, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin. In a key concession to the French, the draft states that the security council must be summoned if Iraq is alleged to be in breach of its conditions. But the wording leaves open whether a further resolution would be needed for war. The Russian deputy foreign minister, Yuri Fedotov, told the ITAR-Tass news agency that Moscow still needed to be sure that the text did not contain any "automatic mechanism" for the use of military force but "intensive diplomatic contacts" were under way to try to agree a final wording. On the streets of Baghdad, people appeared resigned to the possibility of war. "We can do nothing but to hope that France, China and Russia would oppose the US draft resolution on Iraq," Subhi Mahmoud, a grocery store owner, said. Ameer Abdul-Qassim, a school teacher, said approval of the US draft "means that the war on my country is getting closer." Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 10 EU Proposes Tighter Rules for Nuclear Safety 07.11.2002 Many reactors in the new EU countries are unsafe The European Commission has proposed a set of new rules which will give the EU unprecedented powers in monioring the safety of nuclear reactors across Europe. On Wednesday, the European Commission proposed new rules for the safety of nuclear power throughout the European Union. With the new standards, the Commission aims to implement binding safety standards in all current member states, including the ten new candidate countries up for accession in 2004. Nuclear safety first The Commission has set nuclear safety high on the agenda in the preparations heading up to EU enlargement. As a condition for membership Slovakia, Lithuania and Bulgaria have promised to shut down unsafe reactors and the Czech Republic is in the process of upgrading its nuclear plants. But when these countries join the EU, there is nothing to stop them from abandoning these security measures, simply because there are no common rules for nuclear safety in the EU. "We clearly have two standards," EU Commissioner Loyola de Palacio says. In order to solve this problem, Palacio suggests integrating the guidelines set by the International Atomic Energy Association into EU law. But both Britain and France, large producers of nuclear energy, want to keep it the way it is, and say these guidelines, which are not legally binding, are more than enough. More supervision Under the proposals, each country would have to set up an independent nuclear safety authority, which would include half of the ten applicants, which between them have nine nuclear plants and 27 reactor blocks of Soviet design. These authorities would then undergo thorough monitoring by European Commission inspectors. In addition, the Commission wants to implement special funds to finance decommissioning, in order to guarantee the safety of a nuclear plant if the operating company goes bankrupt. The decommissioning of an aging reactor can cost up to one billion euro. Furthermore, the Commission has proposed a 2018 deadline for burying nuclear waste which currently is mostly kept in containers on the sites of nuclear plants. Too weak for Germany The proposals will now be forwarded to the European Parliament and the European Council for further debate. But whether they will be passed remains questionable: Not only France and Britain, but also Germany, which is in the process of reducing its nuclear power capacities, is expected to express strong opposition to the proposals. On Wednesday, the Greens' Member of Parliament Hiltrud Breyer said the guidelines were "pure eyewash." [en:more_dw] A New Generation of Chernobyl Victims 16 years ago an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant killed 31 people and sent a thick cloud of radiation across much of Europe. Today, the skies are clear, but the fight against radiation sickness is far from over. (April, 02) Wanted: Loads of Clean Energy In Germany, the debate on climate change and renewable sources of energy has become increasingly vocal. Here a look at which regenerative energies play a role in Germany’s energy market. (Aug. 14, 02) [http://www.euobserver.com ***************************************************************** 11 Brussels under fire over nuclear proposals Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Ian Black in Brussels Thursday November 7, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Proposals to give the European commission unprecedented powers to supervise the safety of nuclear installations ran into a storm of criticism yesterday. Loyola de Palacio, the Spanish commissioner for energy, said she wanted to introduce common standards and monitoring mechanisms ahead of the biggest enlargement in the EU's history. Five of the 10 countries expected to join the union in 2004 have a combined total of 18 nuclear reactors, mostly of old Soviet design. Three, in Slovakia, Lithuania and Bulgaria, have been closed as part of the entry negotiations. But current member states cannot be obliged to do the same. "European citizens would never forgive us for inaction in this field," Ms de Palacio said. "It would be paradoxical if the EU were to monitor nuclear safety in the new member states but not in the rest of the enlarged EU." Britain and France are suspicious of any attempt by Brussels to increase its powers in this highly sensitive area. The commission insisted it was not trying to influence energy policy choices in the 15 current member states, eight of which use nuclear energy. Italy, Germany and Belgium have all decided to phase out nuclear power and only Finland is likely to build a new nuclear reactor in the coming years. The idea is to leave national safety bodies to do their work, but to impose checks and require improvements. "Coordination of the national systems within a community framework is a guarantee that high safety standards will be maintained at nuclear installations," the commission said. "Today it is no longer possible to consider nuclear safety from a purely national perspective. Only a common approach can guarantee that high standards will be maintained in an enlarged 25 or even 28-member union." But the proposals came under immediate attack. "The only purpose of the nuclear package is to revitalise the nuclear industry in an enlarged EU," said Luxembourg's Green MEP Claude Turmes. Another worry is that with inspections still in national hands, non-nuclear states such as Ireland and Austria will have little or no influence on the safety and health hazards associated with nuclear installations. Under the Euratom treaty, which dates back to 1957, when the EEC was founded, the EU has no legally enforceable common standards on nuclear safety. Ms de Palacio proposed raising Euratom's borrowing ceiling to 6bn euros (£3.8bn) from 4bn euros to cover nuclear safety and decommissioning projects. The commission also wants to ensure that sufficient financial resources are set aside for decommissioning, which can cost between 200m euros and 1bn euros per reactor. This issue is especially sensitive in France, where the state-owned Electricité de France has used decommissioning funds to finance acquisitions abroad. Useful links British Energy [http://www.british-energy.com/] Department of Trade and Industry [http://www.dti.gov.uk/] British Nuclear Fuels Ltd [http://www.bnfl.co.uk/website.nsf/default.htm] Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament [http://www.cnduk.org/] Greenpeace [http://www.greenpeace.org/homepage/] HSE nuclear glossary [http://www.hse.gov.uk/nsd/ilrwglos.htm] UK atomic energy authority [http://www.ukaea.org.uk/] National Radiological Protection Board [http://www.nrpb.org.uk/] Friends of the Earth [http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/dump_nuclear/index.htm l] World Nuclear Association [http://www.uilondon.org/] World Nuclear Transport Institute [http://www.wnti.co.uk] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 12 Document leaves way clear for war Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Resolution's grey areas may give hawks excuse for strike Ewen MacAskill and Oliver Burkeman in New York Thursday November 7, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Adoption by the United Nations security council of the resolution on Iraq, tabled yesterday by the US, will set in motion a detailed timetable that could take the world to war within months. The US resolution, which Washington wants the security council to vote on tomorrow, sets out tough new powers for UN weapons inspectors to use to hunt down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, if they exist. The resolution sets out lots of stringent conditions for Iraq, the breach of which could result in the launching of a US-led war against the country. And, in spite of two months of tortuous negotiation, there are lots of grey areas, lots of ambiguities, lots of scope for confusion. Opinion is divided in the US, at the UN, in Europe, in the Arab world and within the British government as to whether this resolution will lead to peace, the eventual lifting of sanctions and the return of Iraq to the international fold, or whether it simply offers a menu of excuses for war. The Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, might decide at any point over the next few months that enough humiliation has been heaped upon him by the inspectors. Or the hawks in Washington might try to engineer a crisis, perhaps by leaking "intelligence" on weapons to the inspectors. A western diplomat denied yesterday that war was inevitable. He said the resolution was designed to test Iraq's "genuineness" and war or peace depended on that alone. The resolution will remain open to debate until at least tomorrow when the US is expected to push it to a vote. A UN security council source said France, the main opponent to the resolution, had reached agreement with Washington on the main planks, though there could still be minor changes. Russia could veto the resolution but that might prove too big a price for Moscow: the end of the good relationship that its president, Vladimir Putin, enjoys with the west. The key question in the coming weeks is over the warning to Iraq "that it will face serious consequences" if there is a material breach of the resolution. This was the section that generated the most argument between Washington and Paris, and Paris lost. The French wanted two resolutions: one setting out the terms for the inspectors and a one sanctioning war if Iraq blocked the work of the inspectors. The US would not budge. If the inspectors report problems with the Iraqis, the matter will go back to the security council only for consideration. The way is now open for a US-led war, with legitimacy conferred by the UN without a further resolution. Iraq has a week from adoption of the present resolution to accept or reject it but will accept, knowing that rejection will bring war. It will then have 30 days to provide a detailed declaration of any chemical, biological or nuclear-related weapons at its disposal. Within a fortnight, the UN weapons inspectors, who left Baghdad four years ago, could be back in Iraq, and that is when the problems will begin. An Iraqi official insisted Baghdad would comply fully with the inspectors rather than risk war. The problem is one of interpretation, especially as there is much deliberate ambiguity in the text. The key ambiguity surrounds what would qualify as an Iraqi obstruction of the inspections process and whose responsibility it would be to make the judgment. It will be up to Hans Blix, the UN's chief weapons inspector, to decide whether, for example, a locked door to which the key cannot be immediately found would constitute such an obstruction. Such tiny details could prove crucial. Inspectors with Unmovic's predecessor body, Unscom, voiced suspicions that traffic jams en route to chemical facilities were deliberately arranged by the Iraqis. Iraq appears to be under the impression that failure by Baghdad to declare all weapons would not amount to a "material breach". An Iraqi official, speaking before the resolution was tabled, insisted that the Iraqis could not be held responsible for every weapon buried under the sand. The Iraqi take will be that failure of disclosure will have to be accompanied by evidence that Iraq deliberately set out to obstruct the inspectors. British officials disagreed yesterday, insisting that any significant omission would constitute a "material breach". A British source said: "If it was some clerking error, it will not be a material breach, but any deliberate intention to hide weapons would be." The official said that at the first sign of Iraqis "messing about" the inspection team would return to the security council to lodge a complaint. There is lots of scope elsewhere for friction. The resolution, as expected, overturns a memorandum signed between President Saddam and the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, that set restrictions on visits by inspectors to the president's eight palaces. The inspectors will now have unfettered rights. The inspectors will also be able to declare suspect sites as localised "no-fly zones", preventing any flights in or or out. The inspectors will be able to fly Iraqi witnesses out of the country to give evidence. If there was someone with real information, the Iraqi government's temptation to block his removal would be powerful. The inspectors are scheduled to report to the security council within 60 days of beginning their work in Iraq. It is an extremely short time-span, given the complexity of the problem. The difficulty of the inspectors' job is highlighted by the difference of opinion between two former inspectors. Scott Ritter and Richard Butler were doing the same work but reached radically different conclusions. Mr Ritter claims that of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were destroyed by the time the inspectors left and the country was unlikely to have developed new ones without detection. Mr Butler has consistently warned of the dangers of Iraq having used the absence of the inspectors to develop weapons. Mr Ritter claimed last week that the US will try to trigger a war with Iraq by interfering in inspections. "The US will be doing whatever it can to provoke confrontation. There is a big group of people in the US that want war," he said. Useful links Arab Gateway: Iraq briefing [http://www.al-bab.com/arab/countries/iraq.htm] Middle East Daily [http://www.middleeastdaily.com/] Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq [http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/casi/] Iraq sanctions - UN security council [http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/indexone.htm] UN special commission on Iraq [http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/index.html] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 13 Commission adopts nuclear energy package *In short:* On 6 November, the Commission adopted several controversial proposals on nuclear energy. The proposals would give the Commission more supervisory powers over the safety of the nuclear sector in view of the Union's enlargement. *Background*: Nuclear safety is a responsibility left to the Member States. In view of the enlargement, the Commission has at several times expressed its worries about the safety of nuclear installations in some of the candidate countries. Five of the ten countries for accession have older nuclear power plants based on the old, less safe, Soviet design. In its memo for the nuclear package, the Commission therefore states that it is no longer possible to consider nuclear safety from a purely national perspective. It says that "only a common approach can guarantee that high nuclear safety standards will be maintained in an enlarged 25- or even 28-member Union." *Issues*: The new proposals would give the Commission more supervisory power over the nuclear sector in all current and future EU Member States. The Commission's "nuclear package" consists of different legislative proposals: * A proposal for a framework directive defining the basic obligations and general principles concerning the safety of nuclear installations during operation and decommissioning, including: o *common safety standards and monitoring mechanisms*, based on the internationally recognised principles of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and WENRA (Western European Nuclear Regulators' Association) rules; o the requirement for all Member States to have an *indepedent safety authority*; o a *peer review system to inspect the inspectors*: the Commission states that it has no plans to conduct on-the-spot safety inspections at nuclear installations and that there is no intention, under any circumstances, of setting up a corps of European inspectors; o Community rules for the constitution, management and use of *decommissioning funds* to ensure that sufficient funds will be available to carry out decommissioning operations under conditions protecting the general public and the environment from ionising radiation. * A proposal for a directive on radioactive waste to produce a clear, transparent response in reasonable time to the issue of how to deal with radioactive waste, with the following elements: o priority to *geological burial of waste* as the safest method of disposal known at present. o obligation for all Member States to adopt, according to a pre-set timetable, *national programmes for the disposal of radioactive wastes*: decision on burial sites for highly radioactive wastes by 2008 at the latest and sites operational at the latest by 2018. For low-activity, short-life waste, arrangements must be ready at the latest by 2013; o more support and more funding for *research on waste management*. * A draft decision authorising the Commission to negotiate an agreement between Euratom and the Russian Federation on trade in nuclear materials In its accompanying Communication on nuclear safety in the EU, the Commission draws the attention to the fact that the Green Paper on Energy Supply kept the nuclear option open to those Member States who would like it. It also explains the need for a comprehensive approach to nuclear safety in the Union, from the conception to the decommissioning of installations. The Commission also proposed on 6 November to extend the Euratom lending ceiling from 4 to 6 billion Euro. *Positions*: *FORATOM*, the organisation representing the EU nuclear sector, reacted cautiously to the Commission's new package. In a first press reaction, FORATOM stated that it will study the details of the proposals but underlines that nuclear waste is already safely conditioned and stored, that the nuclear industry is highly regulated concerning supervision of nuclear safety and that all operators of nuclear installations "are obliged to set aside financial resources to meet the cost of plant decommissioning when the time comes." *Greenpeace* and the environmental groups reacted with disappointment to the proposals from "nuclear power" Commissioner Loyola de Palacio. In a press release entitled "EU's atomic relic rises again", Greenpeace urges the EU to use the taxpayers' money for clean energy, not nuclear expansion. The *Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament* renamed the Commission's proposals "the nuclear survival kit". MEP Claude Turmes (Greens, Luxembourg) stated: "Mrs de Palacio, the pro-nuclear energy Commissioner behind the nuclear package, wants to show that problems perceived by opponents of nuclear power, like safety and radioactive waste management, are gone. But the details of the text show clearly that the only purpose of the nuclear package is to revitalise the nuclear industry in an enlarged EU". *Next Steps*: The Commission has based its proposals on the Euratom Treaty's article 31, which means that the European Parliament does not need to be consulted. It is to be expected that the UK, France and Finland will oppose the Commission's plans to increase its power over the highly sensitive nuclear sector. CSR ***************************************************************** 14 NRC Staff Proposes $60,000 Fine Against U. S. Enrichment Corp. For Failing to Protect Classified Information at Paducah Plant NRC: News Release - Region III - 2002-061 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region III 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle IL 60532 www.nrc.gov No. III-02-061 November 7, 2002 CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630) 829-9663 Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662 E-mail: [opa3@nrc.gov] The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has proposed a $60,000 fine against the U. S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC) for failing to properly protect classified information at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which the company operates at Paducah, Kentucky. USEC was cited for failing to store classified information in a properly secured storage system between October 5 and December 17 of last year. The company was cited for a second violation involving six instances last year and in June of this year in which classified information was transmitted on a telecommunications system which had not been approved for classified information. The gaseous diffusion plant processes uranium for use in fuel in nuclear power plants. Certain aspects of the uranium enrichment process are considered classified information which must be properly protected from unauthorized disclosure. In notifying the company of the proposed fine, NRC Regional Administrator Jim Dyer said, While no compromise of classified information appears to have occurred, the violations are significant in that the information was not properly secured and could have resulted in individuals without the appropriate security clearance obtaining access to classified information. The company has until December 5 to pay the fine or to protest it. If the fine is protested and subsequently imposed by the NRC staff, the company may request hearing. The letter notifying the company of the proposed fine and the associated Notice of Violation will be available on the NRCs web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/enforcement/actions/materials/ and from the NRCs Region III Office of Public Affairs. It will also be available in the agencys ADAMS electronic reading room: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Thursday, November 07, 2002 ***************************************************************** 15 An unsettling quest for truth in Baghdad The Plain Dealer 11/07/02 Mark Dawidziak Plain Dealer Television Critic Reporter Sam Kiley visits an Iraqi research center where, according to the United States, Saddam Hussein is developing "weapons of mass destruction." This is an American lie, the journalist is told, and he may enter any building at the site. Kiley takes the Iraqi officials at their word and attempts to enter a building that looks suspicious to him. He immediately is herded over to other journalists on a sanctioned tour conducted, Kiley says, "like it's a school outing." When he asks if the center's physics department includes nuclear physics, a scientist answers, "I don't know what you mean by nuclear physics." When he tries to look down a corridor, he's physically restrained and told to rejoin the group. You begin to understand the frustration expressed by United Nations weapons inspectors. You can go anywhere you like, but not there. You can ask anything you wish, but not that. This is the unsettling pattern that emerges from "Truth and Lies in Baghdad," a "Frontline/ World" report that will air at 9 tonight on WEAO Channel 49 and at 10 on WVIZ Channel 25. With President Bush making his case against Iraq, Kiley sets out to investigate claims about Saddam's weapons and reports that his regime beheads women as part of a campaign of terror. Those who believe Bush is overstating the case against Saddam's regime will not be comforted by Kiley's report. The journalist finds no weapons of mass destruction, it is true, but the futility of his search is in itself illuminating. In trying to deny Kiley access to information, the Iraqi officials provide a disturbing glimpse of a country in the iron grip of terror and propaganda. This propaganda would dismiss PBS, Kiley and "Frontline" as mere agents of Western powers and Zionist leaders, yet, again and again, the most incendiary comments are made by people who are provided by the government to make Saddam look good. When Kiley asks about public beheadings of women, a director at the Ministry of Religious Affairs says, "These stories were all fabricated . . . all the lies of America." If so, they are lies believed by his own people. Assumed to be the will of the government, the beheadings are spoken of with approval by Iraqis voicing approval of Saddam. Confirming the reports of eyewitnesses, they refer to these executions as common knowledge. When Kiley asks about claims that economic sanctions are hurting hospitals in Iraq, doctors tell him such shortages are a thing of the past. When one doctor says drugs are in short supply, Kiley is stopped from verifying this at the hospital's pharmacy. This is the truth he found in Baghdad, and he didn't have long to find it. His three-week stay was cut to 10 days when the government decided it didn't like the questions he was asking. To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: mdawidziak@plaind.com, 216-999-4249 © 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. © 2002 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 S. Korea Warns North on Nuclear Issue Las Vegas SUN Today: November 07, 2002 at 1:10:13 PST By PAUL SHIN ASSOCIATED PRESS SEOUL, South Korea- South Korea warned Thursday that inter-Korean economic projects could be hurt unless North Korea resolves a dispute over its nuclear program promptly, South Korean pool reports said. While avoiding a direct answer to the warning, North Korea appealed for a continued expansion of inter-Korean cooperation, said the reports from the North's capital, Pyongyang, where the two sides opened two days of economic talks, the third since 2000. The exchange took place amid tension over recent revelations by the North's communist government that it has been secretly developing nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 agreement with the United States. The United States, joined by its allies, has tried to gain international support for its campaign to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions. "In order to further enliven ongoing inter-Korean economic cooperation, the nuclear issue should be resolved at an early date," the reports quoted Yoon Jin-sik, the chief South Korean delegate, as saying in a speech at the start of the talks. The chief North Korean delegate, Pak Chang Ryun, said only that his country was "seriously contemplating" the issue, said the reports. No foreign reporters were allowed to cover the talks. The meetings were supposed to review inter-Korean economic projects but South Korean officials made it clear that they could not move on unless the nuclear dispute was resolved, the reports said. After admitting to its nuclear program during meetings with U.S. diplomats in Pyongyang in early October, North Korea later expressed willingness to resolve the issue if the United States agrees to a nonaggression treaty. Washington has ruled out any such discussions unless the North abandons its nuclear ambitions. Fresh from a visit to North Korea this week, Donald Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, said Wednesday that North Korean officials still support the 1994 nuclear pact, which they described as "hanging by a thread." The 1994 agreement requires North Korea to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear program in return for two light-water reactors to meet its energy needs. North Korea has complained that the reactor project is years behind schedule and not expected to be completed by 2003 as promised. The U.S.-led international consortium building the reactors says 2003 was a target date and not legally binding. Three key members of the consortium - the United States, Japan and South Korea - were scheduled to meet in Tokyo this weekend to coordinate their strategy toward the North. Reflecting North Korea's acute energy crunch, many residential districts along the street from the airport to the city center in Pyongyang were dark and without electricity, the pool reports said. The reports quoted North Korean officials escorting the South Korean delegation as saying that all available electricity was being directed to help harvest fall crops. "That's why we need South-North economic cooperation," an unidentified North Korean escort said in the pool reports. A group of high-ranking North Korean officials who ended a nine-day study tour of South Korea early this week requested help in rebuilding their country's dilapidated economy. South Korea, along with the United States, is a major donor to impoverished North Korea. It is currently in the process of sending 400,000 tons of free rice and 100,000 tons of free fertilizer to the North. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 17 Nuclear Issue Tops Agenda at Inter-Korean Economic Talks Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea Updated Nov.7,2002 15:47 KST The third round of inter-Korean economic talks got underway in Pyongyang Thursday with the North Korea's nuclear crisis high on the agenda. A 35-member South Korean delegation led by Vice-Finance and Economy Minister Yoon Jin-shik received a warm welcome from North Korean officials upon arriving in the North's capital late Wednesday afternoon, after which they headed straight to a hotel. There, the South Koreans were treated to a dinner banquet, during which the two sides expressed hopes for the latest round of dialogue aimed at defusing tensions on the divided peninsula while seeking economic developments through cross-border exchanges. During the three day meeting, South and North Korean delegates plan to discuss ways to prevent flooding along the Imjin River flowing across the border and report progress on the Gyeongui and Donghae railway projects. The North is also seeking energy supplies from Seoul and wants the South Korean delegation to tour prospective sites in the North Korean city of Kaesung, for its envisioned industrial complex. But with Seoul bent on getting the Stalinist regime to dismantle its nuclear program prior to further progress in negotiations, the outcome remains uncertain. (Arirang TV) ***************************************************************** 18 Inter Korea Economic Talks Underway Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea Updated Nov.7,2002 20:04 KST PYONGYANG - In the third round of working level Inter Korean Economic Cooperation talks held in Pyongyang Thursday, North Korea proposed a groundbreaking ceremony for the Kaesong Industrial Complex on December 20, while South Korea said it was necessary to solve nuclear concerns as early as possible. North Korean chief negotiator Park Chang Ryon said the two countries should move ahead with agreement made in the second round of talks and the 8th ministerial talks. The North is reportedly planning to release a special district law for Kaesong Industrial Complex next week. His South Korean counterpart Minister of Finance and Economy Yoon Jin-sik said in order to further accelerate inter-Korean economic cooperation the nuclear problem needs to be settled early. "I hope Pyongyang to take necessary actions immediately for this," Yoon added. At the same time, Yoon called for Pyongyang to jointly announce the connecting points of the Seoul-Sinuiju railway and road on November 30, and disclose the construction schedule regularly. He requested the North to prepare a system for businesses wishing to invest in Kaesong to heighten competitiveness, including return of investment, and to allow a South Korean economic delegation to tour the North. (Joint Press Pool) ***************************************************************** 19 US Opposes Kaesong Project Start Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea Updated Nov.7,2002 18:43 KST by Kim Yeon-kwang (yeonkwang@chosun.com) United States Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith expressed a negative stance towards the South Korean government developing economic cooperation between North and South Korea, including the Kaesong Industrial Complex, regardless of the alleged nuclear weapons program by the North. He noted that Pyongyang admitted the clandestine nuclear program of enriching uranium and should not a reward but penalized for breaching an international agreement. Feith, currently visiting Seoul, said in a press conference with Undersecretary of Defense for East Asia Richad Lawless in attendance at Yongsan 8th USFK Command, that the focus on solving North Korean nuclear problem was diplomatic, but suspension of the supply of heavy oil should not be left out. Asked what he thought about Seoul trying to separate North Korean nuclear problems from inter-Korean economic cooperation, Feith commented the North violated four international agreements, including the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework and Non-Proliferation Treaty, by attempting to enrich uranium. He added that Seoul should not allow Pyongyang to think it can make a normal deal with other countries despite the breakdown of international agreements. Feith said he understood the South's complex relationship with the North, and has to achieve a balance, but continued North Korea's nuclear program is an important challenge against the South. International communities should make the North recognize the fact that when it does not comply with international agreements, it receives punishment, not a reward, he added. In related news, Spokesperson Richard Boucher for the U.S. Department of State said in a briefing that even though a ship loaded with heavy oil aid is on its way to the North, KEDO can still decide whether to recall it. ***************************************************************** 20 Q: Iraq resolution imminent BBC NEWS | Middle East | Thursday, 7 November, 2002, [Q&A: What are students' rights at work?] On Friday the UN Security Council is expected to pass a tough new resolution under which weapons inspectors will return to Iraq. BBC News Online looks at the key questions surrounding the inspections and the circumstances which could lead to war against Iraq. What would the new resolution mean? The passing of the resolution will establish a new, strict inspection regime intended to give Iraq a final opportunity to comply with its obligations under previous resolutions to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq will have seven days from the date of the resolution to agree to comply with it. The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, will visit Iraq within two weeks of the passing of the resolution, probably 19 or 20 November, to start immediate weapons inspections. France and Russia have reportedly agreed to drop their threat to veto the resolution. However, they are still said to be worried by the resolution's warning that "serious consequences" would follow Iraq's failure to comply with inspectors. France and Russia insist that this should not be used by the US as an automatic trigger for military action if the inspectors are impeded. What is the timetable for implementation? The exact timetable will depend on the date of the passing of the resolution but the BBC's UN correspondent, Jon Leyne, says that the following dates are key: + 15 November - By this date, seven days after the resolution is passed, Iraq must confirm that it will comply with it. + 19 or 20 November - This is the date Hans Blix intends to travel to Iraq, starting the first weapons inspection almost immediately. + 8 December - By this date, 30 days after the passing of the resolution, Iraq must provide a full declaration of its chemical, biological, nuclear and delivery programmes. This is a key deadline and the first likely trigger for confrontation. + 23 December - The resolution stipulates that inspections should resume no later than 45 days after passage of the resolution. + 18 January - The inspectors have 60 days to report on their progress to the Security Council. It is not clear from the draft resolution whether the clock runs from the day they arrive in Iraq - expected to be around 19 November or from the 23 December. The Bush Administration is likely to press for the earlier of the two dates for the presentation of the reports. Under what circumstances might the US demand for military action? Any material breach of the resolution by Iraq would be expected to lead Washington to press for military action. This could be a refusal to comply with the resolution, a failure by to provide an accurate declaration of its chemical, biological, nuclear and delivery programmes or any attempt to restrict or impede access by the inspectors to sites they wish to inspect. The US has intelligence material from which they have built up their own picture of Iraq's weapons programmes. If Iraq's declaration does not include everything that the US believes it should, this would constitute a material breach in American eyes and could be a trigger for military action. Does the resolution specify that a breach will lead automatically to war? No. It says that the Security Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of continued violations of its obligations under UN resolutions. It is not clear from the resolution who is to judge when a material breach has occurred. The US will want the phrase "serious consequences" to mean military action against Iraq to destroy all suspected programmes for producing weapons of mass destruction. Washington has also made clear that the removal of Saddam Hussein is a key policy aim. Russia and France do not want military action to be the result of the new resolution, certainly not without further reference to the Security Council. Other states would only give their support to military action against Iraq if there is explicit UN approval. The US has made it clear that it will not delay much further and the BBC's Jon Leyne says that Washington might well take the view that it can act alone, or with Britain, if Iraq is seen to be in breach of the new resolution. © MMII | News Sources | Privacy ***************************************************************** 21 Both used and abused, the UN has lost its fundamental legitimacy Examiner 07/11/02 ALL SORTS of historical parallels have been invoked to try to make sense of the current international situation surrounding Iraq, from the Suez Crisis to the Bay of Pigs invasion. But, in truth, there is no precedent for the almost surreal debate over Iraq that has taken place in the past year. As the Independent on Sunday put it, never has a war been "so heavily signposted so long in advance, to the general indifference of so many". We have a US administration that is desperate to go to war against another devastated, impoverished Third World state. Yet even armed with the powerful propaganda weapon of a demonised rogue whom it likes to compare to Adolf Hitler, it cannot generate any genuine popular enthusiasm for war, either domestically or in the wider world. On the other hand, we have a so-called anti-war movement that, despite all the dithering, confusion and anxiety within the Bush and Blair administrations, still cannot mount any coherent or convincing case for not attacking Iraq. When George W Bush first identified Iraq as part of an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address, he assured the American public that "I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer." Yet here we are, almost 10 months later, and the terms of a new UN resolution are still being kicked about in the UN Security Council, a body loathed by many of the conservatives close to the Bush administration, with the US and France in particular locked in negotiations to resolve their differences. Not so long ago, the Bush hawks were rubbishing the UN, while France and Germany were being dismissed as an irrelevance in international affairs who needs those damned lily-livered Europeans anyway, was the American attitude, we'll just go ahead and take Saddam out by ourselves. A few months ago vice president Dick Cheney stated his conviction that Saddam Hussein would develop a nuclear weapon "fairly soon. We know we have a part of the picture and that part of the picture tells us that he is in fact actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons." He ridiculed the idea of sending international arms inspectors back to Iraq. Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was equally dismissive of any conciliatory gestures from Iraq towards the West. "You'll find at the last moment that they will withdraw that carrot of opportunity," he said, "and go back into their other mode of thumbing their nose at the international community." Bush told the United Nations that Saddam's regime is "a grave and gathering danger". To believe otherwise is to gamble with peace "and this is a risk we must not take." One would imagine that, confronted by a grave threat from a latter-day Hitler who was on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and who would never accede to the will of the international community, the last thing the world's only superpower would want at this stage is to get bogged down in months of wrangling over the terms of a new UN Security Council resolution especially with those pesky French. It is a measure of the insecurity that informs US foreign policy making today that this is precisely what it allowed to happen. The US has never been so powerful, yet is increasingly nervous and uncertain about how to project that power. For all the gung-ho rhetoric and the dire warnings of the threat posed by Iraq, it still could not muster the resolve to act decisively without obtaining the legitimacy bestowed by the UN. Just to cloud matters further, Bush switched emphasis again on October 21. After months of declaring regime change in Baghdad as the central goal of American policy, he said the United States was trying to disarm Mr Hussein "peacefully" and suggested that if Iraq complied with all UN resolutions, "it would signal the regime has changed." This is the same regime that only a month earlier had been declared beyond redemption. The change of rhetoric was widely interpreted as an attempt to mollify other members of the Security Council, which in itself is telling, but even at this late stage the Bush administration appears not have determined what exactly its purpose or goals are with Iraq. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has argued that for the hawks in the Bush administration, this "is the latest chapter in the culture wars, the conservative dream of restoring America's sense of Manifest Destiny Extirpating Saddam is about proving how tough we are to a world that thinks we got soft when that last helicopter left the roof of the American embassy in Saigon in 1975". In this sense, however, the war on terrorism has clearly been a failure. The Stars and Stripes may still fly over houses and buildings all over America, but it seems to be more an expression of a collective sense of vulnerability and loss than the type of go-get-'em patriotic fervour that has characterised previous times of war. The problem of Iraq has become the defining issue for the Bush presidency, largely because it has nothing else to distinguish it and therefore must continue pursuing the war on terrorism indefinitely in order to retain some sense of mission or purpose. Yet despite Republican successes, the subject did not generate much enthusiasm in the course of the most nasty, petty and trivial Congressional election campaign that anybody can remember. Whatever is holding back Bush and Blair, it certainly has not been the strength and coherence of the anti-war coalition in Europe and elsewhere. At each stage, the anti-war movement has relied on arguments over strategy or potential consequences to oppose an attack on Iraq, rather than any principled objection to Western intervention per se. They argued that a war would be highly dangerous in that it could destabilise the entire Middle Eastern region. They trotted out the jaded and increasingly surreal argument about the war really being about oil and profits (if the war on terror actually has any such clearly defined purpose, somebody should inform the Bush administration). They demanded more evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and represented a threat to the West. Tony Blair duly produced his much-hyped dossier, which merely re-hashed old evidence already in the public domain, and failed to even mention any purported link between Iraq and Al-Qaida. Nevertheless, the war momentum rumbled on, and the anti-war lobby turned to the UN for salvation. For many on the liberal-left, a military assault that completely violates the sovereignty and independence of a weak Third World state somehow becomes more acceptable if it is dressed in the garb of UN legitimacy. But this faith in the UN is hopelessly misguided, for the organisation is a mere shadow of what it once was, used and abused by the major powers at will. If it can be used as a vehicle for conferring legitimacy upon Western military adventures then it will, but if not it will simply be ignored, as in the case of Kosovo and Afghanistan. As President Bush told the UN in September, this is the organisation's "defining moment" and that a failure to act in accordance with US wishes would render it "irrelevant." But if the UN does proceed to give legitimacy to a war against Iraq, it will have destroyed once and for all one of the fundamental principles upon which the organisation was originally founded the sovereign equality of all its members. Might truly will be right in international affairs. In fact, the only check upon US power will be its own hesitancy and uncertainty about where it is going next. [http://breaking.examiner.ie/] © Irish Examiner, 2002, Thomas Crosbie Media, TCH ***************************************************************** 22 UN, Afghans spar over statues ruined by Taliban The inspections maze | csmonitor.com Afghans want to replicate the Bamiyan Buddhas. The UN wants them patched up. November 07, 2002 edition The inspections maze By Ben Arnoldy and David S. Hauck | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor In February 1995, a team of United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors left Baghdad on a bus headed for Al Hakam, an hour southwest of the Iraqi capital. For years, UNSCOM suspected that the remote, 10-square-mile facility was producing more than just pesticide and chicken-feed supplement, as the Iraqi government claimed. Some inspectors were certain it was a biological-weapons factory. But this visit, like those before, failed to resolve the question. "The Iraqis became very skilled over the years at deception and denial techniques," says Jonathan Tucker, a member of a UN inspection team that visited Al Hakam in 1995. "At the time of our visit, there was still some uncertainty about whether Al Hakam was, in fact, a bioweapons production facility." It took a several teams of weapons inspectors – from the US, France, Sweden, Britain, Russia, and other nations – a year of digging before Iraq admitted that Al Hakam was producing biological weapons. With a new UN resolution expected to pass this week, inspectors will be back in Iraq later this month armed with new technology and the lessons learned at Al Hakam. The UN estimates that there are some 700 sites to examine. But if Al Hakam is any indication, the Iraqi inspection games are just beginning. The suspicions Al Hakam was supposedly for civilian purposes only. But its remote location, guard towers, and high barbed-wire fence seemed strange to inspectors. The unusual distance between buildings appeared to be an attempt to provide containment for potential toxic leaks. And for an alleged chicken-feed factory, only three scrawny chickens were seen strutting around. Inside, the equipment appeared legitimate at first glance. There were fermentation tanks and controllers connected by snaking pipes. But a closer look revealed an unusual degree of jury-rigging. "The fermenters had been cannibalized from different plants, the piping was of different sizes, and it had all been welded together," says Mr. Tucker. "The equipment was clearly not state of the art, but it was good enough to produce anthrax and other bugs." This was precisely the dilemma facing inspectors. While the ragtag gear could be used for legitimate purposes, these same components could also produce deadly weapons. Inspectors say that biological-weapons are among the hardest to detect because of the "dual-use" nature of the equipment. To Richard Spertzel, head of UNSCOM's bioweapons team, the fermentation tanks suggested something sinister. They were quite small, more in line with the production of bioweapons than single-cell proteins, an additive to chicken feed. "Single-cell protein [producers] don't mess around with a 2,000- or 5,000-liter fermenter," he says. "Most of them scoff at anything under 100,000." Cat & mouse As part of its monitoring mandate, the UN required that Iraq provide monthly records for Al Hakam, such as raw-materials orders, water-consumption data, and quality-control measures. The Al Hakam scientists obliged, but their accounting didn't add up. "It was so embarrassing how they presented their science, because even mathematically it wasn't correct," says one UN inspector. To try to get to the truth, inspectors conducted grueling interviews with Iraqi scientists in Baghdad hotels. Tucker says that this was an arduous process because the scientists were unable speak freely. "Iraqi officials insisted on having a minder sitting in on all the interviews," he says. "People knew that they could be signing their death warrant if they said too much." Mr. Spertzel says that the minders would make eye contact, gestures, and even coughing noises to keep scientists from revealing too much. Some scientists couldn't explain the details of their supposedly legitimate jobs. Others changed their stories midstream – one, notably, after strangely ducking under the table several times. Rihab Taha, head of Iraq's biology division, smashed a chair in frustration after a tough interview. Despite the obfuscation, UN inspectors made several unsettling discoveries. For example, much of the equipment used at Al Hakam had been transferred from Salman Pak, a known bioweapons facility that was destroyed during the Gulf War. Inspectors also discovered that the entire biotech team at Salman Pak was now working together at Al Hakam. Dissension in the ranks By the time Tucker's multinational team visited Al Hakam in February 1995, the evidence was mounting. But there was still disagreement over what it meant. The biggest point of contention was Al Hakam's ventilation equipment – or lack thereof. French and Russian inspectors contended that if Al Hakam was a biological-weapons facility, it would need a sophisticated ventilation and containment system. Without one, Iraqi scientists would be endangered. This, says Tucker, was exactly what the Americans and British thought Iraq wanted inspectors to conclude. "I believe that the Iraqi government made a deliberate decision to put their workforce at risk by not installing an effective containment system, so as to avoid creating obvious signatures of illicit activity," says Tucker, a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace in Washington. Another inspection team that looked at the biopesticide production line found two anomalies. First, when a sample of bacterial pesticide (BT) was examined under an electron microscope, it was observed that the bacteria lacked the toxin crystals needed to kill insects. Second, the BT particles were too small. Normally, BT particles are large enough to fall rapidly out of the air to avoid drifting onto adjacent fields. Not these. "The particles were so small and light that they would tend to float a long distance downwind," Tucker says. "That is not desirable in a biological pesticide, but it is something you would want in a biological-warfare agent." Inspectors concluded that the BT line was being used to develop techniques that could transform anthrax into a more effective bioweapon. Cracking the cover Iraq had to rely on imported equipment and materials to build its biowarfare program, and ultimately that practice gave it away. UNSCOM chairman Rolf Ekeus requested that all UN member states provide export records for any dual-use equipment purchased by Iraq. From these records, inspectors learned that Iraq had ordered a high-power ventilator – the type the French and Russians said was necessary for Al Hakam to be a bioweapons facility. Through a series of interviews, UNSCOM followed threads between various project code names and determined that the ventilator was, indeed, intended for Al Hakam – but had not been installed. Records also revealed that Iraq purchased a huge amount of growth media, or food for microorganisms. Growth media is typically used in hospitals to make diagnoses or to test for bacteria in water. But it can also be used to make anthrax, botulinum toxin, and gas gangrene. Inspectors scoured Iraq, including Al Hakam, for growth media, but could account for only 22 of the 42 tons purchased. Iraq said the other 20 tons had been used in diagnostic tests. "You could never in your lifetime use 20 tons in any hospital, in any diagnostic institute anywhere in the world," says one former inspector. The missing media provided enough ammunition for UNSCOM to find Iraq in breach of its requirement to disclose fully its weapons programs. Desperate to get sanctions lifted, in July, Iraq admitted to producing 2,200 gallons of anthrax and 500 gallons of botulinum toxin with the missing material, enough to fill 75 missiles or 115 bombs. However, when inspectors analyzed Iraq's new data with a formula known as a mass balance calculation, the numbers still did not add up. UNSCOM reckons that Iraq could have produced several times more toxin than it declared. The confirmation Despite the admission that it had produced biological toxins, Iraq continued to maintain that it had not filled any warheads. A month later, the story changed. Hussein Kamel, one of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law and head of Iraq's weapons program, defected in August. Though he didn't provide inspectors with any additional information on Al Hakam, he confirmed all the evidence. More important, he revealed additional information on Iraq's chemical, nuclear, and missile programs, much of which UNSCOM had considered destroyed. Following Mr. Kamel's defection, Iraq admitted to having an offensive biological weapons program. But, Iraqi officials contended, they had destroyed these weapons themselves in 1991. Inspectors weren't buying it. "They kept growth media, they kept the scientists in place at Al Hakam. So what obliteration of the BW [biological weapons] program is that?" says one UN inspector. Kamel's information led inspectors to ramp up their search for bioweapons, as well as act on the new information about Iraq's other programs for weapons of mass destruction. Victor Mizin, an UNSCOM inspector in 1994 and 1995 and currently a diplomat in residence with the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, says that Russia felt betrayed after Iraq's admission. "They made Russians to look quite stupid, because Russia was ... supporting them vigorously, saying to everyone, 'Well, there's no biological weapons in Iraq,' " he says. "Suddenly when it was revealed, they let us down a little bit." Destruction & exit For six weeks in 1996, under a hot summer sun, the UN oversaw the destruction of Al Hakam. Structural engineers set explosives to fell the site's buildings. Biologists neutralized toxin cultures. Oxyacetalyne torches were used to cut through double-jacketed steel fermenters. Some equipment was spared and tagged for monitoring purposes. Part of the inspectors' job was to confirm that Iraq hadn't removed anything for illicit future use. "The year before, photographs had been taken of equipment on that site, so when we went a year later, we had these pictures to help assess whether items had been moved," says Olivia Bosch, a UN inspector in Iraq in 1996 and currently at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Though UNSCOM was successful in uncovering Al Hakam, Tucker says that ferreting out bioweapons will still pose a big problem for future inspectors. "Bio facilities can be considerably smaller than chemical facilities, because a militarily significant quantity of chemical weapons is on the order of several tons, whereas with a biological agent, it's in the range of kilograms," he says. Tucker says that good intelligence is crucial, but that countries such as the US often fail to provide it for fear of compromising sensitive sources and collection methods. "If we want the inspections to work, [the US] will have to be willing to put some intelligence-collection assets at risk by sharing timely information with the UN," he says. Future inspectors won't be able to rely heavily on export documents, because Iraq can now make critical equipment and growth media, say inspectors. And while there are some new technologies to test for anthrax, there is no scientific silver bullet for the next generation of inspectors, says Spertzel. Ultimately, they will need to work through similar puzzles with the same mix of white-coat and trench-coat savvy. But, says Spertzel, "A good scientist has a good analytical mind." Copyright © 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights ***************************************************************** 23 Changes to Draft Resolution on Iraq By The Associated Press November 7, 2002, 1:10 AM EST The following is a look at some changes and additions made to the U.S. draft resolution on Iraq, which was first submitted to the U.N. Security Council on Oct. 25. The revised draft was submitted to the council on Wednesday. * Responding to French, Russian and Chinese demands, the new U.S. draft now recognizes Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity. * Hoping to satisfy an Arab request, the draft now commends the Arab League for its efforts in convincing Iraq to accept the return of weapons inspections. * Trying to meet a key Russian and French demand, the draft now specifically offers Iraq a chance to end 12 years of punishing sanctions if it complies with its obligations under previous resolutions. * Responding to French concerns about ambiguities in the original draft, the new version strengthens the reference to the seven-day period Iraq has to accept the terms of the resolution. * The United States inserted an addition calling on the security council to convene immediately if Iraq is found to have omitted anything from a written declaration of its chemical, biological and nuclear programs. * The new draft softens a threat of "serious consequences" by moving it to the bottom of draft and linking it to any report from inspectors that Iraqi is noncompliant. Several council members had objected to a more general threat of consequences which appeared in an earlier draft. Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press ***************************************************************** 24 George Bush's poll win paves the way for an attack on Iraq. Scotsman.com Thu 7 Nov 2002 Bush moves on Saddam after victory /JAMES HALL and ALISON HARDIE/ GEORGE Bush, the US president, yesterday moved swiftly to turn the screw on Saddam Hussein as he produced a tough new United Nations resolution on Iraq, just hours after the US electorate gave him a resounding mandate to step up the war on terror. The new joint US-British draft resolution promised "serious consequences" for Iraq if it defies the international weapons inspectors. Fleshed out after eight weeks of international diplomacy, the US said it would push for a vote on the resolution tomorrow. It was a clear indication that Mr Bush, buoyed by the stunning Republican victory in the US elections, had returned to his foreign agenda with renewed vigour. Democrats were left shell-shocked as the Republicans took full control of Congress, wresting control of the Senate and increasing their majority in the House of Representatives. With four polls to declare, the Republicans had secured 223 of the 435 seats, up one on last year. In the Senate, the Republicans secured 51 seats, two more than previously. The victory gave Mr Bush freedom to push through legislation on taxation, homeland security and judicial appointments. Republicans and opponents alike regarded it as a personal vote of confidence in Mr Bush and his foreign policy. "I think it was a referendum on his [Mr Bush?s] leadership and he really showed it," said the Republican Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, who will become the Senate majority leader. Tom Daschle, the outgoing Senate majority leader, said: "I think it means the president has an opportunity here to proceed ... with the plan [on Iraq] as he has articulated it, I think the American people appear to give him the benefit of the doubt." Tony Blair said the new UN resolution ensured Iraq would face tough action if it breached inspection conditions, but said conflict was not inevitable. He told MPs: "It will be a tough new inspection regime. It will be free from the problems of the past and it will make it very, very clear that there must be the complete and total disarmament of Iraq, of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological, nuclear weapons. And if not, action will follow. "But it is not conflict that is inevitable, it is the disarmament of these weapons of mass destruction that is inevitable. The best and surest way to avoid conflict is for Iraq to comply with the will of the United Nations." However, there was immediate uncertainty as Jacques Chirac, the French president, hailed "improvements" in the draft but asked that "certain ambiguities be removed". His spokeswoman said these concerned the automatic recourse to military force if Baghdad hampered weapons inspectors. Yuri Fedotov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, said his country still needed to be sure the British-US text did not contain any "automatic mechanism" for the use of military force. But he said "intensive diplomatic contacts on all channels" were now under way to try to agree a final wording. Richard Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state, said he was "pretty optimistic" agreement could be reached in the security council on the new resolution, though he made clear that the US was willing to go ahead with action against Iraq without international support. The new draft resolution includes a two-step process for UN action in response to French and Russian demands. If Baghdad hampers inspectors, the issue will be passed back to the security council before any action is taken. But, crucially, the resolution does not provide the need for a second resolution - leaving Washington free to act. Although the US has called the resolution its "final offer," diplomats said there would probably be some alterations. ©2002 scotsman.com | contact ***************************************************************** 25 Asia: How safe is nuclear energy?* Thursday, November 7, 2002 ** ASIA-PACIFIC MONITORED By RALPH COSSA Recent scandals regarding Tokyo Electric Power Co. safety inspection procedures have added a new sense of urgency to a long-standing question: "Are nuclear power reactors throughout East Asia being operated safely?" Equally important, especially in light of increased concerns about nuclear terrorism in the wake of 9/11, and continuing rumors of terrorist desires to acquire "dirty bombs," is the question of whether spent fuel rods and other forms of highly radioactive waste from East Asia's myriad of nuclear reactors are being stored in a safe and secure manner. Today, China, South Korea, Russia and Taiwan also rely on nuclear power to partially satisfy their energy needs, although none is as reliant on this form of energy or have as many reactors (more than 50) as Japan. Others in the region, including Mongolia and Vietnam, are seriously contemplating building nuclear power stations, while others either have or are planning to build nuclear research reactors. As one concerned Asian resident recently told me, if you can have this type of trouble in a seemingly over-regulated society such as Japan's, what must the situation be like in China and the Russian Far East, or in some of the Third World states experimenting with nuclear research? While others are raising serious questions, one organization is working to discover and broadcast answers. To provide a "one-stop shopping" location for information on East Asia nuclear energy-related activities, the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, or CSCAP, in cooperation with the Sandia National Laboratory's Cooperative Monitoring Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been developing an Asia-Pacific Nuclear Energy Transparency Web site containing facts and figures, and, in some cases, actual radiation-monitoring data relating to regional nuclear energy production: www.cscap.nuctrans.org CSCAP is a multilateral, nongovernmental, track-two organization aimed at prompting greater trust and understanding on security-related issues in the Asia-Pacific region. For several years now, a CSCAP Nuclear Energy Experts Group has been meeting regularly to discuss ways of promoting greater transparency and public understanding of nuclear energy. This effort is aimed at ensuring that those in the region who have chosen the nuclear energy option do so in a safe, secure and open manner. The latest Experts Group meeting was held in Vladivostok in September. Previous meetings have been held at nuclear power plants in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States, as well as at the Japanese reprocessing facility under construction in Rokkasho, Aomori, Taiwan's Radiation Monitoring Center, the Canadian Underground Research Laboratory outside Winnipeg, and the U.S. Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Information on all these facilities can be found on the CSCAP Nuclear Transparency Web site, which provides basic data on the nuclear energy production programs of all the region's nuclear energy producers. But it also does much more. The Web site provides details on individual local environmental monitoring practices while identifying available technologies that can further enhance monitoring capabilities to provide even greater transparency. TEPCO has rightfully come under fire for its falsification of nuclear reactor inspection and repair records, but this does not mean that local residents or the broader international community are being exposed to radiation hazards. In fact, there is considerable evidence to the contrary, thanks to an unheralded transparency program that TEPCO and several other Japanese nuclear energy producers have initiated. Radiation monitoring devices are situated around all TEPCO power plants and the data collected at these sites has been shared on a near real-time basis with local communities. For that matter, it is important to note that the inspection-falsification problem began in 1993, well before the current era of greater transparency by the Japanese power companies. Following accidents at the Monju fast-breeder demonstrator reactor (1995) and at the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation bituminization plant (1997), and the criticality event at the uranium processing plant at Tokai (1999), the power companies seriously embraced transparency as they observed the public outrage against coverups and secrecy. It is sadly ironic, therefore, that coverups starting almost a decade ago are coming back to haunt nuclear operators that have become leaders in nuclear transparency. As part of its domestic transparency effort, TEPCO was the first power company to publish its near real-time airborne radiation readings on a Web site; TEPCO subsequently invited CSCAP to link to its data pages to make this information immediately available to a broader international audience. It was also the first power company to offer annual radiation reports to the CSCAP Transparency Web site. Building on these precedents, the CSCAP Web site now enjoys cooperation from Kansai Electric, Japan Atomic and Shikoku Electric, as well as Fukui, Shimane and Miyagi prefectures. In addition, the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute, Fukui Prefecture and Taiwan's Radiation Monitoring Center send their near-real time radiation data directly to the CSCAP Web site. The Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety and the U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory also allow links to their Web sites for similar data. Most recently and with assistance from the U.S. Department of Energy, Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy has begun transmitting near real-time data from the Bilibino Power Plant in Siberia to the CSCAP Web site also. The Experts Group is now examining problems associated with the storage and management of spent fuel and radioactive waste, including the prospects of developing regional storage facilities or at least regional approaches to handling a common safety and security problem. This is aimed at reinforcing, not duplicating, the excellent safeguards provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose findings are not available to the general public. Despite these efforts, concerns will remain about the safety and security of nuclear energy in the Asia-Pacific region. Much more work needs to be done, especially to ensure that appropriate safeguards are being followed to ensure that nuclear materials do not fall into the hands of terrorists and that both energy production and nuclear research reactors through East Asia are operated in a safe and secure manner. /Ralph Cossa is president of Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based policy research institute affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. / *The Japan Times: Nov. 7, 2002* (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 26 NRC hears of nuke plant's impact Democrat &Chronicle: NRC hears of nuke plant's impact [Rochester, NY] Advocates and opponents agree area will be affected if the license isn't renewed By Daryl Bell Democrat and Chronicle MAX SCHULTE Frank Gillespie of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission answers a question at a meeting Wednesday to determine whether the Robert E. Ginna nuclear power plant in Ontario, Wayne County, receives a 20-year renewal of its license. Both advocates and opponents say the area will be affected if the license isnt renewed. [Day in Photos [http://cf.democratandchronicle.com/photo/day.cfm] ] (November 7, 2002)  WEBSTER  Economics may help determine whether the Robert E. Ginna nuclear power plant in Ontario, Wayne County, receives a 20-year renewal of its license. At Wednesdays Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearings on environmental issues, both advocates and opponents agreed that the area will be affected if the license isnt renewed. We want the plant to remain open, said Michael Havens, who lives only seven miles from the plant. They have been an excellent neighbor. The plant, you dont even notice that its in the area. It has never been a distraction. As far as money is concerned, it is a solid tax base for my community. Havens spoke at the afternoon hearing at the Webster Public Library. The NRC also conducted an evening hearing. I realize there are many questions about nuclear energy but one thing is for certain, there would be an economic impact if the plant closed its doors, said Tim Judson of the Citizens Awareness Network. Judson, of Syracuse, was part of a contingent from organizations voicing displeasure with the plant. Energy East Corp., the parent company of Rochester Gas and Electric Corp., runs Ginna. According to spokesman Mike Power, no decision has been made about the plants fate. One thing is for certain: If it werent for the Ginna plant operating, electric prices would be higher, he said. Ginna, which began operating in 1970, applied for a 20-year license renewal Aug. 1. Its 40-year license expires Sept. 18, 2009, but the renewal process takes about 30 months. Robert G. Schaaf, project manager for the NRC, said environmental and economic effects would be taken into consideration. E-mail address: dwbell@DemocratandChronicle.com [dwbell@DemocratandChronicle.com] ***************************************************************** 27 Floating nuclear power plant to emerge in Russia Russia has 10 nuclear power plants (NPPs) in operation. The safety standards of the Soviet designed reactors have been highly questioned by international experts. During the last decade, the social issues at the Russian NPPs have become of major concern in line with the technical flaws. SEVERODVINSK - Russia is close to creating floating nuclear power plants but could they become floating Chernobyls? The project of the nuclear thermoelectric power plant in Severodvinsk. Sevmash Andrey Mikhaylov, 2002-11-07 16:21 On Monday October 28th the head of the Russian Atomic Ministry, Alexander Rumyantsev, approved the technical design of the low-powered floating nuclear plant for generating heat and electricity. Earlier, Rosenergoatom president, Oleg Sarayev, and director of the Russian Shipbuilding Agency, Vladimir Pospelov, approved the project. The Ministry should start financing before the end of 2002. The first floating nuclear plant in the world will be constructed in Severodvinsk, Archangelsk region, by 2008. The Sevmash plant, which specialises in nuclear submarine building, will produce a special ship accommodating a power unit with a 70MW/h capacity. The Rosenergoatom concerm plans to build not less than two floating nuclear plants at Sevmash. The price tag for each plant is $100-$120 million. The new power plant will serve as a test plant and will undergo various checks. The plant's construction should take 40 months. The thermoelectric power plant, which is capable to generate heat and electricity, will be transported after completion to Kamchatka, to a “closed” town Viluchins, which is a nuclear submarine base. The floating source of electricity will make the town independent from the local grid. The construction of the floating plant is 5-6 times cheaper than an ordinary nuclear power plant. It is planned to build the floating nuclear power plants for Severodvinsk, Archangelsk region, and Pevek, Chukotka. The design of the low-capacity floating thermoelectric power unit was developed by the companies of the Nuclear Ministry and the Rosenergoatom concern: Russian Shipbuilding Agency, Malaya Energetica company, design bureau Iceberg, Kaluga Turbine plant, Avrora and others. But environmentalists are not happy with the civil project taking place at a Russian navy shipyard. It is probable that these experimental “civil” floating nuclear plants can damage the environment more than “disciplined” nuclear submarines with well-trained crews. Read on 2002-11-07 Russian NPPs Report about Floating Nuclear Power Plants (in Russian) (External link) Publisher: [bellona@bellona.no] , President: [frederic@bellona.no] Information: [info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: [webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 28 Nuclear plant near Austrian border resumes testing of second reactor Thu, Nov 07, 2002 PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Workers at a nuclear power plant near the Austrian border resumed tests of the plant's second unit after a two-month shutdown, a spokesman said Thursday. Milan Nebesar, a spokesman for the Temelin nuclear plant, said fission reaction at the second unit's reactor was restarted late Wednesday. The reactor was running at 2.5 percent of its capacity early Thursday. Testing of the reactor was halted in late August after a short circuit occurred in the generator turbine. A similar problem had delayed tests in July. Testing of the 1,000-megawatt unit, scheduled for commercial use in 2004, started in May. None of the problems were related to the nuclear parts of the plant, Nebesar said, adding the turbine rotor was replaced before testing was resumed. The plant, located just 60 kilometers (35 miles) north of the Austrian border, has been a source of friction between the two countries. Critics in Austria argue the plant is unsafe and demand that it be shut down, but Czech authorities insist the plant is safe. Tests on the first unit of the 2,000-megawatt plant — based on Russian design and upgraded with U.S. technology — started in November 2000. But testing has been plagued by frequent non-nuclear malfunctions. (nr/sl) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 29 2 TVA programs not exclusive Story published in the Johnson City Press: 11/7/2002. By Alyssa Spradlin Press Staff Writer Is there a contradiction between promoting renewable energy sources and raising money to reopen a nuclear reactor? Officials from the Tennessee Valley Authority said ?no? during phone interviews on Tuesday. ?I don?t think it?s a contradiction,? said Gary Harris, manager of TVA?s Green Power Switch program. ?It?s another addition to the mix (of power sources). ?It?s not a contradiction because you need all sources of power,? said Gil Francis, TVA spokesman. ?For the foreseeable future, the country?s going to have to rely on nuclear (power).? The Johnson City Power Board?s board of directors recently approved considering pre-purchasing power from TVA at a reduced rate so the seven-state power producer could raise capital to reopen a third nuclear reactor at Brown?s Ferry Nuclear Plant in northern Alabama. Some people questioned the rationale of supporting both Brown?s Ferry and promoting Green Power, a program that allows customers to purchase blocks of renewable power at a slightly higher rate to promote environmental consciousness. Participating in both programs was not a conflict but a matter of taking advantage of TVA programs, Power Board officials said. While Harris maintained TVA?s commitment to the environment, he noted that renewable resources were not able to meet the power demand. Green Power is available only to certain distributors across the valley. ?TVA, in general, is very, very committed to protecting the environment. We try to minimize the environmental impact of our businesses. ?We do have a commitment to Green Power, but we also have a commitment to demand,? Harris said. Francis was more direct. ?If you just had Green Power, you wouldn?t have power at all sometimes.? He said base-load power supply sources, like nuclear and coal plants, run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. ?You have to have them,? Francis said. Despite a sluggish economy, TVA is seeing a growing need for power, and unit one at Brown?s Ferry will be needed to keep up with that demand by 2007, he said. ?Think California. You don?t want to be in a position where you have to rely on (buying power on) the open market,? Francis said. He said every effort is made to ensure power facilities are operated safely, both in environmental impact and human safety. /(Contact Alyssa Spradlin at aspradlin@johnsoncitypress.com )./ © 2001-02 Johnson City Press and Associated Press All Rights Johnson City Press 204 W.Main St. ? Johnson City, Tennessee 37605 423.929.3111 ***************************************************************** 30 Nuclear sub crash* u.tv THURSDAY 07/11/2002 13:35:10 A nuclear-powered submarine was just three miles off the north-west coast of a Scottish island when it ran aground, it emerged today. A full investigation is under way into the incident involving HMS Trafalgar which struck underwater rocks just before 8am yesterday near the Isle of Skye. The submarine, which had been taking part in a joint maritime training exercise, was today making its way back to the Faslane naval base on the Clyde where it was expected to arrive later this afternoon. An initial assessment has shown that there was damage to sonar, forward planes and a ballast tank and some minor internal damage. Two crew members were injured in the collision but the sub`s nuclear reactor was not damaged. The submarine struck a rock at 50 metres depth while travelling at a speed of about 15 knots. Scotland`s senior naval officer Rear Admiral Derek Anthony today expressed concern at the incident. He gave assurances that there was no risk to the public or the 130 crew and no danger of radiation. ``The submarine is making her way back here to Faslane under her own power, escorted by a Royal Navy warship,`` he added. ``When she arrives, a full damage assessment will be carried out. ``Until then it is not possible to say how long repairs will take or where they will be carried out.`` Copyright © 2002 UTV Internet and the UTV plc Group. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 31 Depleted Uranium: UN addresses issue Pravda.RU Nov, 07 2002 In a message to the international community on the occasion of the International day for Preventing the Exp+loitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan specifically referred to Depleted Uranium yesterday, stating that it was damaging to the environment. It will be remembered that US military aircraft deployed tonnes of weapons coated or tipped with depleted uranium in southern Iraq and in Yugoslavia during conflicts in the 1990s. Systematic claims by the Iraqi Health Authorities, published in Pravda.Ru, were scorned or ignored and constant complaints by the Yugoslav authorities concerning alarmingly high clusters of cancerous diseases among civilians living near areas in which DU weaponry was deployed, were investigated – but met wqith systematic denial by the Pentagon and by NATO. In his speech, Kofi Annan stated that “While environmental damage is a common consequence of war, it should never be a deliberate aim…although international conventions govern nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, new technologies, such as depleted uranium ammunition, threaten the environment”. Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru Copyright ©1999 by "Pravda.RU [http://www.pravda.ru/] ". When ***************************************************************** 32 Defence chiefs launch inquiry after nuclear sub runs aground Nov 7 2002 An investigation is under way after a nuclear submarine ran aground while taking part in a military exercise. The Ministry of Defence says HMS Trafalgar struck rocks on the north-west coast of the Isle of Skye. Two crew members were injured in the collision, but the sub's nuclear reactor was not damaged. The "hunter-killer" submarine was involved in the first wave of attacks against Afghanistan last October. It was deployed alongside HMS Triumph and HMS Superb and at least one of the subs fired Tomahawk cruise missiles. Commenting on Thursday's incident, an MoD spokeswoman said: "There is no damage to the pressure hull and a core integrity assessment of the nuclear reactor has been conducted. "There is no risk to the public or crew." On the cause of the collision, the spokeswoman added: "An investigation into this incident is under way. "Until the findings of that investigation are known it is unhelpful to speculate on the circumstances surrounding this incident." The submarine was taking part in a joint maritime training exercise and surfaced immediately after the incident. One of the crewmen suffered a broken nose and the other strained his back. HMS Trafalgar, which was commissioned in 1983, is making its way back to Faslane naval base on the Clyde. The 4,750-ton submarine was travelling under her own power, but escorted by a Royal Navy warship. Trinity Mirror Plc 2002 icCoventry^TM is a trade mark of Trinity Mirror Plc. Please read our Terms and Conditions ***************************************************************** 33 Fate of sick worker 'voice' unclear The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- Thursday, November 7, 2002 by R. Cathey Daniels Oak Ridger staff A strong voice for sick workers may be headed for an early demise. A group of experts cutting across the national Department of Energy complex was chartered in January 2000 to advise the agency on a range of sick-worker issues. It is unclear whether that charter will be renewed in the next two months. And the DOE isn't saying. When asked this week whether the Workers Advocacy Advisory Committee would continue its efforts to alleviate problems swirling around the agency's compensation plan, DOE spokeswoman Dolline Hatchett issued the following statement: "The department appreciates the advisory committee's help on this important issue. The decision process is moving forward." Advocates, who have met quarterly for the past two years and have a slate of recommendations for the DOE, don't know whether they will meet again. "I feel strongly that our charter will not be renewed," said Vikki Hatfield, an Oak Ridge advocate whose father died in January due to federal work-related illness. Hatfield was chosen by former President Bill Clinton to serve on the advisory committee. Assistant Secretary Beverly Cook met with the group in October and according to Hatfield was "noncommittal" as to continuing seeking the group's advice. "We asked while in D.C. if we were going to be renewed, and the assistant secretary was noncommittal on whether or not DOE and the Bush administration was going to support us and renew our charter," said Hatfield. "It's really hard to know how to advise the department when Beverly Cook is totally noncommittal." U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp said this week that he would be "happy to weigh in in support of the workers, including asking DOE to reconsider if that's the case and the advisory panel is at risk. "We need to maintain all the progress that has been made," said Wamp. Should the advisory group be dismantled, not only would the DOE be left without expert advice, but sick workers would be left without their point of contact, said Hatfield. "If it's not renewed, that leaves sick workers without a voice and without being able to tell anyone what kind of problems they are having," she said. "That's what we do -- we have representation from all across the United States, and we just try to clarify the process and try to figure out a way to help them (sick workers)." The group has urged an ombudsman office be set up to assist claimants; recommended a third party administrator handle claims and sought cooperation between the DOE and the Department of Labor in administering the compensation program. Plus, they bring an expertise that no one else has. "Anything the sick workers can bring to us would help as we go back into the lame duck session next week and prepare for the 108th Congress," noted Wamp. There are 15 members of the panel, including representatives from Boston and Rutgers University, Queens College, Kaiser-Hill Co., Bechtel BWXT in Idaho and Portsmouth Uranium Enrichment Plant as well as union members, attorneys and community liaisons. R. Cathey Daniels can be contacted at (865) 220-5515 or danielsrcd@oakridger.com. [http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 34 Canada: Navy knew of sub's flaw Wednesday » November 6 » 2002 Documents reveal brass was aware of problem before sub?s sea-trial trouble By CHRIS LAMBIE The Daily News Thursday, November 07, 2002 The Canadian navy knew a vital piece of emergency gear in its four used submarines was not working properly long before HMCS Corner Brook went to sea. About 1,500 litres of water flooded Corner Brook July 2, 2002, off the coast of Scotland after one of its two small torpedo tubes used to launch signal flares failed. But the sub?s crew ? including about 50 Canadians ? managed to surface and return to port without injury. Documents obtained under the Access to Information Act show the submerged signal ejectors ?never achieved formal Royal Navy acceptance whilst in-service due to a number of safety issues.? The documents are dated March 13, 2002 ? nearly four months before Corner Brook went to sea. They were prepared by Cmdr. Bill Irvine, then head of the Canadian Submarine Detachment at Barrow-in-Furness, England. Canada is leasing the four used diesel-electric subs from Britain for $750 million over eight years, with an option to buy them after that for one British pound. Two of them are now in Halifax, but none of the vessels is currently operational. The subs were in use for just three years before Britain mothballed them in 1994 to concentrate on developing a nuclear fleet. Before the subs were laid up, the British Defence Ministry cleared the submerged signal ejectors for manual use only, Irvine says. That limitation was to remain in place until ?the implementation of the safety modifications required? to fix the problems. ?Unfortunately, the withdrawal from service of the Upholder Class submarines resulted in a suspension of effort to achieve (the modifications),? Irvine says. The subs have been plagued with other problems this year, including two floods, cracks in numerous hull valves, and one, HMCS Victoria, has a dent in it the size of a pizza pan. Canada may be willing to accept Corner Brook before all the sub?s troubles are solved, according to Aug. 12 briefing notes prepared for Defence Minister John McCallum. ?There are other similar defects that fall into a fix now/fix later framework,? says the document obtained by The Daily News. ?Insistence on their rectification now would delay the eventual handover of the submarine.? The navy could accept the sub as is and bill the Brits later for repairs, says the document. ?The major risk in this plan may be the the incorrect perception that we are accepting damaged or inferior goods. In the larger sense, however, we are instead extracting maximum use of the vessel at minimum overall cost,? it says. ?One underlying tenet that is non-negotiable, though, is the issue of safety. Any concession for work to be done later under warranty credit cannot be for a system or defect that affects the safety of the vessel or crew in any way.? Corner Brook ? which is still under British command and goes by the name HMS Ursula ? is slated to head to sea again once the signal ejectors are fixed. The navy hopes the sub will sail into Halifax before Christmas. clambie@hfxnews.southam.ca © Copyright 2002 The Daily News ***************************************************************** 35 Duratek Signs Contracts Valued At $110.7 Million for Hanford Waste Treatment Plant* Australia COLUMBIA, Md., Nov 7, 2002 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Duratek, Inc. (NASDAQ:DRTK) announced today that it signed two major subcontracts worth a combined value of $110.7 million with Bechtel National, Inc. (BNI). BNI is the prime contractor to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for the design and construction of the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant (WTP). The Hanford WTP project is one of the DOE's largest and most complex environmental cleanup projects. The ultimate objective of the project is to treat 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks, at the DOE's Hanford Site in Southeastern Washington State. The first subcontract is for research, development, and testing of pilot-scale melters and glass development formulation for the vitrification systems. It is a multi-year subcontract with a period of performance through September 30, 2006 with an estimated value of $86.7 million over the subcontract performance period. The second subcontract, a multi-year subcontract with a period of performance through February 2006, will provide support to Bechtel for the completion of the full-scale melter vitrification system design, provide engineering support during melter system fabrication, melter system assembly and melter system start-up and commissioning support. This subcontract is valued at approximately $24 million over the subcontract performance period. Robert Prince, Duratek's President and CEO stated, "This award secures Duratek's key role on the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant project that the Company has been working on since 1998. These contracts take us through the start-up of the facilities and positions the Company for additional long-term contracts on the project." Duratek provides services and offers technologies for safely managing nuclear facility operations, radioactive material, and radiological protection. Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 21E(i)(1) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company's actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by these statements. Such factors include the following: the Company's ability to manage its commercial waste processing operations, including obtaining commercial waste processing contracts and processing waste under such contracts in a timely and cost-effective manner; the Company's ability to implement new waste processing strategies in a timely and cost-effective manner; the Company's ability to control its commercial waste processing operating costs; the timing and award of contracts by the U.S. Department of Energy for the cleanup of waste sites administered by it; the Company's ability to integrate acquired companies; and the acceptance and implementation of the Company's waste treatment technologies in the government and commercial sectors. All forward-looking statements are also expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements included in the Company's SEC filings, including its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and its annual report on Form 10-K. Duratek, Inc., Columbia Diane R. Brown Robert F. Shawver 410/312-5100 www.duratekinc.com http://www.businesswire.com ***************************************************************** 36 Razing recommended at Linde site Buffalo News - Friday, November 8, 2002 T.J. PIGNATARO News Northtowns Bureau 11/7/2002 The federal government spent millions to clean it up. Now it's planning to spend millions to tear it down. Stubborn radioactive contamination has led the federal government to recommend demolishing Building 14, a Manhattan Project-era building, on the former Linde Air Products property in the Town of Tonawanda. The proposal comes after the government spent millions of dollars in recent years remediating the 210-by-220-foot building, which currently houses offices and research laboratories for Praxair. "They tried to decontaminate where there are areas of known contamination, and there are areas that are inaccessible," said Ray Pilon, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the project. "For the difference in cost (to continue remediation) and the level of certainty, we feel the removal of the building is the best long-term solution for the problem," he said. Unlike four other Manhattan Project buildings on the site, which were built by the government on Union Carbide land, Building 14 was built by the company itself in the mid-1930s. The building was used by the federal government for laboratory and pilot plant studies for uranium separation in the country's early steps to develop an atomic bomb during World War II. Army Corps officials identified five possible alternatives for the building, ranging from no action to complete removal, in a detailed plan that is available for public review. Comments are being accepted by the Corps through Nov. 29, and a public meeting is scheduled on the issue at 7 p.m. Nov. 19 in the auditorium of Holmes Elementary School, 365 Dupont Ave. According to Corps estimates, the removal of the building, which is considered to be the most protective measure, will cost $9.8 million. The next alternative, to continue remediation work in an effort to leave the structure up, would cost about $8.6 million. That option, however, does not provide certainty that all contamination would be remediated, Pilon said. "We took it to a point where most of the material was removed that was easy to get at," Pilon said. "It has taken us this long to come up with a thorough analysis." In 1996, a year before the cleanup project at Linde was inherited by the Corps from the federal Department of Energy, efforts began to rid Building 14 of contamination. The Corps continued to oversee the work until the new areas of contamination came to light. In all, about $5.8 million in federal money was paid to contractors, in addition to several million dollars in additional administrative costs for the remediation work. Pilon said despite previous federal investment, the most effective and permanent solution is to take the building down. That became necessary after crews discovered that certain areas of the building could not be fully remediated to government environmental standards. "One of our main concerns is to ensure there is no risk to the people in the building," Pilon said. He said Praxair employees who do work in Building 14 are not at risk because the contaminated areas are confined beneath the concrete foundation, some structural high beams and in a major utility tunnel under the building. The former Linde site was one of several locations nationwide where the federal government conducted secret activities in the 1940s in an effort to develop an atomic bomb. The work, known as the Manhattan Project, resulted in elevated radiation levels on the site. In the past decade, the government has undertaken a multimillion remediation project that has included demolition of some buildings and the cleanup of others. Building 14 would be the third building taken down at the East Park Drive property. Buildings 38 and 30 were demolished and disposed of in 1996 and 1999, respectively. Building 31 was decontaminated in 1997. More than 110,000 tons of contaminated materials have been shipped to disposal facilities out of state, according to Corps estimates. e-mail: tpignataro@buffnews.com [http://www.buffalonews.com/copyright.htm] ***************************************************************** 37 Envirocare's Victory The Salt Lake Tribune -- Thursday, November 7, 2002 Were Utahns bought? Envirocare has already petitioned to store class B and C nuclear waste at its facility. My guess is that Envirocare will have permission to do so before the next election, and by then it will be too late to make changes that would keep Utah free of this "hotter" class of nuclear waste. The election also brings up this question: Will the Legislature create laws similar to Initiative 1, or will lawmakers consider Tuesday's vote as proof that the people of Utah want nuclear waste? Believing that the citizens of Utah must like the idea of having nuclear waste stored in their backyard, while getting nothing in return, is easier than thinking that they were bought by Envirocare at the cost of approximately $6 per voter. CRAIG FONNESBECK West Valley City © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on ***************************************************************** 38 UK: FEARS OVER SAFETY INCENTIVES at Sellafield [The Whitehaven News] EXPERTS are worried that Sellafield's safety could be jeopardised once future site management is put into the hands of big nuclear contractors. They fear that incident reports might be faked if contractors take risks to capitalise on the near-£50 billion of taxpayers money available for massive clean up work. The warning comes from the country's radioactive waste advisors, RWMAC, in its advice to the government on proposals for setting up the new Liabilities Management Authority. The LMA will own Sellafield along with other nuclear sites and hand out contracts for future key work. But RWMAC fears that bonus money paid to contractors to meet safety targets could lead to them faking incident reports and covering up safety issues. It is vital that responsibilities and accountabilities for ensuring safety are clearly allocated. David Moore, chairman of the watchdog Sellafield Local Liaison Committee, said: "Safety must be put in front of profits. It is not inconceivable that one day we could have French companies running Sellafield." The LMA is due to take over ownership of Sellafield from BNFL and the UKAEA armed with nearly £50 billion to spend on cleaning up Britain's nuclear waste legacy, most of it at Sellafield. Future work will be put out to contractors who will be offered incentives to do well. BNFL and the AEA will be given initial contracts but after that they face competition. RWMAC - the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee - says that while the LMA will own nuclear sites the direct management of them will go to other bodies like BNFL who will also hold the site licences. Delivery of clean-up programmes will be the responsibility of site licensees under incentivised arrangements. RWMAC believes that potentially this structure "could give rise to serious difficulties in adequately ensuring safety." Under the LMA proposals, the key legal accountabilities would lie with the contractors. RWMAC says: "There is the question of whether safety can, in principle, be incentivised. Safety is an absolute which cannot be delivered in part. Bonus payments based partly on achievement on safety targets can risk false reporting of incidents and accidents and driving safety issues underground. "The need is for careful setting of targets linked to payment levels that obviate these risks while encouraging contractors to "go the extra mile" to ensure a high degree of safety. "Very great care on setting contractual conditions will therefore be needed if the potential benefits are to be realised. This is an area about which RWMAC does have serious concerns, and the one to which it believes the government in conjunction, in particular with the Health &Safety Executive, needs to give considerable thought." ***************************************************************** 39 USEC elects board, sets dividend USEC elects board, sets dividend @@EOM:End of Marker Required -- END OF CONFIG --> The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Thursday, November 07, 2002 Business Briefs Shareholders of Bethesda, Md.-based USEC Inc. elected board members to one-year terms Wednesday and declared a quarterly dividend of 13.75 cents per share, payable Dec. 15 to shareholders of record Nov. 22. President and Chief Executive Officer William "Nick" Timbers said the firm is evaluating economic packages from Paducah and Piketon, Ohio, for a plant to test gas centrifuge technology, which will eventually replace the outdated gaseous diffusion process used in Paducah. USEC is expected to make a decision by early December. The winner of the test plant will have an advantage in landing a 500-job commercial plant by the end of the decade, the firm says. Timbers said he is "optimistic" the test plant will help USEC acquire the $1 billion to $1.5 billion needed for the commercial plant. ***************************************************************** 40 Utah waste vote: Unfinished Business The Salt Lake Tribune -- Utah's Statewide Newspaper Thursday, November 07, 2002 Utah voters buried Initiative 1, the Radioactive Waste Restrictions Act, in a landslide. But despite its 2-1 margin of defeat, this is an unfinished story of public consciousness raised and reforms left undone. The defeat of Initiative 1 must not end the public debate over taxation and regulation of low-level nuclear waste disposal in Utah. In a sense, that debate has only begun. The initiative yanked it out of the back rooms of the State Capitol and thrust it into the light of day. It also served notice that the Legislature has much unfinished work to do. The opponents defeated Initiative 1 by arguing that it was drafted in secret, was too complicated, and its provisions were not subjected to the public scrutiny of the legislative process. All of that is true, though none of it goes to the substance of the issues raised by the initiative. To resolve those substantive matters, let the debate in the Legislature begin. Specifically, the Legislature should close the revolving door that has allowed state environmental and radiation regulators to leave public service and immediately take management or lobbying jobs with Envirocare of Utah, the state's sole commercial low-level radioactive waste facility. These and other state officials also should be prohibited from accepting gifts or loans from the industry, and industry officials should be banned from serving on the Radiation Control Board. The Legislature also should re-examine the market for the low-level waste Envirocare accepts in light of the state's current low tax rates. The most basic financial questions about Envirocare remain unanswered. While no corporation should be singled out as a cash cow, Envirocare's unique business also imposes unique risks for which the public should be compensated. The Legislature also should create a much more robust fund for perpetual care and closure of the site than exists today. This is unfinished business. The people's lawmakers should view it as an unfilled work order. © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on *Utah OnLine is ***************************************************************** 41 AU: Conservationists accused of waste dump scaremongering. 7/11/2002. ABC News Online The Federal Member for Parkes, John Cobb, has accused conservationists of scaremongering over concerns a site near Broken Hill could host a medium level nuclear waste dump. The Australian Conservation Council has said a site near Broken Hill was among those being considered to hold medium-level nuclear waste. But Mr Cobb says he does not want nuclear waste stored in the region, and that out of the 800 sites being considered, far western NSW is an unlikely candidate. He says the Labor Party and conservationists are getting locals unnecessarily worried. "I do not believe this is an issue that we in this electorate, in the western end of it, have to be worried about," he said. "I can't guarantee it will never happen at any stage under any conditions, but I look at the practical example of the fact they are looking at some 600 to 800 sites." © 2002 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 42 Bunker-busters set to go nuclear* NewScientist.com 10:37 07 November 02 The US government is set to fund research into a new type of nuclear weapon that is designed to penetrate and obliterate deeply buried targets such as underground weapons bunkers. Coming 50 years after the world's first hydrogen bomb was detonated in the Pacific, the news has alarmed scientists opposed to nuclear proliferation. They say the thousands of tonnes of radioactive debris produced by a bunker-busting nuclear weapon would not be contained within the rock, concrete and soil above the target, but would contaminate a wide area around it. Funding of $15 million has been proposed for research into the so-called Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), as part of the government's draft Defense Authorisation Bill for 2003. But the bill has not yet been passed by the Senate Committee on Armed Services. While a decision has been delayed until after this week's Congressional elections, a source close to the committee says the RNEP will get the green light. Research into the nuclear bunker-buster follows the Bush administration's leaked Nuclear Posture Review, which in part set out the circumstances under which nuclear weapons might be used. It says the RNEP could be used in pre-emptive strikes against rogue states using deeply buried facilities to store weapons of mass destruction, for example. *"Mini-nukes"* The RNEP would be used on targets that may be immune to conventional weapons. Its backers claim it would create little contamination above ground, but critics say that it would produce huge amounts of nuclear fallout. The RNEP may also remove the distinction between a nuclear deterrent and conventional weapons, increasing the risk of a nuclear exchange. US law prevents development of new "mini-nukes" that have an explosive yield of less than 5 kilotons. But the RNEP falls outside this ban because it is not a new weapon. Rather, it will be a modification of an existing nuclear bomb, probably a highly modified B61, sources say, a weapon whose explosive yield can be set from anything between 0.3 and 340 kilotons. The bomb uses fission at low yields but is a fusion (hydrogen) bomb at high yields. The Hiroshima fission bomb had a yield of 12 kilotons. Underground explosions are 10 to 15 times as effective against buried facilities as airbursts. A conventional bunker-buster is dropped from high altitude and hits the ground at enormous speed. It penetrates earth, rock and concrete before exploding. A nuclear version has the advantage of a far more powerful shock wave, increasing the depth of its destructive effect. The US already has around fifty 'penetrating' nuclear weapons in its stockpile, but these can only reach a depth of six metres in earth. David Wright, a nuclear-weapons expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC, says this would not be nearly enough to contain the radioactivity. "Even for a 0.3-kiloton explosion, you would need a burial depth of about 70 metres in dry soil and about 40 metres in dry, hard rock to contain the blast," Wright says. An explosion at the maximum depth achievable so far would throw thousands of tonnes of highly radioactive debris into the air. *Velocity threshold* Earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, Union of Concerned Scientists Earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, FAS Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, FCNL Senate Committee on Armed Services B61 nuclear bomb, Brookings Institution Moreover, Wright's calculations show that a warhead of this size at the depths currently possible would only destroy a hardened target buried less than 10 to 20 metres deep in rock. Some Iraqi facilities are said to be under 60 metres of rock, requiring a warhead of hundreds of kilotons, which would cause unacceptable devastation above ground. But a study by the Federation of American Scientists concludes that greater penetration with the RNEP is unlikely, as there is a threshold at which increasing impact velocities simply cause the warhead to deform and melt. Attempting to make the RNEP and its warhead robust enough to withstand impact will require extensive research and development. Weapons designers at three Department of Energy labs - Lawrence Livermore in California, and Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico - will have to come up with the new ground-penetration technology. Sandia has already patented a new penetrator (see graphic). While the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty bars any test with a live warhead, this would not prevent the RNEP's use untested. David Hambling ***************************************************************** 43 UK: AL Kennedy: Invade us now, please Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Thursday November 7, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] The past month has been distressing, hasn't it? I live in a top-floor flat and any hint of a firefighters' strike leaves me turning twitchy. What justification do they have for striking, anyway? I mean, fancy wanting a living wage just for running into burning buildings and saving people - or cutting them out of their cars: surely that's just vandalism? Then supposedly sane voters have been plodding about and demanding to be consulted before we go to war; that's not the British way. And finally, I discover that the poor, dear Queen has completely lost it and only noticed at the 11th hour that a butler was on trial for illegally hoarding a pile of her former daughter-in-law's most incriminating and raunchy hats. How fortunate that Her Majesty was able to mumble the word or two that saved the day before the aforementioned butler could discuss the afore-mentioned raunchy and incriminating headgear in open court. Of course, Lizzie may have been distracted by the thought of some old dowager torching a palace while only three squaddies with a bucket were available to damp down the blaze. But, mainly, I think she was suffering the same kind of shock that rocked you and me and every other red-blooded Brit when we discovered that you and me and every other red-blooded Brit were far more likely to recognise Third Nurse From the Left in Celebrity House Swap Cholera Challenge than, say, the PPS to the Undersecretary for Whelks. Individual bits of politicians - Alistair Darling's scary eyebrows, Iain Duncan Smith's fungal-looking hands - are easy to spot. But, as a whole, politicians are simply too ghastly to contemplate. Naturally, this threatens Democracy As We Know It. Any bloated ignoramus could be mistaken for a secretary of state and stoned to death by passing humanitarians. Any high-maintenance, older man in stockings could be lavished with the deference and wallpaper samples rightly due to the lord chancellor alone. Rather than being dragged into an unjustifiable war by a self-serving, power-besotted control freak, we could be trotting to our doom behind an equally patronising and sly big-eared fishmonger from Crouch End. How would we tell? Which brings me to the obvious option of "regime change" in the UK. Parliament long ago proved itself incapable of running a whelk stall. Our population frets under the yoke of imposed insanity. We are used to seeing the tobacco, oil, road, nuclear and related death industries subsidised to the hilt and treated with endless patience. Meanwhile, if teaching should break out in a school anywhere, swat teams are ready to remove all books and chalk supplies within moments. We accept that the vast majority of our media will only tell us the truth about important events when all those concerned have been dead for 300 years. We've abandoned our dreams of sensible farming practices and clean hospitals. In short, we would certainly take to the streets, skipping and weeping with quiet joy if US marines (having bombed 75% of our relatives to pté) were suddenly to liberate us and install sunny, Disney-loving, apple pie-eating members of the National Security Agency to safeguard our extensive oil resources and rule over us for an indeterminate transitional period. Make no mistake, our unrecognisable government is not simply bumbling and destructive by accident. The UK represents a real threat to world peace and security. We have huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons which (unlike Saddam Hussein's stocks) are constantly replaced when they age into uselessness. We also (unlike Saddam Hussein) have a fully operational nuclear capability and spare parts up to our ears, with a dodgy security and safety record that would make even a Russian queasy. We (unlike Saddam Hussein) manufacture and export both arms and instruments of torture. We intervene in foreign conflicts, support foreign dictatorships, spy on allies and enemies alike, and have a history of treating the residents of former colonies like something dubious we've picked up on our shoes. In short, we make the Axis of Evil look like the Teletubbies. So, should you, for example, read a newspaper article containing the phrase "the aardvarks have eaten the basket" or "Peter has reamed his umbilicus", it may well be that the vast and glorious pro-US uprising/invasion is about to commence. And then there will be nothing but happiness, freedom, Hershey bars and nylons for everyone. God bless the liberator Bush. comment@guardian.co.uk [comment@guardian.co.uk] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 44 Bush wins hardline UN deal on Iraq Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Rigorously trained inspection team ready to return to fray We are not traitors, says Blair Dual victory as Congress falls to Republicans Julian Borger in Washington Thursday November 7, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] George Bush's presidency emerged triumphant on both foreign and domestic stages yesterday, as a UN deal was effectively brokered on a concerted hardline stance towards Iraq, and after Republicans seized total control of Congress in midterm elections. Even as news of the election results was coming in the American ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, declared that Washington would force a vote tomorrow on its Iraq resolution, drafted with British support, after nearly two months of negotiations. The draft allows further security council discussions if Baghdad refuses to comply with comprehensive, unfettered weapons inspections, but it does not commit the US to wait for a new UN resolution before going to war. US and British officials confidently predicted that France and Russia had in effect agreed to the broad lines of the resolution and that they would win majority support in the security council. Paris and Moscow said they would study the new draft before passing judgment on it. President Chirac yesterday welcomed changes made in the US draft but called for "certain ambiguities to be removed". French officials indicated that France would not use its veto, while Washington and London appeared convinced that Russia would tag along once France had made public its acceptance. China, the fifth permanent member of the security council, is widely expected to abstain. In London, an upbeat Foreign Office said that the back of opposition to a tough resolution on Iraq had been broken. The focus now shifts to Tony Blair's efforts to persuade Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs to support the UN position, on which the prime minister has pledged a great deal of personal political capital. Mr Blair will portray it as a diplomatic victory for multilateralism over Iraq, and not a blank cheque for an imminent US invasion. Backbench Labour MPs, along with the Liberal Democrats who remain sceptical of the need for military action, will seek clarification of how any war would be triggered. With the Bush administration poised to clear the final hurdle in its push for a tough UN resolution tomorrow, attention will now switch to Baghdad where the Iraqi regime will be under pressure to meet all demands or face imminent oblivion. Once the security council adopts the resolution, Baghdad will have seven days to respond. It is expected to accept the terms as refusal would mean instant war. Within a month of the resolution being passed, Saddam will have to provide a full inventory of all his weapons of mass destruction. If those potential pitfalls are cleared it will then be the job of the arms inspectors to ferret out any biological, chemical or nuclear weapons or research programmes. Under the terms of yesterday's resolution, the inspectors would have the right to inspect any facility, including palaces - a bone of contention between the Iraqi regime and previous inspection teams. The inspectors would also be able to take any Iraqi out of the country for interview, and to set up exclusion zones and corridors in which the Iraqi army would be forbidden from operating. The Bush administration's success in corralling security council support on Iraq represents a foreign policy victory to match its resounding result in Tuesday's midterm elections. Mr Bush is now free of many of the constraints on his conservative domestic agenda. The Republicans recaptured control of the Senate after an 18-month interlude during which the Democrats used a slim majority to foil some of the most controversial elements of the Bush agenda. With all but two of the Senate's seats decided last night, the Republicans controlled 51 votes in the 100-strong chamber. A last minute surge of support, much of it due to a campaigning blitz by the president himself, toppled Democrats in most of the close Senate races, including the former vice-president Walter Mondale in Minnesota. The Republicans also strengthened their grip on the House of Representatives, increasing their majority by at least three votes. The victory immeasurably boosted Mr Bush's authority over his own party and dispelled many of the doubts lingering over his presidency since the 2000 election debacle. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 45 Straw to brief MPs on Iraq BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Wednesday, 6 November, 2002, 20:46 [Jack Straw in the Balkans] Jack Straw has met British soldiers in Kosovo UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is cutting short a trip to the Balkans to update MPs as talks on the United Nations reached a critical stage. A draft resolution about getting weapons inspectors back into Iraq was put before the UN Security Council on Wednesday. Prime Minister Tony Blair said the resolution would stress the need for the "complete and total disarmament" of Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. "If not, action will follow," Mr Blair told MPs. "But it is not conflict that is inevitable. It is the disarmament of these weapons of mass destruction that is inevitable." 'Avoiding past problems' The prime minister had spoken to US President George Bush just before giving the House of Commons the news. "I very much hope that the resolution is passed and has support," said Mr Blair. "It will be a tough new inspection regime. It will be free from the problems of the past. There should be no hair-trigger for military action able to be pulled by an individual state that chooses Menzies Campbell Liberal Democrat "It will make it very, very clear that there must be the complete disarmament of Iraq - of weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons." Mr Blair argued the surest way to avoid war was for Iraq to readmit weapons inspectors and start disarming. Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith echoed those sentiments. "Can I join you in welcoming any such resolution that will deliver peace in that region and the full disarmament of Iraq," said Mr Duncan Smith. Doubts Later, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell voiced caution. "Any decision to take military action in the name of the UN is a matter of utmost seriousness and can only be taken by the UN as a whole," said Mr Campbell. "There should be no hair-trigger for military action able to be pulled by an individual state that chooses." [The United Nations] Intensive talks continue at the United Nations On Thursday, MPs will be given more details of progress made on the resolution behind closed doors in New York. Mr Straw is returning to the UK from the Balkans and is due to make a statement in Parliament either in the late morning or early afternoon. The foreign secretary has said the UK will stick to international law but is ready to back American-led military action in Iraq if the UN fails to act. US officials are signalling a deal has been reached with France to end the deadlock in the Iraq crisis talks. French ministers have wanted a second resolution to be passed before UN-backed military action can be used against Iraq - a demand refused by the US. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said progress had been made on France's key demands but did not say whether he was satisfied with the text. Military action splits Russia - which has been a close ally of France on the Iraq issue - said changes had been made which took account of many of the objections to the first two drafts. But Russian news agencies quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov saying differences continued and it was "vital that the new resolution contain no automatic mechanism for using force". The latest, third, draft resolution offers Iraq a "final opportunity" to show it is complying with its disarmament obligations. The five permanent members of the Security Council - the US, the UK, France, China and Russia - may veto a resolution. But support is needed from the other members to get the nine votes necessary to adopt a resolution. © MMII | News Sources | Privacy ***************************************************************** 46 AU: Boffins warn over mini-nuke theage.com.au, Breaking News PARIS|Published: Thursday November 7, 10:05 AM US plans to build a bunker-busting mini-nuclear bomb have triggered alarm among scientists, who warn the weapons could spray radioactive fallout in a wide radius around the impact site. President George W. Bush's administration has earmarked $US15 million ($A26.77 million) in the draft 2003 defence budget for research into a so-called Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP). The bomb could be used in pre-emptive strikes to destroy hardened underground targets such as as command bunkers or weapons of mass destruction squirrelled away by rogue stakes, according to leaked documents. The idea is that the RNEP would be dropped from high altitude and hit the ground with such speed that it would penetrate like a knife deep into the surface before detonating. Fallout would -- theoretically -- be negligible as the debris would be contained by the thick lid of earth, rock and concrete above. But, according to experts quoted by New Scientist, even the smallest warheads are likely to spew up thousands of tonnes of highly radioactive dust and debris. "Even for a 0.3-kiloton explosion, you would need a burial depth of about 70 metres in dry soil and about 40 metres in dry, hard rock to contain the blast," David Wright, a nuclear-weapons specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, told the British weekly. The likely design for the RNEP will be an existing nuclear bomb, the B61, whose explosive yield can be set from anything between 0.3 kilotons equivalent of TNT and 340 kilotons, New Scientist said. By comparison, the Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 12 kilotons. In any case, said Wright, a 0.3-kiloton bomb would not be powerful enough to destroy a hardened target buried more than 20 metres beneath the ground. Some Iraqi facilities are said to be buried to a depth of 60 metres under rock. To destroy those targets would therefore require a bigger warhead, in the hundreds of kilotons. ©2002 [aap] Copyright © 2002 John Fairfax Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 47 Pak-Saudi nuke nexus? The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Main News Thursday, November 7, 2002, Chandigarh, India Rajeev Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 6 After the lid has been blown off from the Pakistan-North Korea nexus on nuclear weapons cooperation, a similar clandestine cooperation is understood to be on between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia with China playing a key role in the murky behind-the-scene international power games. According to reports received here through diplomatic channels, Saudi Arabia has been secretly involved for years in funding Pakistan’s missile and nuclear programme purchases from China. In the past few years, China, which has a declared ambition of becoming a world superpower by the year 2025, has cleverly dovetailed its foreign policy, energy strategy and military and security imperatives in such a way that its clout with the oil-producing countries has gone up significantly. A clear example of it is that while until 1995 China was a net exporter of oil, in 2001, it imported over 60 million tonnes of ‘black gold’. The closeness between Islamabad and Riyadh has been phenomenal and cuts across party affiliations or the political set-up in Pakistan. It is not without significance that the first foreign tour of Gen Pervez Musharraf, who ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup on October 12, 1999, was to Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Mr Sharif himself, his younger brother and their families are living in Saudi Arabia after a secret deal between General Musharraf and Mr Sharif in which Riyadh had played a key role. During Mr Nawaz Sharif’s aborted prime ministerial tenure, Saudi Arabia had been funding Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programme purchases from China. It is significant to note in this context that the North Korean missiles (red missiles painted green by Pakistan) trade-off for transfer of Pakistani nuclear arsenal know-how in the late nineties took place at a time when the Pakistani economy was in shambles. It is understood that Saudi Arabia bailed Pakistan out from this financial crisis, which some in diplomatic circles take as Saudi’s funding of Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programme purchases from China. The Islamabad-Riyadh close cooperation was evident shortly after Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May, 1999, when Saudi Prince Sultan visited Pakistan and toured the uranium-enrichment plant and missile-production facilities at Kahuta. According to international strategic analysts, if these reports are correct, it connotes two things. One, Saudi Arabia has given money to China for Pakistan’s missile and nuclear programme which means Riyadh could well be buying a nuclear capability from Beijing through a proxy state --Pakistan. Secondly, it also means that Saudi Arabia could leapfrog to the status of a de facto nuclear state the day it wishes to buy a few shipments from Pakistan. Ludhiana Tribune ***************************************************************** 48 Panel talks war effects Daily Trojan / November 7, 2002 [http://www.usc.edu/] Panel: Foreign students in Office of International Services event express their countries’ stakes in possible conflict Abran Rubiner | Daily Trojan Why war? Professor Edwin Smith fields questions regarding an invasion of Iraq. By KAREN ZLOTNIK Staff Writer By the end of Wednesday's discussion on the impending war against Iraq, the panelists agreed the use of force by the United States in Iraq should be a last option, and that President George W. Bush should examine his reasons for a possible attack. Every semester, the Office of International Services hosts a panel of international students as part of their State of the World series. This semester's event, "What Next?," took place in Topping 205 with approximately 40 people attending. The panel consisted of one student from each of five key world players that would be affected by a U.S. invasion of Iraq  India, Israel, Germany, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Edwin Smith, professor of international relations and law, moderated the event. The series is intended to give international students a chance to share their perspectives on social and global issues, said Judy Hartwich, the associate director of the Office of International Services. While each student spoke for his respective country, a common thread ran through most of their comments. They said they did not understand why the United States is so adamant about attacking Iraq when there is no evidence Iraq has nuclear weapons. "Why is the United States attacking Iraq first, if others have nuclear weapons?" asked Talal Hakim, the Saudi Arabian representative and a international relations and social science and communications major. "North Korea admitted to having an nuclear weapons program." Smith rebutted that Saddam Hussein is the only one who used chemical weapons, and this makes him different from the rest of the axis of evil. One member of the audience was not pleased with this response, and said that the United States had knowingly used chemical weapons in Vietnam, and that the United States was the only country who had ever deployed nuclear weapons. Another common issue was that while some of the countries were U.S. allies, they were unwilling to get involved in any war that was not sanctioned by the United Nations. Muhammad Nawaz of Pakistan said that Pakistani troops sided with the United States during the Gulf War because it was a sanctioned war. "That war was a just war, and there was a just cause for the war," said Nawaz, a graduate student in materials engineering. "The legality of this war is questionable." The students also pointed out that if this war occurs solely based on Bush's hatred of Hussein, then the precedent for wars will forever be changed. They said they did not believe the war should occur without a pre-emptive attack, and without full knowledge of Hussein's capability. India has only recently become a U.S. ally because of the United States' former relationship with Pakistan. After Sept. 11, 2001, the United States realized India's strategic position for launching an attack on Afghanistan. Since then, the right-wing Indian government has been a satisfied ally of the United States, said Sahiba Sandhu, the Indian representative. Although India has not taken a formal stance on the controversy, Sandhu, a graduate student in communication management, said she believed India will support the U.S. war effort, despite the consequences. India has strong economic ties with Iraq. They trade oil and electric goods, and the war could cost India dearly. "We are just scared of U.S. policy because we know that the United States can and will change it at any time," said Sandhu, who added that the United States only keeps relations with those it will benefit from. Most of the panelists admitted that their countries like America for the most part, but the one thing their countries dislike was its foreign policy. "No one likes American policy," said Yonatan Ben-Simhon, the Israeli representative. "But could anyone do it better?" Marc Mund, the German panelist, agreed with Ben-Simhon, a graduate student in applied mathematics and natural sciences and mathematics. "A foreign policy that pleases everyone is impossible," said Mund, an undergraduate majoring international relations and social science and communications. He also added that since World War II, Germany is hesitant about sending troops into combat when it is unsanctioned. Overall, the discussion was a positive one and while some tension existed, the participants were cordial to one another and were able to agree on the main points. The audience was responsive to the discussion and a few felt free to voice their own opinions as well. "This was positive participation, as compared to the apathy on campus, which happens more often than not," said Donika Hristova, a junior majoring in international relations from Bulgaria. " ... Students feel powerless, and the only way to get power is to do something (like this)." Copyright 2002 by the Daily Trojan. All rights reserved. This article was published in Vol. 147, No. 52 (Thursday, November 7, 2002), beginning on page 1 and ending on page 13. ***************************************************************** 49 Y-12 employment numbers have spiked in past 2 years Bush's support is boon to Oak Ridge plant By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer November 7, 2002 OAK RIDGE - The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant is expanding its work force, bucking a trend that eliminated thousands of Oak Ridge jobs in the post-Cold War period. Since November 2000, when BWXT Y-12 took over management of the government's warhead factory, the company has hired 842 people - mostly engineers, project-control specialists, chemical operators and electricians. Even with retirements and other attrition, the plant's work population increased from 4,143 to 4,675, according to figures released by BWXT, a partnership of BWXT Technologies and Bechtel National. The Y-12 employment numbers are still well below peak times of the past, including the defense buildup during the Reagan years. For example, in December 1985, the work force totaled 7,500. Recent hirings, however, are indicative of the Bush administration's support for the Oak Ridge plant and its national-security missions. Y-12 manufactures warhead components from uranium and other materials. The plant specializes in so-called secondaries - the second stage of warheads that produces the high yield of thermonuclear weapons. Currently, Y-12 is fabricating replacement parts for W-87 warheads, which are deployed aboard Peacekeeper (MX) intercontinental missile systems. The Oak Ridge work is part of a "life-extension program" for weapons initially deployed in the 1980s. "Y-12 also fabricates test hardware for all other weapon systems in the enduring stockpile," said Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the Y-12 defense work. During the upcoming year, Y-12 will support test programs for the B-61 bomb and a series of nuclear warheads, including the W-87, W-62 (Minuteman), W-88 (Trident II) and W-78 (associated with Minuteman III), Wyatt said. In addition to its manufacturing missions, Y-12 dismantles old warheads from retired systems, provides expertise for international non-proliferation programs and serves as the principal U.S. storehouse for bomb-grade uranium. Plant officials also are formulating plans to modernize the Oak Ridge manufacturing and storage facilities, some of which date back to the World War II Manhattan Project. The federally funded effort may ultimately cost $4 billion or more. Oak Ridge Mayor David Bradshaw said the developments at Y-12 are a "healthy sign" for the future. He said Oak Ridge leaders want to piggyback on the government's successful run at Y-12 and Oak Ridge National Laboratory and modernize city facilities as well. The city plans to seek additional funds from the U.S. Department of Energy for "special burdens" endured by communities that host the federal facilities, which are exempt from some taxes. "It's clear to me that Oak Ridge is a very supportive community, Bradshaw said, "and we will continue to support these national security missions." Y-12's resurgence isn't pleasing everybody. "It's a horrible mistake, but not really a surprise," said Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. "The current administration has made it clear that their answer to anything that may seem threatening is power based on a violent response," Hutchison said. "Locally, it might feel good to people that money is pouring into this region for bombs and new employment. But at the same time, money is pouring out of schools and housing and food for the hungry." The activist group regularly stages protests and vigils at the defense facility. Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 50 U.S. backs off plan to cut Paducah cleanup workers MyInKy November 6, 2002 PADUCAH, Ky.- The U.S. Department of Energy has backed away from a plan to cut the number of Paducah uranium plant cleanup workers by nearly half and move management of the work to a new office in Lexington. The changes, proposed in an undated memo addressed to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, called for the Lexington office to oversee cleanup at both Paducah and its sister plant in Ohio. Each location now has its own on-site manager, but overall supervision of the work belongs to the department's sprawling complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Kentucky and Ohio sites compete with Oak Ridge for money and resources. The proposed changes were criticized by U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning and some local officials, environmentalists and plant neighbors who fear the reorganization would result in less accountability. Bunning, R-Ky., called the plan "a terrible idea." He has tangled regularly with Energy Department officials over the pace of Paducah work. "It looks like DOE is pulling back on its commitment," said Ronald Lamb, a mechanic who lives near the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant that for years had processed uranium for atomic weapons and, more recently, nuclear reactor fuel. Jessie Hill Roberson, assistant energy secretary for environmental management and author of the 13-page memo, said she made the recommendations based on congressional directives to accelerate cleanup of the Paducah plant and the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio. The reorganization would accelerate the pace of the cleanups and "establish strong leadership" for them, Roberson said about her memo. But in an interview with The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Roberson said, "Don't assume this is decided" and that "all kinds of other alternatives" are being studied, including keeping the two cleanups separate or having a combined management office somewhere other than Lexington. Joe Davis, a Department of Energy spokesman, said Roberson's proposal has not been presented to Abraham and "probably won't be going anywhere." The reorganization would not have a direct impact on Kentucky's 2010 cleanup deadline for Paducah, said Mark York, spokesman for Kentucky's Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet. York said the state had no objections to the proposal outlined in the memo. "We feel we have a good line of communications open with DOE _ both in the state as well as in Washington _ and I don't anticipate this is going to change that," he said. The government has spent about $600 million on the Paducah cleanup since 1990, and the Energy Department estimated two years ago it needed $1.3 billion to meet the 2010 deadline. Federal and state officials in recent months have been negotiating over a new plan from Washington that would accelerate some projects but possibly put off other environmental problems. Radioactive and hazardous materials from the plant have contaminated 10 billion gallons of ground water, along with surface water, soil and plants. Tests have shown widespread contamination in animals near the site, and numerous contaminated abandoned structures and waste burial grounds are spread throughout the complex near the Ohio River. Bunning has inserted language in a spending measure, still awaiting passage, that directs the Energy Department to bypass the existing bureaucracy and set up more direct planning between Washington and Paducah. "My proposal directed the DOE to cut red tape and to send money directly to Paducah to help with environmental cleanup, not to build another office and to shuffle employees around in an effort to look busy," he said. Information from: The Courier-Journal [http://www.myinky.com ***************************************************************** 51 New conductor could provide answers for energy demand The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- Thursday, November 7, 2002 Oak Ridge National Laboratory and 3M Company are hoping for powerful results from a project aimed at making transmitting electricity more efficient and reliable, according to an ORNL press release. Researchers from 3M, working with ORNL, are developing a replacement conductor for conventional power lines that addresses the problem of power outages caused by sagging lines. Lines sag under the heat of high current loads. The replacement conductor also avoids the high cost and environmentally harmful effects of building new towers, states the release. The design uses 3M Nextel 650 ceramic fibers, embedded in an aluminum matrix, to make a composite wire that does not stretch as much when heated. An enhancement in the new cables is the addition of zirconium, which makes the aluminum more resistant to deformation at higher temperatures. The aluminum matrix also helps prevent rust in the cable. 3M is working with Nexans and Wire Rope Industries to manufacture the conductor, according to the release. ORNL researchers will test 3M's small-, medium- and large-diameter conductor cables successively in a field experiment at ORNL. The tests will evaluate the overall performance of the conductors to verify predictions of computer models by looking at sag and tension data, such as stress/strain curve and breaking point, and by testing various conductor accessories that attach the conductor to the towers. The 3M conductor and line accessories by Alcoa Fujikora and Preformed Line Products are being tested for thermocycling, or high current situations, at ORNL. In Fargo, N.D., the conductor and its accessories are being tested for resistance in high winds and ice on a transmission line owned by Western Area Power Administration, while corrosion tests are being performed by Hawaii Electric Co. ORNL is monitoring the performance of the conductor at the Fargo site as well as other future utility sites. In addition, the National Electric Energy Testing, Research and Applications Center in Atlanta is testing all of the components in their laboratories. Each test will run from five to six months. The researchers hope to put each conductor through 500 cycles of simulated thermocycling taking it to peak load and then returning it to normal load the equivalent of 30 years of peak loads. The Power Line Conductor Accelerated Testing or PCAT facility will be a closed loop of approximately 2,400 feet of composite core conductor. A 2MW direct current power supply fed by a transformer will provide current for the site. The Tennessee Valley Authority is helping to design the line structure at PCAT and install poles, hardware and other accessories at the test site. The project is funded by the Department of Energy and through a cooperative research and development agreement with 3M. TVA donated the PCAT line design and the Electric Power Research Institute's Power Electronics Applications Center, a local research and development company, donated the load equipment to test the refurbished power supply that came from UT-Tullahoma's Space Institute. 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