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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 NZ: Nuclear ban not spiking trade deal, says Goff
2 British Energy warns on possible pension gap
3 NZ: US spells out nuclear cost
4 US: Congressional Reactions to Speech
5 NZ: Nuclear stance affects trade - (with US)
6 Ontario faces electricity shortages, higher bills without new
7 British Energy warns on possible pension gap
8 US: TWO CENTS / On Bush's speech
9 Anti-American backlash possible over linking of trade and
10 Al-Qaida leaders say nuclear power stations were original targets
NUCLEAR REACTORS
11 Nuclear watchdog backs Taipower's operational skills
12 US: FirstEnergy: Nuke Repairs Will Hurt Earns
13 US: Repair Costs Jump at Ohio Nuke Site
14 US: Davis-Besse start-up is pushed back
15 US: Perry nuclear plant restarts after fixes
16 US: New life for (RSECO) nuclear facility's 'hot' water
17 US: NRC Oversight Panel to Hold Two Meetings on Davis-Besse Reactor
18 US: No foul play in TVA fire Reason for Watts Bar blaze unclear
19 US: NRC Issues Finding of Low to Moderate Safety Significance to
NUCLEAR SAFETY
20 Did the United States Expose Iraqi Civilians to Radiation?
21 US: * Nuclear security found lax as 'mock terrorists' outmatch
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
22 Kazakhs seize contraband radioactive waste*
23 US: Tiny tribe fights to lease hardscrabble lands for nuclear waste
24 US: Citizen Vigilance
25 US: Funds increased for Battelle nuclear cleanup
26 US: WA Govt slams nuclear waste plan.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
27 US: The Men Who Built the Bomb
28 Military expects the go-ahead for Iraq war within a month
29 Bargaining With Russia
30 Vanunu: Peres told more about nukes than I ever did
31 Inspectors Begin Training for Iraq
32 US: Text of President Bush's Address
33 Pakistan Test Fires Second Missile
34 US: Bush: 'Homicidal' Saddam Can't Wait
35 US: Bush Speech Gets Guarded Support
36 Europe Still Skeptical of Iraq War
37 Iraq: Bush Misleads to Justify War
38 U.S. says al Qaeda exploring Russian market for weapons --
39 UK: Uranium cleared from weapons site
40 Das ist Siemens! Did the famous company help Saddam create
41 US: Iraq: Voices That Must Be Heard
42 US: STREET THEATER AT las vegas FEDERAL BUILDING
43 Pakistan steps up nuclear tests
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
44 Fluor almost done moving spent fuel out of 300 Area
45 Hanford's glassification project price tag likely to be $5.6
46 Group hires director
47 Patton puts priority on new plant -
48 OP: Seeing the SNS site: A tonic for community complaints
49 Opinions:Nuclear waste should be recycled at SRS, not buried in
50 Fluor considers cuts in Hanford firefighting effort
OTHER NUCLEAR
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 NZ: Nuclear ban not spiking trade deal, says Goff
08.10.2002 By VERNON SMALL
New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance is not the pivotal factor in
reaching a free-trade deal with the United States despite
warnings from a senior Bush Administration adviser, says Foreign
Affairs and Trade Minister Phil Goff.
He said he had been told during talks in Washington that New
Zealand was behind Australia in the hunt for a free-trade pact,
but was not out of the race.
"What Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said to me on
the issue - I'm sure it's appropriate to quote him - is: 'You are
on the list, but away down the list'."
It was clear the Republican Administration saw the nuclear issue
as "unfinished business".
"It is far less clear that the nuclear issue is a defining issue
in terms of a free-trade agreement. In fact I would argue it is
not," Mr Goff said.
"We will get there eventually, but it is going to take a hell of
a lot of hard slog."
Australia was expected to start free-trade talks with the US this
year.
Mr Goff said Australia's support for the US on a range of issues,
including the Kyoto climate change protocol, had been a positive
for it, "rather than a negative or prohibitive factor for us".
Australia had more trade sticking points with the US - such as
over sugar, dairy products and motor vehicles - than New Zealand.
"It's not as if Australia will get it tomorrow and NZ won't get
it for 10 years."
Mr Goff said Morocco was not seen as a military ally of the US,
but was at the front of the queue for free-trade talks.
His comments follow reports that New Zealand's nuclear stance was
linked to trade talks during a meeting between Deputy Prime
Minister Michael Cullen and President Bush's Deputy National
Security Adviser for Economic Affairs, Gary Edson.
Dr Cullen said it was made clear that Australia was ahead in the
queue for a free-trade deal because of "their strategic
relationship".
The debate has revived the argument over New Zealand's
15-year-old anti-nuclear law.
Act defence spokesman Ken Shirley yesterday accused Labour and
National of "shadow-boxing" on the nuclear propulsion issue.
He said a free-trade deal would boost the economy.
The Government should accept nuclear-powered ships into New
Zealand waters.
"The removal of the ban on nuclear-propelled ships is the key to
reactivating our involvement in Anzus, which in turn would put us
on equal footing with Australia in facilitating freer trade
access to the US market."
National Party trade spokesman Lockwood Smith called for an
inquiry into trade and security links with the US.
"National is not saying New Zealand should change its
anti-nuclear-powered ships legislation," he said yesterday.
However, an inquiry would be received positively by the Bush
Administration and could break the impasse.
Dr Cullen and Prime Minister Helen Clark have ruled out any
change in the law.
©Copyright 2002, New Zealand Herald
*****************************************************************
2 British Energy warns on possible pension gap
FT.com
Tuesday Oct 8 2002. All times are London time.
By Andrew Taylor, Utilities Correspondent
Shareholders of British Energy, the nuclear generator, suffered a
new blow on Tuesday when the company warned that it might have to
find up to £13m ($20m) a year to fill a pension fund hole.
The group, which was this month given a £650m government
emergency loan facility to allow it more time to negotiate a
long-term financial restructuring, blamed the falling stock
market for the potential deficit.
British Energy has asked actuaries to conduct an interim review
of the funding position of its pension funds, including that of
British Energy Generation Group (BEGG) "which covers the majority
of British Energy's UK employees".
"Following recent falls in the value of stock markets, the
company has been advised that it might be imprudent to continue
the existing use of the BEGG surplus."
"On this basis, the company may cease using the surplus with
effect from January 1, 2003 and may as a consequence pay
additional contributions in 2003 and/or subsequent years."
The additional contribution was unlikely to "exceed £13m in any
financial year".
The nuclear generator, which blames low UK electricity prices for
its financial problems, has warned that it faces insolvency
without further government help. It has told shareholders and
bondholders that there is no guarantee that any restructuring
would "preserve value for investors".
The group, which is seeking annual savings of at least £280m,
wants nuclear power to be excluded from climate change taxes; a
reduction in fuel reprocessing costs charged by the state-owned
British Nuclear Fuels; and lower rate bills.
The emergency aid package is designed to provide enough working
capital and collateral to allow the group to continue trading in
electricity markets until November 29. It also enables the group
to provide crucial financial guarantees to keep its Canadian
nuclear operations running.
Whitehall officials stress that the emergency aid "is not a blank
cheque" and that the facility is secured against specific British
Energy businesses, mostly its UK nuclear power stations.
Patricia Hewitt, trade and industry secretary, announcing the
aid, said time was needed for "detailed and lengthy discussions"
on a long-term rescue. She said: "No decisions have been taken
and no commitments given."
FT.com
*****************************************************************
3 NZ: US spells out nuclear cost
The government is sticking with New Zealand's nuclear-free status
despite a high ranking member of the Bush administration directly
linking the stance to delays in a free trade deal with the United
States.
Finance Minister Michael Cullen has returned from Washington
saying a presidential advisor told him the ban on nuclear ship
visits has put New Zealand further down the free trade queue than
Australia.
Two parties that work closely with the government, United Future
and the Greens, are backing the government's decision not to
change current policy. However, the Act Party says the
legislation should be changed to enable nuclear-powered vessels
to visit if it gives exporters better access to US markets.
Any change could smooth the way for a free trade agreement with
the US and American embassy spokesman Bill Millman has made it
clear that NZ's nuclear policy stands between trade deals with
the US.
"What they made clear was Australia was ahead in the queue
because of the strategic relationship between Australia and the
United States and they did say if we changed our policy that
might affect how we are considered in that regard," Cullen said.
Act believes New Zealand should retain its anti-nuclear weapons
legislation but dump the laws regarding nuclear propulsion.
"It was excessive from day one - it's childish and unnecessary,"
spokesman Ken Shirley said.
The National Party resisted calling for a law change but instead
suggested an inquiry.
"An independent inquiry into our trade and security relationship
would help everyone.. it can do no harm...and I think a
responsible government would do that," MP Lockwood Smith said.
The government is moving to dampen down expectations before Prime
Minister Helen Clark meets US President George Bush later this
month in Mexico.
Published on Oct 07, 2002
*****************************************************************
4 Congressional Reactions to Speech
Las Vegas SUN
October 07, 2002 By The Associated Press ASSOCIATED PRESS
Members of Congress on President Bush's speech on Iraq: Sen. Bob
Smith, R-N.H.:
"We must unify behind our commander in chief, and support him in
whatever mission he feels we need to conduct to protect American
lives and national security. I fought in the Vietnam War, and I
know what it's like to have people protesting at home during the
war. We should not let that happen again."
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.:
"President Bush made a compelling case that the combination of
Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction poses a growing
threat to our national security. ... I expect that a large
majority of senators will vote to authorize the president to use
force, if necessary, to enforce the U.N. Security Council's
demands."
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas:
"If the quality of his evidence matched the quality of his
oratory, I'd be 'ready to roll.' But his repeated references to
9/11, despite his advisers' admission that no such link to this
terrorism exists, show how very weak the case for war now really
is. My concern is that a near-unilateral land invasion of Iraq
will endanger thousands of young Americans now while exposing our
families to terrorism for years to come in what will be perceived
by too many as a new crusade against Islam."
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas:
"I think he brought in 'Why now?' He talked about the satellite
photos that shows that he's rebuilding the nuclear plants. He
talked about the unmanned aerial vehicles that can be brought in
containers, in small containers, in airplanes or ships, along
with chemical weapons we know he has and distributed throughout
America ... so I think the threat and the immediacy was brought
home tonight."
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio:
"The administration has failed to make a case for a unilateral
and pre-emptive strike on Iraq. War is simply a failure of
diplomacy. The United States must continue to work with the
international community to ensure that weapons inspectors are
allowed into Iraq. The Administration's stated policy of 'regime
change' is counterproductive to efforts to disarm Iraq and
restore stability to the region."
Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla.:
"Kudos to the president for taking the case to the American
people.The more the president does that, the more the American
people will agree that Saddam Hussein and his efforts to build
weapons of mass destruction pose a threat to the freedoms and way
of life enjoyed by everyone in our nation." Rep. Ike Skelton,
D-Mo.: "Getting rid of Saddam Hussein is just half the battle.
... History will more greatly record not how you got rid of
Saddam Hussein, but history will record chapter and verse on what
happened to Iraq, and the Middle East, after he's gone. It could
flower up into a nightmare, or it could be a stable situation."
Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas:
"As the president made clear, America cannot and will not stand
idle as the cancer of Saddam's brutal regime metastasizes and
threatens our interests." Sen. John Warner, R-Va., on CNN's
"Larry King Live": "This is not the United States against the
people of Iraq. As the president said, it is the world struggling
to preserve its freedoms for this generation and future
generations. It is better that it is the world that is bringing
the end to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, rather
than just the United States."
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., on "Larry King Live":
"We ought not be voting on this now. We ought to go home and see
what the American people want ... Here, we're being asked to make
this decision in an atmosphere that is super-charged with
partisan politics." Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.:
"The question which Congress is faced with is whether the United
States should decide not it will 'go it alone,' to act
unilaterally against Iraq, at the same time we are trying to get
from the United Nations a tough new resolution, which authorizes
member states to use military force to enforce the UN
resolution."
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
5 NZ: Nuclear stance affects trade - (with US)
NZOOM - ONE News - Politics
New Zealanders"> [http://nzoom.com]
Opposition parties are raising concerns about the effect New
Zealand's anti-nuclear policy is having on the ability to get a
free trade deal with the world's most powerful nation.
The Act party's defence spokesman Ken Shirley said on TV One's
Breakfast show the anti-nuclear stance is hurting New Zealand.
"I've had discussions with US officials and they've made it quite
clear to me that our non-nuclear policy is an encumbrance," he
said.
Peace campaigner Marie Leadbeater said on Breakfast that she
thought this would be the worst time for New Zealand to go back
on its nuclear stance.
"The nuclear arms race hasn't gone away. We've had missile tests
in Indian and Pakistan just in the last few days," she said.
Published on Oct 08, 2002
ONE News sourced from TVNZ, RNZ, Reuters and AAP
*****************************************************************
6 Ontario faces electricity shortages, higher bills without new
supply: report -
CANOE
CP October 7, 2002
Ontario faces electricity shortages, higher bills without new
supply: report TORONTO (CP) -- Ontario's electricity system has a
"serious capacity problem" that needs to be corrected or it could
lead to supply "interruptions" and higher energy bills next
summer, says a provincial agency monitoring the province's power.
Supply was extremely tight while demand was high during the peak
summer periods in Ontario, which forced the province to import
power "21 per cent of the time" in the July-August period, the
Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO) said in a market
surveillance report released Monday. "If steps are not taken to
address this (supply) situation, Ontario could face even more
serious reliability problems next summer, leading to the
possibility of supply interruptions and continued upward pressure
on prices during periods of peak demand," the IMO states in its
report. Also on Monday, the Ontario government announced it will
launch an immediate review of the mandate of the Ontario Energy
Board. The board, established in 1960, is a regulatory agency of
the Ontario government and is responsible for overseeing the
energy sector through licensing, enforcing codes, and in some
cases setting rates for energy utilities. It also has a role in
consumer protection. "There have been ongoing changes within the
energy sector and I believe the rules and procedures governing
the OEB need to be examined," said Ontario Energy Minister John
Baird.
Baird said he will review the board and report back to cabinet
in 100 days. Over the few months Baird said he will meet with
consumer groups, energy experts, industry stakeholders and
taxpayers to come up with recommendations on how to improve the
board. The IMO said the supply shortage this summer is linked to
lack of service from two Ontario nuclear power stations -- in
Pickering, which has been idle for five years, and at Bruce
Nuclear Station on Lake Huron, which was idle all summer.
The IMO also noted that there has been a lack of construction of
any new significant capacity since 1988.
The IMO's report looks at the May-August period. For May and
June, prices were "relatively stable" after Ontario's electricity
market opened up to competition on May 1.
However, during July and August, prices "increased in the face
of rising costs of hydroelectric power and very high temperatures
that resulted in record levels of demand."
The IMO said current forecasts suggest 3,500 megawatts of
nuclear capacity from Pickering and Bruce may be returned to
service over the next two years. But additional generating
capacity is required and at the moment, only 1,000 megawatts of
an additional 5,800 megawatts of new construction projected to be
onstream in 2005 is under construction now, the IMO said. The
report also recommends that Ontario Power Generation -- the
government-owned entity that generates most of the province's
energy -- should speed up its mandate to reduce its share of
generating capacity to 35 per cent from almost 70 per cent within
10 years.
Alberta private companies such as TransAlta Corp. (TSX:TA) and
Atco Ltd. are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build
natural gas-fired power plants in southwestern Ontario cities of
Sarnia and Windsor. However, the Ontario government must push for
OPG divestitures to happen "as rapidly as possible" to attract
more competition. The report also says energy customers,
particularly big industrial users, don't have the proper
information to adjust their usage when prices are high in a
market where buyers and sellers set market prices by the minute.
"When customers cannot respond to high prices by lowering their
consumption, they cannot discipline price increases from
suppliers," the IMO said, adding that the behaviour of energy
sellers "needs to continue to be monitored."
CANOE, a division of Netgraphe Inc
*****************************************************************
7 British Energy warns on possible pension gap
[http://www.ft.com]
By Andrew Taylor, Utilities Correspondent Published: October 8
2002 12:24 | Last Updated: October 8 2002 12:24
Shareholders ofBritish Energy, the nuclear generator, suffered a
new blow on Tuesday when the company warned that it might have to
find up to £13m ($20m) a year to fill a pension fund hole.
The group, which was this month given a £650m government
emergency loan facility to allow it more time to negotiate a
long-term financial restructuring, blamed the falling stock
market for the potential deficit.
British Energy has asked actuaries to conduct an interim review
of the funding position of its pension funds, including that of
British Energy Generation Group (BEGG) "which covers the majority
of British Energy's UK employees".
"Following recent falls in the value of stock markets, the
company has been advised that it might be imprudent to continue
the existing use of the BEGG surplus."
"On this basis, the company may cease using the surplus with
effect from January 1, 2003 and may as a consequence pay
additional contributions in 2003 and/or subsequent years."
The additional contribution was unlikely to "exceed £13m in any
financial year".
The nuclear generator, which blames low UK electricity prices for
its financial problems, has warned that it faces insolvency
without further government help. It has told shareholders and
bondholders that there is no guarantee that any restructuring
would "preserve value for investors".
The group, which is seeking annual savings of at least £280m,
wants nuclear power to be excluded from climate change taxes; a
reduction in fuel reprocessing costs charged by the state-owned
British Nuclear Fuels; and lower rate bills.
The emergency aid package is designed to provide enough working
capital and collateral to allow the group to continue trading in
electricity markets until November 29. It also enables the group
to provide crucial financial guarantees to keep its Canadian
nuclear operations running.
Whitehall officials stress that the emergency aid "is not a blank
cheque" and that the facility is secured against specific British
Energy businesses, mostly its UK nuclear power stations.
Patricia Hewitt, trade and industry secretary, announcing the
aid, said time was needed for "detailed and lengthy discussions"
on a long-term rescue. She said: "No decisions have been taken
and no commitments given."
© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2002. "FT" and
*****************************************************************
8 TWO CENTS / On Bush's speech
[chronfeedback@sfchronicle.com] Tuesday, October 8, 2002
QUESTION: Did the president convince you that his plan is sound?
Jo-Anna Pippen, Albany
Bush offered no new material that compels me to support this or
compels me to encourage my sons to go off and participate in
this. There is no focus on what happens next. Bush may save the
world from a tyrant, but he has not considered the consequences,
which could very well make the situation worse than it already
is.
Franco Gianelli, San Lorenzo
I believe his plan is sound and thoroughly convincing. Facts
mentioned during the speech seemed to make sense and made me sit
up and take notice. I still would like to hear what Congress has
to say. And support of other major world leaders for the
president's plan would certainly make me feel better.
Maurice Williams, Oakland
Bush is beating around his own name in his reasons for waging war
with Iraq. He wants oil, something he can fall back on at his
Texas ranch in 2004 -- because he's not going to win the next
election.
Doug Wyllie, San Francisco
The president presented reasons for invasion, but did little to
convince me that his plan is sound. The problem lies in a
post-Saddam Iraq. A severely destabilized Persian Gulf region
puts even more American lives at risk from terrorist retaliation.
What's the plan on that?
Greg Bayol, Daly City
Bush stated his argument very well. We have to trust his
assessment of the threat that exists. He did a good job of being
forceful and serious without merely using fear to gain our
support. I will keep listening to all sides.
Beth Grimes, Petaluma
No. His speech was simply regurgitation of earlier allegations
about Iraq. He gave us no evidence to support these claims.
Toward the end of his speech, he stated that "we cannot wait for
final proof, for a smoking gun" -- an admission that solid
evidence for his statements does not exist.
Mike Gaynes, Moss Beach
What plan? We got history and assumptions -- no new evidence
showing Iraq's imminent threat, no excuse for turning our
military focus away from destroying al Qaeda, no acknowledgment
of the massive cost to the economy. We need strong leadership to
fight a war, not catch phrases from an empty suit.
Patrimpas Prapuolenis, San Francisco
No. The sense I get is that he's decided to engage Iraq in war
for reasons he will not disclose. His disingenuous rhetoric is
designed to confuse -- if not out and out deceive -- the American
public. I simply do not find anything that comes out of this
White House on this credible. Plus, could he please learn how to
pronounce "nuclear"?
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle. Page A - 14
*****************************************************************
9 Anti-American backlash possible over linking of trade and
anti-nuclear policies: Minister
Yahoo! News Tue, Oct 08, 2002
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - The United States could trigger an
anti-American backlash if it insists New Zealand back down on its
anti-nuclear policies to secure a free-trade deal, a senior
official warned Tuesday.
American officials told New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister
Michael Cullen last week that his government's policy barring
nuclear ship visits to the country was hindering negotiations
over a free trade pact. Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton
said Tuesday the United States ran the danger of going too far
while taking a "perfectly legitimate opportunity" to again raise
concerns over New Zealand's anti-nuclear policies. "I just think
this is going to generate a big wave of anti-Americanism out
there in the public and that's something none of us need," Sutton
said. Cullen said that during his visit to Washington, senior
Bush administration officials suggested the anti-nuclear policy
was a hindrance to a free-trade agreement, not an insurmountable
obstacle.
Cullen ruled out any change to the policy, adopted in 1985, which
has widespread support among New Zealanders.
Prime Minister Helen Clark said New Zealand's nuclear-free policy
was commonly raised in talks with the United States.
"If anyone thinks that New Zealand changing its nuclear policy
would lead to a free trade agreement I am afraid they are very
naive," Clark said. New Zealand had constructed its foreign
policy around "being a small independent minded country that
takes these issues seriously ... and I am not about to throw it
all away (for a trade deal)," she added. After the anti-nuclear
law was adopted, the United States and Australia ejected New
Zealand from a three-way military alliance, known as ANZUS.
Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
10 Al-Qaida leaders say nuclear power stations were original targets
[Guardian Unlimited]
Afghan massacre haunts Pentagon
Reporter meets contender for next Bin Laden
Giles Tremlett in Madrid Monday September 9, 2002 The Guardian
[http://www.guardian.co.uk]
Two of the world's most sought after fugitives, the alleged
al-Qaida leaders Khaled al-Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin
al-Shaibah, have boasted about how they planned the attacks on
New York and Washington a year ago this week. The two men,
believed to be the chief of al-Qaida's military committee and the
coordinator of the September 11 attacks respectively, spent two
days last month with a senior journalist from al-Jazeera, the
Arabic television station, at a hideaway in the Pakistani city of
Karachi. The contents of that interview, published in Spain's El
Mundo newspaper yesterday, revealed not only that the target of
the fourth hijacked airliner had been the Capitol in Washington -
home to the US Senate and Congress - but also that al-Qaida was
still functioning and operating from within Pakistan. It also
showed that two unnamed nuclear power stations were the original
targets of the September 11 plot, known to its perpetrators as
the Holy Tuesday Operation, but al-Qaida feared that such an
attack "might get out of hand".
Yosri Fouda, the al-Jazeera journalist, revealed in El Mundo how
a mystery caller invited him to Karachi last month to meet
al-Qaida leaders and film a special report.
After two days in a run-down hotel, he was passed through a chain
of people before being blindfolded, put in a car boot and driven
to an apartment building. He was taken to a flat strewn with
laptop computers and mobile phones and occupied by two men whom
he recognised as the Yemeni Ramzi bin al-Shaibah and Khaled
al-Sheikh Mohammed, thought to be a 38-year-old Kuwaiti. The US
has offered a $25m reward for the pair. "The two were proud of
what they had organised. Al-Shaibah spoke with calm and
authority. Mohammed was the man of action, al-Shaibah the
theorist," Fouda said.
The first piece of the September 11 plot was put in place in 1992
when the Egyptian Mohammed Atta, who eventually led the attacks,
was sent as a sleeper agent to Hamburg, Germany. There he studied
urban planning, spending occasional periods in Afghanistan, the
two men confirmed. The idea came several years later from
al-Qaida's military committee when it decided to refine a
previously aborted plan - to fly airliners into 12 major American
buildings - "in order to cause the greatest possible number of
deaths and deal a huge blow to America on its own soil",
according to Mohammed. "It was decided to abandon nuclear targets
for the moment," Mohammed explained. "I mean for the moment," he
added. The operation took two and a half years to prepare. It was
hatched and refined in a building known as the House of al-Gumad
in the Afghan city of Kandahar, where Saudi al-Qaida fighters
used to meet. "We had a meeting attended by all four pilots
including Nawaf Al Hazemi, Atta's right-hand man," al-Shaibah
explained.
Al-Hazemi, who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the
Pentagon, has never before been identified as the operation's
second in command. Atta was given operational control and chose
the day for the attack. Al-Shaibah, who failed to get a US visa
to join the attackers, was in possession of a suitcase of
souvenirs, including flight manuals and hand-written notes, from
the Hamburg flat he shared with Atta. "He was an incredible man.
May God place paradise at his feet so he can be, god willing,
among the martyrs," said 30-year-old al-Shaibah. Last spring the
rest of the attack team, mainly Saudis, began training in
Afghanistan. "They knew it was a martyr's operation, but they did
not know details," explained Mohammed. Atta and the pilots had
started flying lessons in the US the previous year. Communication
was by email, with targets given codenames. The Twin Towers were
the "faculty of urban planning", the Pentagon was the "faculty of
fine arts" and the Capitol was "the law faculty". Ramzi kept on
his laptop computer the last coded email sent to him by Atta,
three weeks before the attacks, which spoke of the 19 attackers
and the four targets.
"The first term starts in three weeks ... There are 19
certificates for private studies and four exams," the message
read. The exact date of the attack was given to al-Shaibah, using
a numbers riddle, when Atta called him in Hamburg on August 29.
Al-Shaibah himself communicated the date, via messenger, to Osama
bin Laden on September 6 after he had fled Hamburg for Pakistan.
Mohammed boasted that al-Qaida had a "department of martyrs"
which was still active. "We have many volunteers," he said.
Fouda said his interviewees had demanded to hold on to his video
recordings of them for two weeks so that they could cover their
tracks. But the tapes were in fact never sent on to al-Jazeera.
"Khaled let his tongue run away by referring to Bin Laden in the
past tense," wrote Fouda. "Something is not working well in the
upper levels of al-Qaida. I used to think there was a 50% chance
Bin Laden was alive, now I rather believe he is dead."
Fouda, however, said the two men he met seemed quite capable of
taking over. "Ramzi caused the greatest impression.He has the
severe charisma, the vitality and the religious knowledge. This
is our future Bin Laden."
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
11 Nuclear watchdog backs Taipower's operational skills
The Taipei Times Online: 2002-10-08
ASSURANCES: The Atomic Energy Council says its new study shows
maintenance operations at power plants as seen on videotape are
safe
By Chiu Yu-Tzu STAFF REPORTER
A comprehensive investigation into Taiwan's nuclear power plants,
which was prompted by a recent scandal involving the Tokyo
Electric Power's (TEPCO) failure to disclose damage to some of
its reactors, suggests that the three Taiwan Power Company
(Taipower) plants are safe, Atomic Energy Council (AEC) officials
said yesterday.
News pertaining to TEPCO's failure to replace damaged core
shrouds and other parts at its reactors that it operated in the
1990s was first exposed in late August.
Taiwan's nuclear watchdog AEC was prompted by the scandal to
launch a comprehensive investigation on Aug. 30 of its three
operational nuclear power plants.
"We spent a whole month and reviewed more than 250 videotapes,
which record steps in the latest routine maintenance at each
plant, to look for any potential problems," AEC Vice Chairman
Chiou Syh-tsong (ªô½çÁo) said yesterday at a press conference.
Chiou said that the council took the TEPCO scandal seriously
because learning lessons from others' mistakes could prevent the
occurrence of similar ones.
Historically speaking, Chiou said nuclear industries in Taiwan
and Japan had built close relations through exchange of
operational experiences and technologies in past decades.
"However, the TEPCO sandal does not imply that similar mistakes
would necessarily exist inside Taipower," Chiou said.
TEPCO's role in that scandal was confirmed as a violation of
Japan's Electric Utility Law after the government examined some
important reactors. In addition, more coverups were exposed by
other voluntary inspections covering all equipment and facilities
regarding reactors.
On Oct. 6, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency under the
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry decided to supervise all
inspections of nuclear reactors, according to the Japan Times.
Chiou said that similar problems pertaining to core shrouds at
boiling water reactors in Taiwan were discovered and fixed 10
years ago.
"We've done our best to prevent the occurrence of malfunction
caused by damage to the components at the plants," Chiou said.
In the future, Chiou said that the nuclear industry in Taiwan
would still maintain close relations with its counterparts in
Japan in a bid to learn advanced technologies.
Chiou said Japan's experience in operating advanced boiling water
reactors at a plant in Kashiwazaki, the only one in the world
operating this type of reactor, would be invaluable to Taiwan.
Taiwan will become the second country in the world to use
advanced boiling water reactors.
According to Ni Maw-sherng (ÙZ²±), deputy director of the AEC's
nuclear regulation department, operational technicians working in
the control rooms of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant would be
trained at power utilities in Japan, including TEPCO and Kansai
Electric Power Co.
Ray Wu (§d·ç³ó), director of the AEC's Fuel Cycle and Materials
Administration, told the Taipei Times that Tawain, a user of
nuclear technologies, still has lots to learn from Japan, a
vender.
Wu is the convennor of the 17th Sino-Japan Seminar on Nuclear
Safety, which will be held in Taipei on Nov. 20 and Nov 21.
He said that 25 Japanese nuclear experts from Tohoku Electric
Power Co, Hokuriku Electric Power Company, Toshiba and others
would communicate with their counterparts in Taiwan on diverse
topics, such as operation of nuclear plants, nuclear safety, and
the management of radioactive waste.
This story has been viewed 240 times.
URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/10/08/story/0000171138]
Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
12 FirstEnergy: Nuke Repairs Will Hurt Earns
The New York Times
October 7, 2002*
*By REUTERS*
Filed at 5:10 p.m. ET
AKRON, Ohio (Reuters) - First Energy, citing higher-than-expected
costs linked to extensive repairs at its crippled Davis-Besse
nuclear power plant in Ohio, warned on Monday the outage would
cut into its earnings for 2002.
The Akron-based energy company also said extra work at the plant
would delay a restart until ``early next year, rather than by
year-end.''
First Energy did not give a more specific time for a plant
restart. ``We don't determine the start-up, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission does that. But we expect to have everything
in place by the end of the year,'' Ralph DiNicola, a company
spokesman, told Reuters.
In September, the company said it expected to have Davis-Besse
ready for restart by Dec. 7.
The added cost for work at the plant, which has been shut since
February, will add up to about $115 million in 2002 and 2003 --
an estimated $65 million this year and $50 million in 2003.
The company said the outage costs and replacement energy
purchases would reduce its 2002 earnings by about 46 cents to 53
cents a share.
First Energy said that excluding the Davis-Besse costs and any
potential impact from the pending sale of an Argentine
distribution unit, it expects 2002 earnings to be at the high end
of its guidance of $3.30 to $3.45 a share.
Thomson First Call's consensus for 2002 is $2.96 a share.
First Energy said its estimated cost range to replace the
corroded reactor head was unchanged at $55 million to $75
million, while net replacement energy costs also were unchanged
at about $20 million a month for July and August and $10 million
to $15 million a month for non-summer months.
The additional costs announced today would cover other work
needed to get the plant in shape to resume making electricity.
Davis-Besse generates 925 megawatts of electricity. One megawatt
is power for about 1,000 homes.
The new work mainly involves projects inside Davis-Besse's
reactor containment building, plus jobs that had been planned for
refueling and maintenance outages in the future.
The plant typically operates on a schedule of refuelings about
every 24 months, a spokesman said.
The work includes redesigning and rebuilding a water collection
sump, expanded work on air coolers, and more extensive recoating
of other equipment, the company said.
*****************************************************************
13 Repair Costs Jump at Ohio Nuke Site
Las Vegas SUN:
October 07, 2002
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AKRON, Ohio- FirstEnergy Corp. said Monday it will spend $115
million more than projected in restoring its Davis-Besse nuclear
power plant, which won't be operational until next year.
Akron-based FirstEnergy is installing a new reactor cap and
buying replacement power until the plant is restarted. The plant,
about 20 miles east of Toledo, has been shut down since Feb. 16.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors found violations of 10
federal regulations at Davis-Besse, where acid nearly ate through
a 6-inch-thick steel reactor cap.
The leak discovered in March was the most extensive corrosion
ever found on a U.S. nuclear reactor and led to a nationwide
review of all 69 similar plants. A second, smaller hole was found
later at Davis-Besse. FirstEnergy said reactor head replacement
costs were unchanged at $55 million to $75 million.
But other costs of restoring the plant to service, initially
estimated at $50 million to $70 million, have increased because
of additional work. The restoration costs are now expected to
increase by about $65 million this year and $50 million in 2003,
FirstEnergy said. FirstEnergy shares fell 40 cents Monday to
close at $29.21 on the New York Stock Exchange.
On The Net: [http://www.firstenergycorp.com]
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
14 Davis-Besse start-up is pushed back
The Plain Dealer
10/08/02 John Funk and John Mangels Plain Dealer Reporters
The Davis-Besse nuclear power plant won't be ready to make
electricity until early next year, instead of the previous
company forecast of Dec. 7.
And the total cost to replace its corroded reactor lid, fix other
equipment and buy replacement power may reach nearly $400 million
- as much as $115 million more than previously planned.
FirstEnergy Corp., owner of the power plant, said the new costs
included $50 million in spending next year. The company had been
trying to contain the impact of Davis-Besse to this year.
The company said the additional costs also include about $27
million for maintenance that had been planned for the future.
Another $136 million covers the costs of purchasing electricity
to replace Davis-Besse's output this year.
Stockholders, not rate payers, will eat all but $55 million to
$75 million of the $400 million. That $55 million to $75 million
- to replace the lid - will be spread over future years. As a
result of Davis-Besse spending, FirstEnergy's profits this year
could decline by up to 53 cents per share.
The Toledo-area plant has been down since February. Workers in
March discovered that leaking reactor coolant, undetected for at
least six years, had rusted a large hole in the reactor's
6½-inch-thick steel lid.
Most of the major repair work in the plant - including the
installation of the new lid - will be completed this year,
corporate spokesman Ralph DiNicola said. "But as some of the work
moves to year's end, we know we will be getting bills in '03," he
said. "And some work will not be started until the plant is
running again," he said.
The company also yesterday moved its restart target date from
Dec. 7 to "early next year." FirstEnergy cannot be more specific
at this point, DiNicola said, in part because it is working with
hundreds of outside contractors and in part because the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission has the final say.
The NRC has made it clear that it intends to inspect all of the
repairs and newly installed equipment. Over the summer, for
example, an agency inspector found problems with the training of
company-paid inspectors. The NRC then ordered the company to
retrain its inspectors and re-inspect the entire containment
building. This process is pushing up costs, according to
DiNicola.
"This is an interactive process," DiNicola said. "We are
listening to the NRC. And we believe what we have provided today
is a completely accurate indication of where the schedule stands
and the costs that we expect to incur."
Analyst reaction to the new cost figures was muted.
"I don't think it's a huge event," said Paul Rizdon of McDonald
Investments. "We knew costs were going up. I was hoping they
could contain most of them in '02. But I think most analysts
believed some costs would roll into 2003 and the Dec. 7 restart
date to be very aggressive."
Most analysts are still convinced Davis-Besse is a one-time
event, said James Halloran, analyst with National City's Private
Investor Group.
"As long as they can get the thing started up in a reasonable
time, say March or April, they will be OK," Halloran said. "But
if they go past the one-year anniversary without any clear
indication of when they will restart, they will get into
trouble."
In the meantime, the stock will be volatile, said Rizdon. "It's
going to trade with every headline that comes across the wires,"
he said.
FirstEnergy's stock price ended the day at $29.21, down 40 cents.
To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:
jfunk@plaind.com, 216-999-4138
jmangels@plaind.com, 216-999-4842
© 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
*****************************************************************
15 Perry nuclear plant restarts after fixes
The Plain Dealer
10/08/02
Operators restarted the Perry nuclear power plant slowly over the
weekend, after faulty equipment kept the plant closed for 13
days.
The plant is expected to reach full power by tomorrow night, said
Todd Schneider, a spokesman for FirstEnergy Corp., which owns the
facility.
Workers replaced hydraulic valves on a system that sent a false
alarm about turbine damage and shut down the plant on Sept. 22.
They also replaced a seal on the reactor recirculation pump,
replaced a part in one of the emergency diesel generators, and
rebuilt sections of a valve that affects the system that
regulates the nuclear reaction inside the reactor.
Schneider said the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which
oversees the nation's nuclear plants, did not have to approve the
repairs.
© 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. © 2002
cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
16 New life for (RSECO) nuclear facility's 'hot' water
The Sacramento Bee -- sacbee.com --
David A. Peralta watches as fellow workers fill a mock cask with
mock fuel rods last year. One of Rancho Seco's cooling towers
looms in the background.
Sacramento Bee/Randy Pench
Stripped of radioactivity, it'll soon flow from Rancho Seco.
By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg -- Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 a.m.
PDT Monday, October 7, 2002
For more than two decades, the water that cooled and shielded
spent fuel at Rancho Seco has been a radioactive soup, lightly
seasoned with the minute debris of producing nuclear energy.
Today, workers at the now-closed nuclear plant in southeastern
Sacramento County have begun wringing that water clean, filtering
and diluting it so it can be spilled off-site into a network of
creeks that feed the Cosumnes River.
Purifying radioactive water isn't new, but it is an exacting
task, involving mechanical and chemical filters, repeated testing
along the way, and oversight by both nuclear and water
regulators.
"We're going to make sure it's clean," said Michael Bua,
radiation protection chemistry superintendent for the Sacramento
Municipal Utility District.
The water will flow into Clay Creek carrying tiny amounts of
tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, Bua said. The releases
will be about one-third of the state drinking-water limit for
tritium, which is 20,000 picocuries per liter.
"It's a very conservative standard," said Emilio Garcia, a health
physicist with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, whose
rules sometimes permit higher concentrations of tritium in the
water leaving plant sites.
Tritium can't be removed easily because hydrogen is a basic
building block of water. Regulations don't require its removal
because such low levels have been deemed safe.
Although he supports calls for more research, David Lochbaum of
the anti-nuclear Union of Concerned Scientists said that from
everything known to date, releases as low as SMUD is planning
would not worry him if they were in his own back yard.
Emptying Rancho Seco's spent-fuel pool is a $2.7 million step
along the way toward dismantling the nuclear plant, which was
shut down by a popular vote in 1989.
It can happen now because the last of the highly radioactive fuel
rods were moved from the pool in August and placed in dry
storage, where they will remain until a federal dump for
high-level nuclear waste opens at Yucca Mountain.
The 500,000 gallons of water that surrounded the fuel is only
mildly radioactive to start with, Bua said. "If one of our techs
fell in, we would test them, but it wouldn't be a biological
hazard."
Before cleanup begins, the pool water is tested so crews know
exactly which contaminants and how much must be removed.
They already know that three key radioactive ingredients have
become blended into the fuel pool's water, carried there largely
during power plant refuelings.
There's cobalt 60, radioactive particles that flaked away from
metals such as bearings and valves inside the reactor. There's
cesium 137 and 134, electrically charged particles created by
nuclear fission inside the reactor. And there's the tritium,
hydrogen that either became radioactive or was produced during
fission.
Each is processed differently as the water is prepared for
release.
First, water is pumped from the pool through a mechanical filter,
a little like the oil filter in a car, that strains out particles
of cobalt 60.
Next, the water is passed through chemical filters, where tiny
beads of ceramic resins chemically bond with charged particles of
cesium, stripping them out of water. That process works a little
like the way a home water softener removes minerals from hard
water.
Then, the water is sent to the first of several holding tanks,
where it is tested to see if more filtering is needed, although
none is expected to be necessary, Bua said.
Finally, when everything but the tritium has been removed, the
water is repeatedly diluted in holding tanks and basins, before
being spilled into a rivulet whose name changes along its course
from No Name Creek to Clay Creek.
The release itself creates the final dilution, as 50 gallons of
water per minute will mix with a 6,000 gallon-per-minute flow
from the Folsom South Canal.
At that point, the tritium concentration will be about 6,000
picocuries per liter, one-third of allowable drinking water
levels, or slightly lower, according to Bua.
Nearby grape growers will be telephoned before each release to
ensure that they are not irrigating with the water during the
discharge.
"We do that because we're super conservative," Bua said. "They
could water the grapes with this water. You can drink this
water."
After its release, the water will course through Hadselville
Creek, Laguna Creek and finally into the Cosumnes River.
The first batch of pool water has already been partly filtered,
and it could be released Oct. 16. More will be spilled out
sporadically -- halting while the pool's steel liner and fuel
racks are cleaned -- until the pool is empty, probably in late
February or early March.
SMUD calculates that after the water is released, someone who
swims in the creeks, eats their fish and crayfish, and eats
plants, animals and dairy products that relied on local water
will absorb 0.4 millirem of additional radiation.
By comparison, a chest X-ray delivers 35 millirem and the annual
average dose from background radiation in the United States is
360 millirem.
"You get radiation from bricks. You get radiation from all kinds
of things. If it's been scrubbed the way they say it will, I
don't have a big problem with that," said Kathy Peasha, who lives
about a mile from Rancho Seco.
Other Rancho Seco neighbors are more troubled.
Herald resident Tim Butts said the outflow will make him more
careful to always drink bottled water at home, instead of
stopping at the sink when it's more convenient.
"They say this is safe levels, but still it is radioactive
water," he said. "It almost sends a message to our society that
it's OK, we can dump into the river."
Butts said he will still eat local produce, but no amount of
reassurance can convince him that animals and plants downstream
from the release will be completely unaffected.
Such fears are not uncommon, but they are unfounded, said Mike
McNaughton a physics professor and health physics expert at Los
Alamos National Lab in New Mexico.
Tritium is a very low-energy radioactive isotope, without the
ability to damage DNA the way more powerful sources can, and it
is washed through the body quickly, leaving it less time to do
any harm, he said.
Releases in the amounts planned by SMUD are "completely safe,"
McNaughton said. "I would have absolutely no hesitation of myself
or my children or my grandchildren drinking that water."
The Bee's Carrie Peyton Dahlberg can be reached at (916) 321-1086
or cpeytondahlberg@sacbee.com [cpeytondahlberg@sacbee.com] .
Copyright © The Sacramento Bee / ver. 4
*****************************************************************
17 NRC Oversight Panel to Hold Two Meetings on Davis-Besse Reactor
Vessel Head Damage in Oak Harbor, OH
NRC: News Release Region III - 2002-056 -
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs,
Region III 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle IL 60532 www.nrc.gov
No. III-02-056 October 7, 2002
CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630) 829-9663
Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662 E-mail: opa3@nrc.gov
[opa3@nrc.gov]
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will hold two meetings on
Wednesday, October 16, to review the status and adequacy of
recent activities at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station as a
result of the corrosion damage to the reactor vessel head. The
plant, which has been shut down since February 16, is operated by
FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company. Both meetings will be at
the Oak Harbor High School Auditorium, 11661 West State Route
163, in Oak Harbor.
The first meeting will begin at 2 p.m. (EDT), when the NRC
oversight panel, set up to coordinate the agency's activities
associated with the corrosion damage to the reactor vessel head,
will meet with utility officials to discuss the status of repairs
at the plant and upcoming activities. The public is invited to
observe the business portion of the meeting and will have an
opportunity to make comments and ask questions of the NRC staff
before the meeting is adjourned.
The second meeting will begin at 7 p.m. (EDT) to update the
public on NRC's activities related to the reactor vessel head
degradation and will provide a summary of the earlier meeting.
The public will be invited to ask questions and make comments.
Transcripts of both meetings will be posted on the NRC's web
site.
The NRC oversight panel, created on April 29, includes NRC
management and staff from its Region III office in Lisle,
Illinois, the NRC Headquarters office in Rockville, Maryland, and
the NRC Resident Inspector Office at the Davis-Besse site.
Documents on the Davis-Besse corrosion issue, including meeting
transcripts and further details on NRC's oversight panel
activities, are posted on the NRC's web site
at:http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/vessel-head-degradation
.html.
Privacy Statement | Site Disclaimer
Last revised Tuesday, October 08, 2002
*****************************************************************
18 No foul play in TVA fire Reason for Watts Bar blaze unclear
By The Associated Press October 8, 2002
SPRING CITY, Tenn. - Investigators continue to look for the cause
of a fire last month at a hydroelectric plant near the Watts Bar
nuclear station, but have ruled out foul play.
The Sept. 27 fire caused the Tennessee Valley Authority to cut
off auxiliary power to the nuclear plant. Five workers suffered
minor injuries. The TVA power system, which serves seven southern
states, was not compromised. "There is still no time estimate on
how long it will take to make the required repairs to bring the
hydroelectric units back into service," said TVA spokesman
Phillip Ivey on Sunday.
The hydroelectric plant provides electricity to the entire TVA
power grid and serves as a backup electricity source for the
nuclear plant, which runs on its own power. When the
hydroelectric plant stopped providing power for the nuclear
plant, TVA substituted emergency diesel generators to make sure
there was enough power to operate safety systems, said Nuclear
Regulatory Commission officials.
A temporary power connection has been installed by a TVA
distributor, The Volunteer Electric Cooperative, to replace the
hydroelectric plant until it is back running, Ivey said.
Investigators from the Watts Bar plant fire unit, TVA's Inspector
General's Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
have determined that there was no criminal cause for the fire,
Ivey said. The five units that generate power in the
hydroelectric plant were not affected, but the central control
room was damaged, Ivey said. The hydroelectric plant dates back
to 1942, and has a generation capacity of 145 megawatts. It is
one of 29 hydroelectric plants operated by TVA, accounting for 12
percent of its total power output. TVA provides electricity to
some 8.3 million people through 158 distributors.
The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
19 NRC Issues Finding of Low to Moderate Safety Significance to
Ginna Nuclear Plant
NRC: News Release Region I - 2002-061 -
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs,
Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406
www.nrc.gov
No. I-02-061 October 7, 2002
CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330
Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov
[opa1@nrc.gov]
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a "white" finding to
the R.E. Ginna nuclear power plant for an issue involving the
plant’s emergency sirens. The NRC considers the issue to be of
low to moderate importance to safety but one which may require
additional NRC inspections. The plant, operated by Rochester Gas
and Electric Corporation (RG) is located in Ontario, N.Y. During
a June inspection at the facility, NRC inspectors found that
becaue of problems with the siren feedback system, plant
operators and officials in Monroe and Wayne Counties could not
identify which, if any sirens, failed to operate during
activation of the alert and notification system (ANS). The ANS
consists of sirens to alert members of the public of an emergency
at Ginna. Identifying failures is necessary so that backup route
alerting can be conducted to notify the public.
Using the agency's significance determination process, NRC
officials classify certain findings at nuclear power plants as
being one of four colors which delineate increasing levels of
safety significance, beginning with "green" and progressing to
"white," "yellow" or "red."
In a July 25 letter to RG, the NRC preliminarily classified the
finding as white and offered the company an opportunity to meet
with the NRC to discuss it. The company declined the regulatory
conference, but did provide supplemental information to the NRC.
After reviewing the information collected during the inspection
and the company's written response, the NRC has determined the
finding was appropriately classified as white.
The company also was cited for a violation of NRC requirements.
This enforcement action will be posted on the NRC's web site at
www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/enforcement/actions/reactors.
Privacy Statement | Site Disclaimer
Last revised Tuesday, October 08, 2002
*****************************************************************
20 Did the United States Expose Iraqi Civilians to Radiation?
By Brendan I. Koerner
Posted Monday, October 7, 2002, at 12:06 PM PT
The Iraqi government has long claimed that uranium-tipped
American shells used during the Gulf War are to blame for an
upsurge in cancer deaths and birth defects among Iraqi civilians.
Did the United States expose Iraqis to radiation?
The United States did, indeed, shower Iraq with well over 300
tons' worth of depleted uranium ordnance during the Gulf War.
Because of its high density, DU—a byproduct of the uranium
enrichment process at nuclear reactors—is particularly
effective in piercing armored vehicles. DU shells incinerate on
impact, leaving behind a dusty residue that is primarily composed
of the isotope Uranium-238. The Gulf War marked the first
widespread use of DU ordnance; they've since been fired in Kosovo
and Bosnia-Herzegovina by NATO forces. An estimated 15 nations,
primarily in the West, are believed to possess DU weapons.
Many scientists fear that this dust, when inhaled or ingested via
contaminated water, emits radiation inside the lungs or lymph
nodes, leading to cancer and other severe ailments. Iraq's health
ministry claims that cancer rates have soared by 400 percent
since 1991, and victims of "Gulf War syndrome" in the United
States and Europe have frequently ascribed their maladies to DU
exposure. Last year, Doug Rokke
, former head
of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project, told the British
Parliament that one-fifth of his Gulf War team—which examined
Iraqi vehicles hit by DU fire—has since died of various lung
diseases. Late last month, during his visit to Baghdad, Rep.
David Bonior, D-Mich., characterized DU's long-term impact on
Iraq as "horrific and barbaric."
The Pentagon has dismissed a direct link between DU residue and
cancer. It often points to a 1999 RAND Corp. study
that
monitored the health of Gulf War veterans exposed to DU and
concluded that no link between kidney disease and DU had been
found. The Department of Defense also argues that DU dust is less
toxic than naturally occurring uranium, of which there is
typically 2 to 4 tons per square mile of top soil. A British
researcher has theorized
that any
up-tick in Iraqi cancer rates is due not to DU pollution but
rather to Saddam Hussein's use of sulfur mustard gas during the
Iran-Iraq War.
The World Health Organization published its own report
in April of 2001. The organization agreed that a link between DU
exposure and cancer has yet to be established but cautioned that
its study relied heavily on military data. "Some scientists would
like to see a larger body of independently—i.e.,
non-military—funded studies to confirm the current viewpoint,"
the WHO paper stated. Researchers should have plenty of time to
accumulate the necessary data; the half-life for Uranium-238 is
4.4 billion years.
Brendan I. Koerner is a fellow at the New America Foundation.
*****************************************************************
21 * Nuclear security found lax as 'mock terrorists' outmatch
facilities*
A Service of The Seattle Times Company
Nation & World: Friday, October 05, 2001
*By Stephen J. Hedges and Jeff Zeleny* /Chicago Tribune/
WASHINGTON ? The nation's 10 nuclear-weapons
research-and-production facilities are vulnerable to terrorist
attack and have failed about half of recent security drills,
according to a study compiled by a non-government watchdog group.
U.S. Army and Navy commando teams penetrated the plants and
obtained nuclear material during exercises designed to test
security, according to the Project on Government Oversight
report, which will be released today. In a drill in October 2000
at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, "the mock
terrorists gained control of sensitive nuclear material which, if
detonated, would have endangered significant parts of New Mexico,
Colorado and downwind areas," the report says. In an earlier test
at the same lab, an Army Special Forces team used a household
garden cart to haul away enough weapons-grade uranium to build
several nuclear weapons.
In another test at the Rocky Flats site near Denver, Navy SEALs
cut a hole in a chain-link fence as they escaped with enough
plutonium for several nuclear bombs. They were discovered only as
they left the facility.
Government security rules require the nuclear facilities to
defend themselves against the theft of nuclear materials by
terrorists or sabotage.
A spokeswoman at the National Nuclear Security Administration, a
branch of the Energy Department, declined to comment on the
report yesterday.
The report is based on information provided by 12
whistle-blowers, according to Danielle Brian, the Project on
Government Oversight's director, as well as declassified Energy
Department material that describes the security exercises.
The repeated security breaches are cause for serious concern,
Brian said, because Energy Department employees were warned
before each security exercise.
"These are tests where the security forces are necessarily
dumbed-down so that they know the tests are coming," Brian said.
"They are very restrictive tests, (but) they're still losing half
of the time."
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon have
raised alarms on a number of lagging security concerns across the
U.S., from local community responses to chemical and biological
weapons to the security at nuclear power-generating plants.
Nine of the nuclear-weapons facilities are located within 100
miles of cities with more than 75,000 people. Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory is located near the San Francisco
metropolitan area, which has more than 7 million people. The
Rocky Flats site is located near Denver, which has 2.6 million
people.
Eight of the 10 weapons plants contained a total of 33.5 metric
tons of weapons-grade plutonium. Experts say it takes only a few
pounds of plutonium to craft a nuclear bomb.
The study has drawn the attention of the House Reform Committee,
which has launched its own review of the nuclear-weapons plants'
security measures.
Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who leads a national security
subcommittee in the House, declined to discuss the report. But in
a statement he said he was "deeply troubled" that the nuclear
facilities failed security tests.
"We want to know what DOE is doing to resolve this deficiency,
both in the short term and in the long term," Shays said.
Security tests at the nuclear-weapons facilities are simulated on
computers and run as drills between an invading terrorist force
and the plant's security team. Participants strap on devices
similar to those from a laser-tag game. When someone is "killed,"
they must lie down and end their participation in the exercise.
Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
22 Kazakhs seize contraband radioactive waste*
United Press International
Published 10/7/2002 4:32 PM
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- Kazakh customs officers
suppressed an attempt to smuggle radioactive waste into China,
the Kazakh Khabar news agency reported Monday.
The radioactive waste, weighing 1,974 pounds and contained in 18
sacks, went as a transit load from Russia in a KAMAZ trailer.
Kazakh customs officers and border guards stopped the smugglers
at the Bakhty checkpoint in the eastern Kazakh region on the
border with China.
The Kazakh sanitation and epidemical station said the substance,
resembling brown sand, was solid radioactive waste.
Kazakh law-enforcement agencies launched an investigation of the
incident. The names of the smugglers were not reported.
Such incidents have ocurred before, a Kazakh diplomatic source
told United Press International.
In February, a railroad car loaded with iron-and-steel scrap was
stopped at the Ognevka railroad station in eastern Kazakhstan. A
7-foot-long pipe in the scrap pile contained a brown-colored
radioactive substance.
(Marina Kozlova reported from Tashkent, Uzbekistan)
Copyright © 2002 United Press International
*****************************************************************
23 Tiny tribe fights to lease hardscrabble lands for nuclear waste dump
KRT Wire | 10/08/2002 |
[http://www.macon.com]
Posted on Tue, Oct. 08, 2002
dump BY DAN EGAN Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
SALT LAKE CITY - KRT NEWSFEATURES
(KRT) - The chaos that erupted just over a year ago in the
Goshute Indians' tribal headquarters normally wouldn't even make
the police briefs of the local newspaper.
A woman punched another woman in the eye. A man shoved a woman
into a table. A guy slammed another guy's fingers in a door.
Police arrived at the smoky little office squeezed between a
barbershop and bowling alley, and the hapless brawlers squabbling
over changed locks on the front door were sent on their way. All
wanted to press charges, but the city attorney declined.
Not really news, except for the fact that this fight was among a
group of people who, in a very real sense, hold the keys to
America's nuclear waste policy.
In a controversial push to open the nation's biggest commercial
nuclear waste storage facility on the reservation of one of
America's tiniest Indian tribes, a Wisconsin-based consortium of
eight utility companies has persuaded the two dozen residents on
the Goshutes' Skull Valley Reservation to do what nobody else
will - play caretaker to the highly radioactive waste stacking up
at nuclear power plants across the country.
The consortium, La Crosse-headquartered Private Fuel Storage,
known as PFS, has offered the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes a
secret slice of a potential $3 billion budget to store up to
40,000 tons of spent uranium fuel rods in aboveground,
radiation-proof casks at their reservation, about 50 miles
southwest of Salt Lake City.
The contract calls for the deadly waste to be removed within 40
years, after the federal government opens its planned permanent
nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in neighboring Nevada. That
facility has yet to be approved and won't open until 2010 at the
earliest.
The problem, according to the utilities, is that storing waste at
the power plants where it is generated is economically
inefficient and needlessly risky, especially in the heightened
security environment since last year's terrorist attacks.
What this nation needs until Yucca opens, say PFS officials who
represent about a third of the nation's nuclear plants, is a
temporary Fort Knox for the spent uranium fuel rods that remain
toxic for thousands of years. They hope the Goshutes will come to
the rescue.
"Once we get the waste into one place, we can contain the cost
and the risks," says PFS chairman John Parkyn, who works for
Dairyland Power Cooperative in La Crosse.
---
Critics, and there are plenty of them, simply see another sad
chapter shaping up for the Goshutes, some of the poorest people
in America.
The plan has so bitterly split the 120-member tribe that leaders
resorted to blows last year, and so scared the rest of Utah that
Gov. Mike Leavitt once pledged that high-level nuclear waste
would roll into his state "over my dead body."
The governor, however, can do little about what happens on
American Indian sovereign land, and critics say that is why the
utilities targeted the Goshutes.
"PFS went looking for an Indian tribe because impoverished people
who are desperate will cut deals that other people won't. And by
more or less buying Indian sovereignty, they have avoided the
usual legal and political constraints and dialogues that would
normally apply," says Chip Ward, a neighbor of the tribe who has
written a book about the toxic history of the region. "This is an
egregious case of environmental racism on the part of PFS."
Nonsense, Parkyn says, nobody forced anything upon the Goshutes.
"The tribe came to us. We didn't go to them," he says. "What (PFS
critics) are saying is that Native Americans don't have the
ability to make the right choices, and we should be protecting
them from themselves. The tribe is a sovereign nation, and that
was their choice."
Tribal chairman Leon Bear puts it more bluntly.
"Exploit me," says Bear. "If your business had a chance to make
money … wouldn't you take it? That is what this United States is
all about. Opportunity."
---
Opportunity has always been hard to come by in Skull Valley.
When Mark Twain happened upon the Goshutes in the 1800s, he was
shocked to see a "scrawny" people scratching a living from a land
that offered little more than pine nuts, crickets and rodents.
"These Goshoots are … a people whose only shelter is a rag cast
on a bush to keep off a portion of the snow, and yet who inhabit
one of the most rocky, wintry, repulsive wastes that our country
or any other can exhibit," Twain wrote in his book "Roughing It."
Things have only gotten worse in Skull Valley during the last
century.
The 18,000 acres the federal government ceded to the Goshutes at
the beginning of the 20th century was just a sliver of the
millions of acres they historically roamed, but at least it was a
place they could call all their own. For a while.
Dry, dusty and desolate, Skull Valley has one thing going for it
- isolation. That became a hot commodity in the last century for
a federal government looking for an out-of-the-way place to
conduct some of its more unsavory business.
The handful of Goshutes left living in dilapidated trailers and
cabins in Skull Valley find themselves, literally, in the middle
of a mess in an area Utahans refer to as the West Desert.
Just to the east of the reservation stews a stockpile that once
held almost half the nation's chemical weapons and an
incinerating facility built to destroy them. To the west are
millions of acres of federal bombing range.
To the south sits Dugway Proving Ground, where the federal
government spent decades testing chemical and biological warfare
agents.
North of Skull Valley is a plant that sucks magnesium from the
Great Salt Lake, a chlorine-spewing operation that was labeled in
the 1990s by the Environmental Protection Agency as one of the
nation's worst air polluters. There also are several nearby
hazardous waste dumps, including one that accepts low-level
nuclear waste.
"Nasty stuff. Nasty," says Bear, who still lives in Skull Valley
and is riled that the tribe was never consulted about the
government's decision to turn their neighborhood into "the dump
of the U.S."
It is no surprise that most of the members have fled the
reservation for places such as California and North Dakota. The
ones who have stayed have not been immune to the nastiness around
them.
Reservation resident Margene Bullcreek remembers a time back in
1968 when her father lost his entire sheep herd after a military
jet accidentally - and infamously - released a cloud of nerve gas
over rangeland in the area.
"He didn't know what happened to the sheep," says Bullcreek.
"They were having seizures, rolling around in the dirt."
---
Given the history of the neighborhood, few were surprised when
the Goshutes began to look at joining the toxic waste club in the
early 1990s.
Nobody, as a local saying goes, would be inclined to buy a tomato
harvested on Goshute land.
Today the only business open on the reservation is a one-clerk,
two-pump gas station with more horses than cars parked in its
dusty parking lot. Their economy is tied largely to beef jerky
and soda sales.
Even those bitterly opposed to storing the nuclear waste don't
blame the Goshutes for turning to spent uranium fuel to warm
their homes and put food on their tables.
"They said to themselves, `This is how you make money on the West
Desert - you bury or burn things out there that no one else wants
to deal with,' " says author Ward.
The Goshutes started studying the issue more than a decade ago.
After they received about $300,000 in federal grants, tribal
leaders traveled the world researching storage practices and
policies from Sweden to Japan.
They came back convinced that nuclear waste was their future.
They noted that the waste bound for the reservation has been
stored safely at nuclear power plants around the country, and
they point to a group of scientists including Nobel laureates who
have said the PFS plan can be enacted without harm to the
environment or human health. PFS will be responsible for
protecting the area from theft or terrorist attacks.
"We found, actually, that storing spent fuel is safer than some
of the waste already out here," says Bear.
---
That's ridiculous, contends Gov. Leavitt and most Utahns, who
fear the political hot potato of spent fuel will land on Utah's
plate for eternity if the plan goes through. The risk of an
accident might be low, but its cost could take an ungodly toll on
lives and the environment. Particularly worrisome for opponents
is the prospect of radioactive trains from virtually all regions
of the nation chugging regularly to Utah in the coming decades.
A mobile Chernobyl, they call it.
Equally troublesome to Utahans is the fact that at this point
nobody can say for sure when - or even if - the federal Yucca
facility will open.
"If temporary storage is so safe, then high-level nuclear waste
can stay where it is," Leavitt says.
Leavitt and other top state leaders have been ferociously
fighting the plan ever since the Goshutes signed a lease with PFS
in 1997, but state efforts to block the waste shipments have died
in the courts.
The governor's public relations campaign rolls on. But Bear may
have bigger problems than a hostile governor.
Other Goshutes say there is nothing close to unity on the issue
and point to last summer's scuffle between chairman Bear and
then-Tribal Secretary Rex Allen as evidence of the tribe's split
over the plan.
Bear and PFS say more than two-thirds of the tribe's 70 adult
members support the plan, a figure hotly contested by tribal
member Sammy Blackbear, who is Bear's cousin. Blackbear says Bear
has been recalled, and there is nothing close to a mandate for
the waste.
"We don't want the waste. We want to save who we are. We want to
save what's left," says PFS opponent Bullcreek. "We have an
obligation not to be messed up by greed."
Despite the dissenters, Bear still holds the title of tribal
chairman and remains the federal government's point person for
negotiations on the issue.
The terms of the contract that Bear signed with PFS in 1997 have
remained a secret, with the utilities arguing it is a private
arrangement and Bear saying tribal dealings are nobody's
business.
Bear's administration has already received some money for the
project, though few people - not even most tribal members - know
how much. Copies of the contract have been distributed within the
tribe, but the dollar amounts are blacked out.
That has led to charges that Bear is pocketing the profits or
distributing them only to tribal members who support the plan.
Those allegations are contained in a pending federal lawsuit,
though Bear dismisses them, contending that the people who don't
know the dollar amount missed a tribal meeting on the matter.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to decide
whether to give a license to the facility sometime next year, and
shipments could start rolling in from all across the country as
early as 2004 - nearly a century and a half after Twain
introduced America to a remarkable people who had figured out how
to make a living off the "repulsive wastes" that made up their
homeland.
While this latest chapter in their history has torn at Goshute
unity, Blackbear says in some ways it has been good for a people
that this country corralled onto a landscape it later peppered
with bombing ranges, hazardous waste dumps and chemical and
biological weapons facilities.
The Goshutes have grown accustomed to being powerless people.
They have gotten used to being dumped upon.
Now, perhaps, comes the payback.
Now, Blackbear says, some of the nation's most toxic waste is
giving this little tribe more power than anybody ever expected.
And, regardless of whether the project gets federal approval,
nobody is ignoring the tribe anymore.
"We do believe life is a circle, and sooner or later that circle
comes around," Blackbear says. "Right now, Utah is afraid."
© 2002, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
*****************************************************************
24 Citizen Vigilance
The Salt Lake Tribune --
Tuesday, October 8, 2002
The intended purpose of the Division of Radiation Control Board
is to administer statutes, regulations and policies regarding
radioactive materials. The board is also to act as judge and jury
in administrative adjudications. In the October meeting of the
board, it voted to draft a position paper to educate the voters
on the "legal and technical issues" of Initiative 1.
The issue is this: Does the board have the right to draft such a
position paper, without questioning their own biases in upcoming
adjudication against Envirocare?
In a court of law there are strict standards for judges to
declare their biases and/or recuse themselves before hearing any
case put before them. Should the Division of Radiation Control
Board members who voted for the position paper be required to
recuse themselves in the upcoming Envirocare adjudication
hearing?
Two facts are not mentioned: Utahns are some of the most educated
people in the United States, and it was citizens who originally
developed this board and the other boards of the Department of
Environmental Quality.
Now citizens are asking the general populace to make a decision
concerning the makeup of the Division of Radiation Control Board
and the state's regulatory program for radioactive waste, because
citizens believe that inherent biases have developed and
corporate influences deny corporate accountability.
CLARK KING
Salt Lake City
© Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on
*****************************************************************
25 Funds increased for Battelle nuclear cleanup
* STEVE SMITH * Press Staff Writer Published October 07, 2002
12:35 PM CDT
The federal government is speeding up the removal of radioactive
waste from the Battelle research site at West Jefferson by
increasing funding for the project.
Specially-designed trucks will soon begin moving materials from
the decommissioned nuclear reactor on the site along state Route
142 to repositories in the west.
Battelle has conducted sensitive defense research at the facility
since World War II and in the early years that research required
the use of a nuclear reactor on site. The remains of that
research must now be cleaned up.
"We want to have a clean and green site by 2006," Battelle
project leader Joseph Gantos said Friday.
Gantos was among the speakers at Battelle's annual meeting with
police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel who are
called upon to respond to incidents on the site, such as the
August explosion that injured two scientists working in a blast
containment facility.
Both men are out of the hospital and recovering from their
injuries and Battelle officials say they hope to release
investigative findings on the incident later this week.
Representatives of the Ohio Department of Health, the Department
of Public Safety, the Ohio Highway Patrol and the Federal Bureau
of Investigation were also on hand for the meeting.
Captain Steve Saltsman, commander of the Columbus Fire Department
Bomb Squad and former Madison County Emergency Management Agency
director, was the host for the meeting.
Madison County Commissioners, representatives of the village of
West Jefferson and Saltsman's father, Madison County Sheriff
Steve Saltsman, were also among nearly 100 people who attended
the annual meeting.
During the session, Gantos announced that the cleanup project,
initially scheduled for completion in 2010, will be completed
sooner and cheaper.
The project had been receiving about $16 million per year in
taxpayer funding, but the U.S. Department of Energy will increase
funding to more than $20 million per year in order to shave about
four years from the length of the cleanup.
Gantos said DOE approval of a final cleanup plan and the
subsequent increase in funding will reduce the cost of the
project to $87 million, a savings of about $25 million over the
life of the project.
"We have a plan for it, we want your support for it and we're
going to try our (best) to make it happen," Gantos told the
group. The trucks are expected to begin rolling within several
weeks.
Battelle officials also announced a new contract to develop an
effective anthrax vaccine, which will be tested at the West
Jefferson site.
Battelle's Medical Research and Evaluation Facility is in the
midst of a major expansion to accommodate the continued search
for medical counter-measures to deal with anthrax, plague,
tuberculosis, encephalitis and other toxic agents. Parts of the
expansion will be completed this fall and a new administration
building will open next year.
The medical research facility, which opened in 1981, also
continues to work on systems for shutting down the U.S.
Military's own stockpiles of chemical and biological agents.
Officials say stockpiles of toxic materials stored at the site
have been dramatically reduced.
Battelle has spent $1.2 million on security upgrades at its West
Jefferson and Columbus locations since Sept. 11, 2001. New access
control points, fencing, cameras and lighting systems have been
added, along with beefed-up procedures.
"We want to make sure we can block access to those we want to
keep out," Battelle security chief Jack Baber told the gathering
Friday, indicating that the changes should not hinder emergency
personnel responding to the facility.
Baber also expressed continued security concerns involving the
railroad line that passes along the southern edge of the West
Jefferson site.
"It's something we're aware of and think about quite a bit," he
said, indicating that a derailment could cause major problems.
Battelle scientists are always involved in interesting new
projects.
This week they begin work on a new taser dart effective up to 100
meters without connecting wires. The cordless taser, being
developed for the Pentagon's Office of Naval Research, is just
one of many non-lethal weapons under development in the West
Jefferson facility.
Other current projects include work on radio frequency tagging,
new inspection equipment to detect bombs and drugs at U.S.
borders, robotic bomb detection and disruption equipment and
underwater demolition improvements.
Another current Battelle project that could have a major impact
on U.S. military capabilities involves the development of
electromagnetic armor, which will result in lighter and faster
armored vehicles.
The annual safety meeting is important to emergency responders.
Battelle signs agreements with the Jefferson Township Fire
Department and other agencies each year to make sure that those
agencies and Battelle's own emergency personnel know what their
responsibilities are.
The agreements represent a "unified plan" in which "off site
responders and Battelle make joint decisions" on how to deal with
situations on the site, according to Battelle emergency Manager
Gene Roe.
Capt. Saltsman said advance planning could make all the
difference.
"I think it's very important to come together before something
happens," Saltsman said.
"It pays off."
*Steve Smith can be contacted at (740) 852-1616, 1-800-282-3838
or by e-mail at news1@madison-press.com*
COPYRIGHT ® 2002 The Madison Press, Central Ohio Printing
*****************************************************************
26 WA Govt slams nuclear waste plan.
8/10/2002. ABC News Online
The Western Australian Government says a proposal to store
nuclear waste in the Goldfields, in southern central WA, is bad
news.
Laverton Shire Council is investigating the possibility of
storing radio isotopes from Lucas Heights, near Sydney, within
its boundaries, almost 400 kilometres north of
Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
The Premier says the State Government is firmly against the idea.
Geoff Gallop says a radioactive waste dump near Laverton would
undermine the Government's efforts to promote WA as a clean and
green state.
"I've made that clear in a letter to the Prime Minister, and the
very fact that he's written back to me refusing to rule it out
means that the Commonwealth is looking to Western Australia," he
said.
"I think it's important that everyone in Western Australia
rallies together on this issue and sends a clear and unambiguous
message to Canberra...'we don't want your nuclear waste in this
state'."
The plan has split Laverton Shire.
Some councillors are planning to raise a motion to make the shire
a nuclear-free zone at a meeting next week.
Eyre MP John Bowler says the proposal is concerning because the
waste would have to be transported through the Goldfields to
reach its destination.
He says this would pose obvious safety risks.
© 2002 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
*****************************************************************
27 The Men Who Built the Bomb
latimes.com
BROTHERHOOD OF THE BOMB: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of
Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller, By Gregg
Herken, John Macrae/Henry Holt: 450 pp., $30
By DAVID HOLLOWAY, David Holloway is the author of "The Soviet
Union and the Arms Race" and "Stalin and the Bomb." He is the
director of the Institute for International Studies at Stanford
University.
In "Brotherhood of the Bomb," Gregg Herken has written an
immensely readable account of the lives of three physicists who
led us into the Nuclear Age. Robert Oppenheimer directed the
wartime effort to design and make the atomic bomb at Los Alamos;
Ernest Lawrence developed the method that produced the
uranium-235 for the Hiroshima bomb; and Edward Teller, the only
one of the three still alive, was the chief designer of the
hydrogen bomb. Much of the story is familiar territory, but
Herken provides a new angle by looking at the intersecting lives
of his three protagonists.
Herken begins his story in the 1930s in Berkeley, where Lawrence
was building machines to accelerate elementary particles; in
1939, Lawrence received the Nobel Prize for this work.
Oppenheimer was the leading theoretical physicist in Berkeley,
and he and Lawrence became close friends in spite of differences
in temperament and political outlook. Teller's role grew after
1942, when he was recognized as one of the main advocates of
research on the hydrogen bomb.
Herken shows how Lawrence brought the enthusiasm and the skills
of an American entrepreneur to physics, ushering it into the age
of Big Science. A brilliant organizer and director of research,
he could do unexpected things. It was Lawrence who twice
proposed, in meetings in May and June 1945, that the bomb be
demonstrated to the Japanese in "some innocuous but striking
manner" to persuade them to surrender before the bomb was used to
destroy cities. In the mid-1950s, when it became possible to meet
Soviet physicists, he was taken with the prospect that such
contacts might lead to breaking down the Iron Curtain.
But Oppenheimer and Lawrence fell out over politics and personal
matters. And after the war, Oppenheimer resisted Teller's push
for the hydrogen bomb and opposed the creation of a second
nuclear weapon laboratory. Despite his opposition, however, by
the time the book's narrative ends, in the mid-1950s, the United
States had tested a hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more powerful than
the Hiroshima bomb and set up a second nuclear weapon laboratory
named for Lawrence (the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
to work on the hydrogen bomb. After loyalty-security hearings on
Oppenheimer, the U.S. government declared him a security risk and
deprived him of security clearance.
Herken had access to government documents, personal papers and
memoirs, as well as to FBI transcripts of recorded telephone
conversations. "Brotherhood of the Bomb" also benefits from new
evidence about Soviet espionage from declassified Russian
documents and from the Venona documents, consisting of U.S.
intercepts of coded messages between Moscow and its agents in the
United States. With these sources, Herken provides a collective
biography of three men who left a huge mark on history through
their political advice and administrative skill as well as
through their scientific research.
There is one important new source, however, that Herken was not
able to use and assess: Soviet documents listing Oppenheimer as a
secret or covert member of the Communist Party, which have
recently been declassified. The suspicion that Oppenheimer was a
Communist is a major element in Herken's story, as are
Oppenheimer's consistent denials that he was ever a member of the
party.
All three men worked hard to develop nuclear weapons and became
deeply involved in Washington councils on nuclear policy. The
great disagreement among them, however, was over what priority to
give development of the hydrogen bomb. Teller, supported by
Lawrence, pressed for an all-out effort. Oppenheimer, though he
changed his mind from time to time, opposed its development in
the late 1940s and early 1950s for moral, political and technical
reasons.
At Oppenheimer's security hearing, Teller testified in a way that
suggested that Oppenheimer should be deprived of his security
clearance because he had taken the wrong position on the hydrogen
bomb. As a result, Teller experienced hostility and ostracism
from the physics community, which apparently caused him
considerable pain.
Oppenheimer was undoubtedly the most complex of the three men. He
proved to be an unexpectedly brilliant director of Los Alamos.
But his close ties to the Communist Party raised questions from
the very beginning about his suitability for such a position. He
was granted the necessary security clearance only at the
insistence of Gen. Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan
Project.
In 1943 a communist friend, Haakon Chevalier, mentioned to
Oppenheimer that he had been told of someone who could pass
information discreetly to the Soviet Union. Oppenheimer quickly
cut off the conversation. Subsequently he gave different accounts
of it to Groves and the security people in the Manhattan Project.
When he was confronted with these differences at the security
hearing, he could not explain them. His behavior was hard to
fathom, and it fueled suspicions about his loyalty to the United
States. Herken suggests, plausibly though without proof, that
Oppenheimer's evasions were designed to protect his brother,
Frank, who may have been involved as well.
Oppenheimer was an enigmatic figure. The decision not to renew
his security clearance was a terrible blow to him, and he
appeared to many to be a victim of McCarthyism. He was too
complex a figure, however, to conform to the image of a
persecuted liberal. In the summer of 1945 he helped to quash
Lawrence's proposal for an atomic bomb demonstration, thus making
certain that it would be used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He
opposed the hydrogen bomb through the early 1950s but at the same
time encouraged the development of tactical nuclear weapons and
more powerful fission weapons.
Herken quotes a revealing comment made to Oppenheimer by a Dutch
physicist: "Robert, the reason you know so much about ethics is
that you have no character." Oppenheimer characteristically
quoted this in a letter to a colleague. Perhaps he did not have a
very clear sense of his own self, which he sometimes presented to
others in a playful manner. Some people saw Oppenheimer as a
poseur, but that seems unfair in view of the deep seriousness
with which he regarded nuclear weapons and the effort he made
after the war to secure international control of atomic energy.
Do the recently declassified Soviet documents listing Oppenheimer
as a member of the Communist Party change our understanding of
him and his role? Assuming that the documents are genuine, they
do indeed throw into sharper relief the contradictions in
Oppenheimer's character and in his actions. They do not prove
that he was a spy or an "enabler" of spies. There was extensive
espionage at Los Alamos, but Oppenheimer cannot be shown to have
known or approved of it. The documents do indicate, however, that
unless Oppenheimer persuaded himself that he had not really been
a member of the party (what does "membership" mean?), he perjured
himself in the 1954 hearings.
Herken tells this story with great skill, making excellent use of
copious sources. What he does not do, however, is stand back from
his narrative to analyze the issues that it raises.
One of the charges made by Oppenheimer's critics, for example,
was that his advice on the hydrogen bomb would, if followed, have
imperiled the security of the United States. Twenty-five years
ago, Herbert York, a Lawrence protege and the first director of
the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, demonstrated that U.S.
national security would not have been harmed if Oppenheimer's
advice had been taken.
One can be skeptical about the possibility of the Soviet Union's
reciprocating American restraint in the development of the
hydrogen bomb and still believe that restraint could have been
tried without harming the United States. Herken does not address
this question but sticks to the narrative of the arguments as
they were presented at the time, which is a pity. We should
nevertheless be grateful for "Brotherhood of the Bomb," a
well-written, well-documented, exciting and yet unhappy tale of a
crucial encounter between science and politics.
latimes.com
*****************************************************************
28 Military expects the go-ahead for Iraq war within a month
Independent.co.uk
Military strategists believe Saddam Hussein could be toppled by
his own army shortly before or in early stages of an attack
By Kim Sengupta
08 October 2002
*War against terrorism*
Military expects the go-ahead for Iraq war within a month
Bush addresses nation to explain why he won't back down over Iraq
Tanker attack fits bin Laden's economic war
Government tries to convince court to approve detention of
terrorist suspects
MI5 faces accountability test as new chief takes reins
Leading article: President Bush once again places the electoral
interests of his party first
Britain's military forces are expected to be given Downing
Street's go-ahead by the end of this month to prepare for a war
with Iraq.
It will take two months from then, and £90m, to get the army's
chief battle tank, Challenger 2, "desertised" for combat, and
move other equipment and manpower into place, senior Whitehall
sources said.
According to the projected timetable for a new Gulf war, drawn up
by defence planners in London and Washington, an air campaign
could begin by the end of November, with a land offensive early
in the new year.
Although no official decision has been made yet on deployment,
and the Government insists that a war is not inevitable,
strategists in London are preparing contingency "non plans" for a
short and swift war, and units have already been "ringfenced" for
operations.
Senior British and American commanders believe that a /coup
d'etat/ is almost certain to take place in Baghdad to depose
Saddam Hussein on the eve of, or very early into, a new conflict.
They also believe that the damage caused by the Iraqis using
chemical or biological weapons in an open battlefield may not be
as destructive as has been feared.
Senior officers hold that as much of the Iraqi armed forces as
possible must be left intact in a post-Saddam Iraq to maintain
order and prevent Shia and Kurdish forces from dismembering the
country.
The Whitehall sources also acknowledged that senior British
officers do not view that a war against the Iraqi regime is a
matter of "national survival", or a "do or die" situation.
"Spending £90m to desertise has to be a political decision. [But]
If we have not moved on the go-ahead by the end of this month, I
would be very surprised,"a senior Whitehall source said. "It will
take just a few weeks to move armour when a decision is made, but
around two months to carry out the full desertisation.
"There are reasons to believe that there could be a /coup d'etat/
against the current regime by their commanders. It is not in our
interest to destroy or humiliate the Iraqi army, they will be
needed to maintain the territorial integrity of Iraq.
"As for weapons of mass destruction, the effectiveness of
chemical and biological weapons may be limited in a dispersed
battlefield, the nuclear issue, of course, is very different."
In Washington, the Bush administration yesterday urged Iraqi
generals to defy President Saddam if he orders biological or
chemical attacks on US and allied forces. "The message to them is
think before you act," the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer,
said.
The Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri yesterday visited the
United Arab Emirates as the Iraqi regime continued with its own
diplomatic offensive. "With whatever weapons we have in our
hands, and after depending on God with faith, we are able to
confront any aggressor, from wherever he comes," Mr Sabri said.
Back Home
By Baruch Kra
Convicted atomic bomb spy Mordechai Vanunu is facing a parole
hearing at the end of the month and his lawyer plans to argue
that Foreign Minister Shimon Peres revealed more about Israel's
nuclear capabilities last year in a TV documentary than Vanunu
ever knew.
Vanunu was sentenced in 1986 to 18 years in jail for telling
London's Sunday Times about what he saw inside the Dimona nuclear
reactor as a technician there. When he reached two-thirds of his
sentence, he began seeking parole, which was first denied in
1998, and subsequently every six months. In May this year he
petitioned the Be'er Sheva District Court for his right to a
hearing, and the court agreed.
Now, says Feldman, he plans to argue that last year, Peres told a
Channel Two documentary more about Israel's nuclear capability
than Vanunu ever told the British newspaper. Therefore, Feldman
says, it's illogical to keep Vanunu in prison on grounds that his
release could damage security.
© Copyright 2002 Ha`aretz. All rights reserved
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31 Inspectors Begin Training for Iraq
Las Vegas SUN:
October 07, 2002 By WILLIAM J. KOLE ASSOCIATED PRESS
VIENNA, Austria- U.N. arms inspectors kicked off four weeks of
technical training Monday ahead of their possible redeployment to
Iraq for a fresh assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal.
Chief inspector Hans Blix returned to Vienna to address the
inspectors at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear monitoring group, where the
Iraqis last week agreed on logistics for the inspectors' eventual
return to Baghdad. The training sessions, which run through Nov.
8, involve inspectors from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and
Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC. The New York-based
inspectors specialize in detecting chemical and biological
weaponry and the long-range missiles capable of delivering such
arms. The IAEA's Vienna-based nuclear inspection team is not
participating in the training, said Ingrid Lehmann, chief
spokeswoman for the U.N. complex in the Austrian capital.
Addressing the inspectors behind closed doors, Blix did not say
if and when the teams would return to Iraq, but characterized the
training as "new and different" from past sessions because the
Iraqis have agreed in principle to their return, Lehmann told The
Associated Press. About 50 UNMOVIC inspectors from 25 different
countries are taking part in the technical training, which
Lehmann described as routine. Five similar sessions have been
held over the past year or so, she said. Blix, under pressure
from the United States and Britain, agreed last week that new
weapons inspections in Iraq should await U.N. Security Council
action on a tough new resolution setting out terms for the
search.
Although Iraq has said it would allow the inspectors to return,
it has drawn the line at opening eight so-called presidential
sites to surprise inspections. Unannounced visits to the sites,
which include Saddam's palaces, were banned under a 1998 deal
that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan cut with Baghdad.
The United States, which accuses Saddam of stockpiling weapons of
mass destruction, has demanded revised procedures overriding the
1998 agreement and providing completely unfettered access to
sites across Iraq. Saddam denies that he has nuclear, chemical or
biological weapons, and on Sunday, Iraq's ambassador to the
United Nations appeared to show flexibility on the presidential
sites.
"I don't think that will be a huge problem between us and the
inspectors," Mohammed al-Douri said on ABC's "This Week."
"Certainly, we can accommodate ourselves with the U.N. to have
free access to presidential sites." He did not elaborate.
Blix has said that an advance team of inspectors could deploy to
Iraq as early as mid-October once they get the go-ahead from U.N.
headquarters. The inspectors pulled out of Iraq nearly four years
ago, on the eve of U.S.-British airstrikes, amid allegations that
Baghdad was not cooperating with the teams.
By the end of the 1991 Gulf War, IAEA inspectors discovered the
oil-rich nation had imported thousands of pounds of uranium, some
of which was already refined for weapons use, and had considered
two types of nuclear delivery systems.
Over the next six years, inspectors seized the uranium, destroyed
facilities and chemicals, dismantled more than 40 missiles and
confiscated thousands of documents.
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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32 Text of President Bush's Address
Las Vegas SUN
October 07, 2002
By The Associated Press
Text of President Bush's address to the nation Monday: Good
evening. Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave
threat to peace, and America's determination to lead the world in
confronting that threat.
The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi
regime's own actions - its history of aggression, and its drive
toward an arsenal of terror.
Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War,
the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass
destruction "to cease all development of such weapons" and to
stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has
violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces
chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.
It has given shelter and support to terrorism, and practices
terror against its own people. The entire world has witnessed
Iraq's 11-year history of defiance, deception and bad faith.
We also must never forget the most vivid events of recent
history. On Sept. 11, 2001, America felt its vulnerability - even
to threats that gather on the other side of the earth. We
resolved then and we are resolved today to confront every threat,
from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to
America.
Members of the Congress of both political parties and members of
the United Nations Security Council agree that Saddam Hussein is
a threat to peace and must disarm. We agree that the Iraqi
dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world
with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons.
Since we all agree on this goal, the issue is: "How can we best
achieve it?"
Many Americans have raised legitimate questions: About the nature
of the threat. About the urgency of action - and why be concerned
now? About the link between Iraq developing weapons of terror,
and the wider war on terror. These are all issues we have
discussed broadly and fully within my administration. And
tonight, I want to share those discussions with you. First, some
ask why Iraq is different from other countries or regimes that
also have terrible weapons. While there are many dangers in the
world, the threat from Iraq stands alone - because it gathers the
most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant, who has
already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This
same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded
and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations
without warning and holds an unrelenting hostility towards the
United States.
By its past and present actions, by its technological
capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is
unique. As a former chief weapons inspector for the UN has said,
"The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the nature of the
regime itself: Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is
addicted to weapons of mass destruction." Some ask how urgent
this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already
significant and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam
Hussein has dangerous weapons today - and we do - does it make
any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even
stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?
In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the
head of Iraq's military industries defected. It was then that the
regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000
liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The
inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two
to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of
biological weapons that has never been accounted for and is
capable of killing millions. We know that the regime has produced
thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas,
sarin nerve gas and VX nerve gas. Saddam Hussein also has
experience in using chemical weapons. He has ordered chemical
attacks on Iran and on more than 40 villages in his own country.
These actions killed or injured at least 20,000 people, more than
six times the number of people who died in the attacks of Sept.
11. And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding
facilities that it has used to produce chemical and biological
weapons.
Every chemical and biological weapon that Iraq has or makes is a
direct violation of the truce that ended the Persian Gulf War in
1991. Yet Saddam Hussein has chosen to build and keep these
weapons, despite international sanctions, U.N. demands and
isolation from the civilized world. Iraq possesses ballistic
missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles - far enough to
strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations - in a
region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service
members live and work. We have also discovered through
intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned
aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or
biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq
is exploring ways of using UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) for
missions targeting the United States. And of course,
sophisticated delivery systems are not required for a chemical or
biological attack - all that might be required are a small
container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to
deliver it.
And that is the source of our urgent concern about Saddam
Hussein's links to international terrorist groups. Over the
years, Iraq has provided safe haven to terrorists such as Abu
Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90
terrorist attacks in twenty countries that killed or injured
nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans. Iraq has also provided
safe haven to Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the
Achille Lauro and killing an American passenger. And we know that
Iraq is continuing to finance terror and gives assistance to
groups that use terrorism to undermine Middle East peace. We know
that Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network share a common enemy
- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaida
have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al-Qaida
leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq.
These include one very senior al-Qaida leader who received
medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been
associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We
have learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb
making, poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after Sept.
11, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist
attacks on America. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide
a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or
individual terrorists. Alliances with terrorists could allow the
Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.
Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could
detract from the war against terror. To the contrary, confronting
the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror.
When I spoke to the Congress more than a year ago, I said that
those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists
themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the
instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and
destruction. And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too
great that he will use them or provide them to a terror network.
Terror cells and outlaw regimes building weapons of mass
destruction are different faces of the same evil. Our security
requires that we confront both. And the United States military is
capable of confronting both. Many people have asked how close
Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. We don't know
exactly, and that is the problem. Before the Gulf War, the best
intelligence indicated that Iraq was eight to 10 years away from
developing a nuclear weapon; after the war, international
inspectors learned that the regime had been much closer. The
regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no
later than 1993. The inspectors discovered that Iraq had an
advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a
workable nuclear weapon and was pursuing several different
methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. Before being barred from
Iraq in 1998, the International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled
extensive nuclear weapons-related facilities, including three
uranium-enrichment sites. That same year, information from a
high-ranking Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected revealed
that despite his public promises, Saddam Hussein had ordered his
nuclear program to continue.
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear
weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with
Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear
mujahideen" - his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs
reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been
part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to
purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed
for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear
weapons. If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal an
amount of highly-enriched uranium a little larger than a single
softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And
if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed.
Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who
opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the
Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And
Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology
to terrorists. Some citizens wonder: After 11 years of living
with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? There is a
reason.
We have experienced the horror of Sept. 11. We have seen that
those who hate America are willing to crash airplanes into
buildings full of innocent people. Our enemies would be no less
willing - in fact they would be eager - to use a biological or
chemical weapon or, when they have one, a nuclear weapon.
Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat
gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot
wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in
the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in
October of 1962: "Neither the United States of America nor the
world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and
offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We
no longer live in a world," he said, "where only the actual
firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's
security to constitute maximum peril." Understanding the threats
of our time, knowing the designs and deceptions of the Iraqi
regime, we have every reason to assume the worst and we have an
urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring. Some believe we
can address this danger by simply resuming the old approach to
inspections and applying diplomatic and economic pressure. Yet
this is precisely what the world has tried to do since 1991. The
U.N. inspections program was met with systematic deception. The
Iraqi regime bugged hotel rooms and offices of inspectors to find
where they were going next. They forged documents, destroyed
evidence and developed mobile weapons facilities to keep a step
ahead of inspectors. Eight so-called presidential palaces were
declared off-limits to unfettered inspections. These sites
actually encompass 12 square miles, with hundreds of structures,
both above and below the ground, where sensitive materials could
be hidden.
The world has also tried economic sanctions and watched Iraq use
billions of dollars in illegal oil revenues to fund more weapons
purchases, rather than providing for the needs of the Iraqi
people. The world has tried limited military strikes to destroy
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities, only to see them
openly rebuilt, while the regime again denies they even exist.
The world has tried no-fly zones to keep Saddam from terrorizing
his own people ... and in the last year alone, the Iraqi military
has fired upon American and British pilots more than 750 times.
After 11 years during which we have tried containment, sanctions,
inspections, even selected military action, the end result is
that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and
is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving
ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon. Clearly, to actually
work, any new inspections, sanctions or enforcement mechanisms
will have to be very different. America wants the U.N. to be an
effective organization that helps to keep the peace. That is why
we are urging the Security Council to adopt a new resolution
setting out tough, immediate requirements. Among those
requirements, the Iraqi regime must reveal and destroy, under UN
supervision, all existing weapons of mass destruction. To ensure
that we learn the truth, the regime must allow witnesses to its
illegal activities to be interviewed outside of the country. And
these witnesses must be free to bring their families with them,
so they are all beyond the reach of Saddam Hussein's terror and
murder. And inspectors must have access to any site, at any time,
without pre-clearance, without delay, without exceptions.
The time for denying, deceiving and delaying has come to an end.
Saddam Hussein must disarm himself - or, for the sake of peace,
we will lead a coalition to disarm him.
Many nations are joining us in insisting that Saddam Hussein's
regime be held accountable. They are committed to defending the
international security that protects the lives of both our
citizens and theirs. And that is why America is challenging all
nations to take the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council
seriously. Those resolutions are very clear. In addition to
declaring and destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction,
Iraq must end its support for terrorism. It must cease the
persecution of its civilian population. It must stop all illicit
trade outside the oil-for-food program. And it must release or
account for all Gulf War personnel, including an American pilot,
whose fate is still unknown.
By taking these steps, and only by taking these steps, the Iraqi
regime has an opportunity to avoid conflict. These steps would
also change the nature of the Iraqi regime itself. America hopes
the regime will make that choice. Unfortunately, at least so far,
we have little reason to expect it. This is why two
administrations - mine and President Clinton's - have stated that
regime change in Iraq is the only certain means of removing a
great danger to our nation.
I hope this will not require military action, but it may. And
military conflict could be difficult. An Iraqi regime faced with
its own demise may attempt cruel and desperate measures. If
Saddam Hussein orders such measures, his generals would be well
advised to refuse those orders. If they do not refuse, they must
understand that all war criminals will be pursued and punished.
If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is
possible.
We will plan carefully, we will act with the full power of the
United States military, we will act with allies at our side and
we will prevail. There is no easy or risk-free course of action.
Some have argued we should wait - and that is an option. In my
view, it is the riskiest of all options - because the longer we
wait, the stronger and bolder Saddam Hussein will become. We
could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to
terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world.
But I am convinced that is a hope against all evidence. As
Americans, we want peace - we work and sacrifice for peace - and
there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and
whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I am not willing to
stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein. Failure to
act would embolden other tyrants; allow terrorists access to new
weapons and new resources; and make blackmail a permanent feature
of world events. The United Nations would betray the purpose of
its founding and prove irrelevant to the problems of our time.
And through its inaction, the United States would resign itself
to a future of fear.
That is not the America I know. That is not the America I serve.
We refuse to live in fear. This nation - in World War and in Cold
War - has never permitted the brutal and lawless to set history's
course. Now, as before, we will secure our nation, protect our
freedom and help others to find freedom of their own.
Some worry that a change of leadership in Iraq could create
instability and make the situation worse. The situation could
hardly get worse for world security and for the people of Iraq.
The lives of Iraqi citizens would improve dramatically if Saddam
Hussein were no longer in power, just as the lives of
Afghanistan's citizens improved after the Taliban. The dictator
of Iraq is a student of Stalin, using murder as a tool of terror
and control within his own cabinet and within his own army and
even within his own family. On Saddam Hussein's orders, opponents
have been decapitated, wives and mothers of political opponents
have been systematically raped as a method of intimidation and
political prisoners have been forced to watch their own children
being tortured. America believes that all people are entitled to
hope and human rights - to the non-negotiable demands of human
dignity. People everywhere prefer freedom to slavery; prosperity
to squalor; self-government to the rule of terror and torture.
America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are
directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us.
When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will
come to Iraqi men, women and children. The oppression of Kurds,
Assyrians, Turkomans, Shi'a, Sunnis and others will be lifted.
The long captivity of Iraq will end and an era of new hope will
begin. Iraq is a land rich in culture, resources and talent.
Freed from the weight of oppression, Iraq's people will be able
to share in the progress and prosperity of our time.
If military action is necessary, the United States and our allies
will help the Iraqi people rebuild their economy and create the
institutions of liberty in a unified Iraq at peace with its
neighbors. Later this week the United States Congress will vote
on this matter. I have asked Congress to authorize the use of
America's military, if it proves necessary, to enforce U.N.
Security Council demands. Approving this resolution does not mean
that military action is imminent or unavoidable. The resolution
will tell the United Nations and all nations that America speaks
with one voice and is determined to make the demands of the
civilized world mean something. Congress will also be sending a
message to the dictator in Iraq: that his only choice is full
compliance - and the time remaining for that choice is limited.
Members of Congress are nearing an historic vote, and I am
confident they will fully consider the facts and their duties.
The attacks of Sept. 11 showed our country that vast oceans no
longer protect us from danger. Before that tragic date, we had
only hints of al-Qaida's plans and designs. Today in Iraq, we see
a threat whose outlines are far more clearly defined - and whose
consequences could be far more deadly. Saddam Hussein's actions
have put us on notice - and there is no refuge from our
responsibilities.
We did not ask for this present challenge, but we accept it. Like
other generations of Americans, we will meet the responsibility
of defending human liberty against violence and aggression. By
our resolve, we will give strength to others. By our courage, we
will give hope to others. By our actions, we will secure the
peace and lead the world to a better day. Thank you, and good
night.
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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33 Pakistan Test Fires Second Missile
Las Vegas SUN
October 07, 2002 By KATHY GANNON ASSOCIATED PRESS
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan- With border tension running high in South
Asia, nuclear-armed Pakistan test-fired a medium-range
surface-to-surface missile Tuesday, its second in less than a
week, an army statement said. The launch of the nuclear-capable
Shaheen missile was part of a series of tests that began Friday,
the army said in a statement. State-controlled Pakistan
Television said Tuesday's test completed the series.
Nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India conducted tit-for-tat
missile tests on Friday.
With more than 1 million soldiers deployed along the disputed
Kashmir border, where there have been daily gunbattles, the
continued missile testing threatens to escalate tensions in a
region that is already one step from the brink of war. Tuesday's
test was conducted in Pakistan's sparsely populated southwestern
Baluchistan province. The missile had an estimated range of 510
miles, according to Pakistani defense reports, making it capable
of reaching most targets in India.
In a statement carried on state television, President Gen. Pervez
Musharraf congratulated the scientists who worked on the missile.
"The successful test fire of the indigenously developed shaheen
weapons system is the culmination of years of hard work,
dedication and professional excellence of Pakistani scientists
and engineers," the statement said. Pakistan tested a similar
missile Friday. Within hours, New Delhi tested its most
sophisticated surface-to-air missile, meant to bolster its air
defense.
In the past, the countries have notified each other when they
were planning to conduct missile tests. Pakistani officials did
not immediately comment on whether India was told a test would be
conducted Tuesday. Both Pakistan and India claim to have nuclear
weapons in their arsenals, although neither country is believe to
have acquired the technology to attach nuclear warheads to their
missiles. Pakistan and India have gone to war three times since
they were separated in 1947, twice over the Kashmir region. They
came dangerously close to a fourth confrontation after militants
attacked the Indian Parliament in New Delhi last December.
India accused Pakistani intelligence of masterminding the attack,
a charge Islamabad denied.
Both India and Pakistan claim a united Kashmiri as their own.
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants who are
demanding an independent Kashmir or a Kashmir aligned to
Pakistan. Pakistan denies the charge. --
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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34 Bush: 'Homicidal' Saddam Can't Wait
Las Vegas SUN
Today: October 08, 2002 at 5:15:27 PDT By JIM ABRAMS ASSOCIATED
PRESS
WASHINGTON- The House and Senate prepared to take a step toward
war by giving President Bush authority to use military force
against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, whom the president labeled a
"homicidal dictator" and the world's greatest threat to peace.
Both houses were to begin formal debate Tuesday and hoped to
conclude by Thursday night, with expectations they would approve
a resolution providing the president wide latitude to take
military action to disarm Saddam of chemical, biological or
nuclear weapons and, if possible, depose the Iraqi leader.
In a somber address to the nation Monday evening, Bush said the
threat from Iraq was unique and imminent and there was no time to
wait for final proof that Saddam had developed a nuclear
capability - "the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a
mushroom cloud." "While there are many dangers in the world, the
threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious
dangers of our age in one place," the president said.
Bush told a Cincinnati audience in his televised speech that
Saddam was "a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of
mass destruction," and that if he succeeds in obtaining nuclear
weapons to add to his biological and chemical stockpiles, he
"would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his
aggression."
The House has allotted 21 hours to debate what House
International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., a
chief sponsor of the White House-backed resolution, called "one
of the most consequential questions we will deal with for years
to come."
That resolution urges the United Nations to enforce strict new
rules on inspecting Iraq and eliminating its weapons of mass
destruction, while giving the president the authority to act
unilaterally if the United Nations fails to crack down on the
Iraqi threat. It also requires the president to notify Congress,
no later than 48 hours after commencing military action, on why
diplomatic efforts were inadequate.
Bush said congressional authorization of a military strike "does
not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable. The
resolution will tell the United Nations, and all nations, that
America speaks with one voice and is determined to make the
demands of the civilized world mean something." Both the House
and Senate will also vote on more narrowly drawn alternatives,
backed mainly by Democrats, that would authorize force only to
deal with the Iraqi weapons buildup and allow unilateral action
against Iraq only after the United Nations fails to act or Iraq
refuses to cooperate with demands for unfettered inspections.
There was little doubt, however, that the Bush-backed language
would win out in the end, probably by a sizable margin. At the
United Nations, the United States on Monday continued talks to
gain approval for a Security Council resolution accusing Iraq of
violating past resolutions, specifying what it must do and
threatening force if it were to refuse. Britain supports the
United States, but the other three veto-wielding members of the
Security Council - France, China and Russia - have questioned the
need for a new resolution.
Democrats stressed Monday that the lack of international unity on
Iraq would make a U.S. attack on Iraq significantly more
dangerous and difficult. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., a potential
presidential candidate who came out early for a tough stance
against Iraq, said in a speech that the Bush administration was
following a policy of "gratuitous unilateralism" where it "seems
to confuse leadership with going it alone and engagement with the
compromise of principle." Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., said
unilateral action should be avoided if possible. "Instead of
being the United Nations versus Iraq ... this war will be the
United States versus Iraq; and in some quarters, the United
States versus Muslims and Arabs," he said. While Bush's job
approval rating remains high, a new CBS-New York Times poll
showed that a solid majority of Americans believe he should give
U.N. weapons inspectors time to act.
More than a third of Americans fear the economy will worsen if
the United States attacks Iraq, and half think military action
against Iraq would increase the risk of terrorist attacks.
Pentagon officials planned to brief reporters Tuesday on what
Bush referred to as Iraq's 11-year history, since the end of the
Gulf War, of "defiance, deception and bad faith."
The president gave a glimpse of that in his speech, saying U.S.
intelligence shows Iraq to be building manned and unmanned aerial
vehicles that could be used to target the United States with
chemical or biological weapons. He said Saddam has called
numerous meetings with his "nuclear mujahedeen - his nuclear holy
warriors," and satellite photographs show that Iraq is rebuilding
sites that have been part of his nuclear program in the past. One
senior Republican who had previously voiced doubts about a
military attack on Iraq, House Majority Leader Dick Armey of
Texas, announced Monday that, after extensive briefings with
administration officials, he had decided to vote for the
resolution. --
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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35 Bush Speech Gets Guarded Support
Las Vegas SUN:
Today: October 08, 2002 at 4:25:29 PDT By DEBORAH SEWARD
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOSCOW- President Bush's call for greater pressure on Iraq won
guarded support in Asia and Australia on Tuesday, but his threat
of war gained no support in Russia, which accused Washington of
deliberately seeking armed confrontation with Baghdad.
Bush's strongly worded attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
deepened concerns throughout the world over the possibility of
war. Russian Deputy Foreign Ministry Yuri Fedotov, although not
reacting directly to Bush's speech, told the Interfax news agency
a U.S. proposal for a new U.N. Security Council resolution on
disarming Iraq was disingenuous and contained demands that
Washington was "well-aware" could not be met. Fedotov said Russia
supported France, which is also hostile to Washington's view of
Iraq and has proposed a solution that would let Baghdad try to
comply with existing U.N. resolutions. Russia would not support
any resolution that triggered an automatic use of force, Fedotov
said.
Former French Prime Minister Alain Juppe said Bush's call for an
international coalition to force Saddam to accept weapons
inspectors indicated Washington was weighing France's approach.
"President Bush said a "military operation is neither imminent
nor inevitable," Juppe told RTL radio. In Italy, the left-leaning
La Repubblica newspaper, said the "long list of wicked deeds
carried out by Saddam has persuaded the convert, but has not
moved the skeptics."
Bush's speech came far too late to make most newspapers in
Europe, and early reaction was not expected from government
officials in most capitals there. Bush had more luck in Asia,
where initial reaction from Australia and Japan was supportive.
But a senior politician in the predominantly Muslim country of
Malaysia expressed concern that Bush was ignoring world opinion.
In his speech, Bush called Saddam a "murderous tyrant" and said
he may be planning to attack the United States with biological or
chemical weapons and could have a nuclear bomb in less than a
year.
Along with opening a week of debate in the U.S. Congress over
resolutions to give the president authority to attack Iraq, the
speech was seen as an attempt to rally reluctant allies abroad.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Bush's speech
renewed pressure on Saddam to disarm or face military strikes.
"Saddam Hussein wouldn't even be contemplating letting weapons
inspectors back into Iraq if he didn't fear the military threats
from the United States," Downer said. "We think the speech is a
very measured and considered speech. It puts the pressure in this
debate very much on the shoulders of Saddam Hussein."
Australia has been one of Washington's staunchest allies in his
campaign against Saddam and Prime Minister John Howard has not
ruled out sending Australian troops to serve in a U.S.-led strike
aimed at toppling the Iraqi leader.
In a statement issued just hours after Bush's speech - but not
directly mentioning it - the Australian Federation of Islamic
Councils condemned the United States' aggressive stance against
Iraq. "The U.S. government is on an uncontrollable pathway of
destruction and has turned the war on terror into a war for oil,"
the statement said. Doubts over Bush's hardline approach were
also heard in the largely Muslim nation of Malaysia.
"We are for the U.S. if it is a force for good but we cannot
support the U.S. if it pursues the course of unilateralism with
scant regard for world opinion," said Hishamuddin Hussein,
Malaysia's youth and sports minister. "Maybe Saddam is evil, and
he must not be allowed to develop weapons of mass destruction,
but the U.N. must be given a chance to explore a peaceful
solution," he told delegates at the East Asian Economic Summit
being held in Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur.
Japan supports Bush, but has also been reserved on the use of
force. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's spokeswoman, Misako
Kaji, said Tokyo welcomed Bush's confirmation in the speech that
it remains important to pursue a U.N. Security Council
resolution. The idea of military action remains highly sensitive
with the public. "It's better if they don't go to war," said
Toshiro Kobayashi, a shopkeeper in Tokyo. "It would be one thing
if war would solve the problem, but terrorist acts will happen
again." Though not responding specifically to the speech, about
50 anti-war activists gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy in
Seoul, South Korea, to protest any plans for an attack on Iraq.
The protesters, representing 46 civic and religious activist
groups, issued a statement saying U.S. plans to attack Iraq
cannot be justified "and will instead threaten world security."
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
36 Europe Still Skeptical of Iraq War
Las Vegas SUN:
Today: October 08, 2002 at 10:10:17 PDT By DEBORAH SEWARD
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOSCOW- President Bush's call for greater pressure on Iraq won
guarded support in Asia and Australia on Tuesday, but his threats
failed to overcome widespread skepticism in Europe, where most
nations are deeply concerned by the prospects of war.
Iraq said Bush's address Monday night aimed to justify an
"illegitimate" attack on it. Iraqis and other Arabs said the
speech showed Washington's determination for war, but the
Egyptian and Jordanian governments said they were pleased by
Bush's statement that war was not "imminent or unavoidable."
Britain was the exception in Europe to the prevailing lack of
enthusiasm for Bush's tough line. Prime Minister Tony Blair said
he shared "the same analysis" of the threat posed by Iraq and
that both countries wanted the United Nations to make clear its
determination to disarm Iraq. Bush's speech Monday night rounded
up much of the administration's case for an assault on Iraq, with
Bush calling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a "murderous tyrant." He
said Saddam may be planning to attack the United States with
biological or chemical weapons and could have a nuclear bomb in
less than a year.
Bush said he would "act with the full power of the United States
military" against Saddam unless declare and destroy all of its
weapons of mass destruction, end support for terrorism and cease
persecution of its civilians. The speech was seen in part as an
attempt to rally reluctant allies abroad. But Russia and France,
which like the United States hold veto powers on the U.N.
Security Council, underlined that they still oppose Washington's
efforts for a U.N. resolution imposing strict demands on Baghdad
for weapons inspectors and threatening use of force against Iraq.
In Russia, Deputy Foreign Ministry Yuri Fedotov, although not
reacting directly to Bush's speech, told the Interfax news agency
that the resolution proposed by the United States was
disingenuous and contained demands that Washington was "well
aware" could not be met. Fedotov said Russia supported France,
which has proposed a two-step solution that would give Baghdad
the opportunity to comply with U.N. resolutions on destroying its
weapons of mass destruction before the world body met to decide
on approving a possible military strike.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia would support any United
Nations resolution aimed at increasing the effectiveness of
weapons inspectors. In Germany, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
said armed confrontation with Iraq would be a "great tragedy."
However, he added that Baghdad would have to "fulfill its
obligation without exception." French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre
Raffarin called Saddam Hussein a "potential menace" to the Middle
East, but said Tuesday war with Baghdad should be a last resort.
He told parliament the international community must unite in
pressuring Baghdad to disarm.
"Military action against Iraq that is perceived as illegitimate
... would reinforce the feeling of injustice that prevails in the
Arab world today," Raffarin said.
The foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt chose to focus on
Bush's statement that war could be avoided.
"We still believe that a military operation isn't imminent and
that there's a chance for diplomatic moves to try to avert the
dangers of such a war," Jordan's Marwan Muasher told reporters in
Amman. But many Arabs saw Bush as determined to attack.
"The speech contained misleading information through which Bush
is trying to justify an illogical and illegitimate attack on
Iraq," said Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri.
Iraqi media kept to their regular programming Tuesday, so
ordinary Iraqis relied on radios to hear the speech.
Ahmed Taha, an Iraqi university student, said he wished Bush had
used "new words like dialogue and peace rather than his old words
like war and accusations." In Baghdad, secondary school teacher
Dia'a al-Na'eimy, 55, joined dozens of others at a blood bank.
"Our presence here today is a response to Bush's speech and it is
a strong and decisive response. We will protect our leader with
our blood," she said.
In Afghanistan, U.S. troops at the Bagram Air Base who watched
Bush's speech said they were ready for another war, but had
doubts about doing it without world support.
"I agree with the president that something has to be done," said
Senior Airman George Bonney, 27, of Portsmouth, Va. "But I don't
like going it alone. I don't think that's a good idea at all."
Thousands of U.S. troops are stationed here to help search for
remnants of the al-Qaida terrorism network, which Bush tried to
link with Iraq in his speech. In the Ukrainian on Tuesday,
President Leonid Kuchma denied he ordered the sale of a
sophisticated radar system to Iraq. Kuchma also called for
exhausting all possible measures to avoid war with Iraq.
The U.S. State Department said last month that it had verified
the authenticity of a July 2000 recording in which Kuchma is
allegedly heard giving his approval to the sale of a Kolchuha
radar system to Iraq, in violation of U.N. sanctions.
Bush had more luck in Asia, where initial reaction from Australia
and Japan was supportive.
"We think the speech is a very measured and considered speech. It
puts the pressure in this debate very much on the shoulders of
Saddam Hussein," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer
said. Australia has been one of Washington's staunchest allies in
the campaign against Saddam. In Japan, Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi's spokeswoman, Misako Kaji, said Tokyo welcomed Bush's
confirmation in the speech that it remains important to pursue a
U.N. Security Council resolution.
Doubts over Bush's hardline approach were also heard in the
largely Muslim nation of Malaysia.
"Maybe Saddam is evil, and he must not be allowed to develop
weapons of mass destruction, but the U.N. must be given a chance
to explore a peaceful solution," Hishamuddin Hussein, Malaysia's
youth and sports minister, told delegates at the East Asian
Economic Summit being held in Kuala Lumpur. In the Indonesian
capital Jakarta, more than 100 Muslim youths, waving anti-war
banners and posters, staged a peaceful protest outside U.S.
Embassy. "Stop War", "No More Blood" and "Stop campaign for US'
invasion of Iraq," were among the banners unfurled during the
rally.
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
37 Iraq: Bush Misleads to Justify War
Las Vegas SUN:
Today: October 08, 2002 at 11:15:25 PDT By SAMEER N. YACOUB
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq- Iraq's government on Tuesday described President
Bush's speech as a "misleading" attempt to justify an attack,
while Iraqis who listened to the address saw it as a sign of
Washington's determination to go to war. "The speech contained
misleading information through which Bush is trying to justify an
illogical and illegitimate attack on Iraq," said Iraqi Foreign
Minister Naji Sabri.
Sabri, who spoke to reporters in Qatar, has been touring the Gulf
in an attempt to rally support against a possible U.S. strike. In
Syria, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz urged Arab
countries to support Iraq.
"We are not afraid of the (U.S) aggression," he said at a
conference on the removal of U.N. sanctions on Iraq. "Our people
are ready to defend their sovereignty, dignity and national
interests." Iraqi media kept to their regular programming
Tuesday, so ordinary Iraqis relied on foreign radio reports for
what they interpreted as Bush's determination to go to war.
"Again, Bush's speech contains nothing but threats that do not
help in reaching a peaceful resolution for our ongoing tragedy,"
said Salman Mohammed, a history teacher in Baghdad.
In his speech Monday night, Bush called Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein a "murderous tyrant" and said he may be planning to
attack the United States with biological or chemical weapons and
could have a nuclear bomb in less than a year. Bush said he would
"act with the full power of the United States military" against
Saddam if necessary. At a blood drive in Baghdad Tuesday, banners
written in donated blood read, "Yes, yes to President Saddam
Hussein," and praised him as a source of strength to man.
Secondary school teacher Dia'a al-Na'eimy, 55, joined dozens of
others at the blood bank, saying her donation was a way of
demonstrating support for her president.
"Our presence here today is a response to Bush's speech and it is
a strong and decisive response. We will protect our leader with
our blood," she said. Some Arab governments, however, pointed to
Bush's statement that war was not "imminent or unavoidable." Bush
said the only way war could be avoided was for Iraq to declare
and destroy all of its weapons of mass destruction, end support
for terrorism and cease persecution of its civilians. After a
meeting with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Jordan's King
Abdullah II said he hoped Iraq's agreement to the return of U.N.
weapons inspectors would avoid "a new conflict in the region."
Straw, who visited Egypt earlier Tuesday and was heading to
Kuwait, told reporters he briefed Abdullah on discussions of the
permanent members of the U.N. Security Council relating to Iraq.
Straw said Britain wants a peaceful disarmament of Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein by making it clear he must comply with
new, U.N.-imposed obligations or face the risk of force. The
Security Council has reached no decision on passing a tougher new
resolution. "Saddam has a chance and he has to take it," Straw
said. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, speaking to
reporters in Cairo, also chose to focus on Bush's remarks that
war could be avoided. Egypt and Jordan, key moderate Arab allies
of Washington, have cautioned against war, saying it would
destabilize the region.
But Egypt also has said it would participate in military action
against Iraq if it were authorized by the United Nations.
Egypt and Jordan, key moderate Arab allies of Washington, have
cautioned against war, saying it would destabilize the region.
But Egypt also has said it would participate in military action
against Iraq if it were authorized by the United Nations.
Ahmed Taha, an Iraqi university student said he wished Bush had
used "new words like dialogue and peace rather than his old words
like war and accusations."
Bush said his country bears no hostility against Iraqi people and
his aim is to remove dangers posed by Saddam.
Hill Khalif, a 53-year-old grocery shop owner in downtown
Baghdad, was not reassured by Bush's overture to ordinary Iraqis,
saying Bush could not pursue friendship by "working on destroying
my country." --
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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38 U.S. says al Qaeda exploring Russian market for weapons --
The Washington Times
October 8, 2002
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
U.S. intelligence agencies are concerned that terrorists are
working hard to acquire small nuclear weapons and nuclear
material for bombs from Russia.
The problem was highlighted by recent intelligence reports
indicating that representatives of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
terrorist network have discussed buying nuclear weapons and
nuclear material from members of organized crime groups in
Russia.
Russian authorities also raised concerns recently when
saying they suspect the murder of a nuclear chemist in August may
have been linked to a clandestine effort to steal the country's
nuclear technology. Sergei Bakhvalov, a leading specialist
in the extraction of plutonium, may have been killed by
terrorists seeking to obtain nuclear expertise, material or
equipment, according to Russian press reports quoting sources
within the Federal Security Service, Moscow's domestic spy
agency.
Asked about the terror network's attempt to obtain nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons, a senior U.S. defense official
said recently: "I can't tell you here that I have evidence
they've made use of them. I know that they are working on them;
the documentation is there."
The senior official said there are cases where al Qaeda has had
contacts to inquire about purchasing weapons of mass destruction
on the black market. Russia's government says its weapons
are strictly controlled. "A theft or a leak from our nuclear
weapons storage facilities is absolutely impossible," Col. Gen.
Igor Volynkin, head of the Defense Ministry's 12th main
department in charge of nuclear security, told reporters in
Moscow on Sept. 4.
"The Defense Ministry's 12th department is reinforcing and
is capable of resisting any terrorist attacks," he said.
A U.S. intelligence official said there are no indications
that the al Qaeda has acquired small nuclear arms. However, the
official noted, "It is something that cannot be dismissed
completely." There are fears that Iraq, which is seeking to
rebuild its nuclear weapons development capability, will share
the know-how with such terrorists, according to a senior defense
official. "
There is a close correlation between those states which are
sponsoring terrorism and those which have weapons of mass
destruction programs — chemical, biological and nuclear
programs," the official told reporters during a briefing on
terrorism and unconventional weapons. In February, the CIA
sent a report to Congress on Russia's nuclear arsenal and
material security that concluded Moscow's nuclear weapons are
protected from external threats but have become vulnerable to
insider theft since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,
U.S. officials said.
Many of Moscow's security measures are outdated and "are not
designed to counter the pre-eminent threat faced today — an
insider who attempts unauthorized actions," the report states.
Russia has 300 buildings at more than 40 facilities across
the country that contain nuclear weapons material, and security
there is considered poor, the report said.
CIA Director George J. Tenet told Congress in February that
"one of our highest concerns is [al Qaeda´s] stated readiness to
attempt unconventional attacks against us."
"As early as 1998, bin Laden publicly declared that
acquiring unconventional weapons was 'a religious duty,'" Mr.
Tenet said.
U.S. intelligence believes that prior to allied military
operations in Afghanistan, which began Oct. 7, bin Laden "was
seeking to acquire or develop a nuclear device," he said. "Al
Qaeda may be pursuing a radioactive dispersal device — what some
call a 'dirty bomb.'" Documents obtained by U.S. military
and intelligence officials in Afghanistan indicate that al Qaeda
terrorists were working on chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons. "
These diagrams, while crude, describe essential components —
uranium and high-explosives — common to nuclear weapons," the CIA
report in January said.
There also have been persistent reports that bin Laden
attempted to purchase covertly a tactical nuclear weapon in
Kazakhstan several years ago. Bruce Blair, a nuclear weapons
specialist, said the threat of terrorists acquiring nuclear
weapons is going to remain an "uncertainty" because of the
problem of keeping track of material, equipment and scientists.
"[T]he concern extends to such areas as cyber-terrorism,
such as hacking into the early warning systems and nuclear
command and control networks, with a view to triggering false
alarms or circumventing electronic safeguards against
unauthorized launch," said Mr. Blair, director of the Center for
Defense Information.
Mr. Blair said a Pentagon study found that cyber-terrorists
could enter the Navy's nuclear command system and send a launch
order to Trident nuclear missile submarines. The study led to a
tightening of submarine missile launch procedures.
"The point of this last story is that the nuclear security
problem in Russia has been too narrowly conceived," Mr. Blair
said. "There are other scenarios besides the loss of a weapon or
materials that fall into the wrong hands."
*****************************************************************
39 UK: Uranium cleared from weapons site
BBC NEWS | UK | Wales |
Monday, 7 October, 2002, 16:08 GMT 17:08 UK
[Workers cleaning the former Atomic Weapons Establishment,
Cardiff] The site clean up will take five months to complete
Uranium and other dangerous poisons are being removed from a
former atomic weapons establishment five years after the site
closed down. Contaminated material will be cleared from the now
closed site in Caerphilly Road, Llanishen, Cardiff during the
five month operation.
All the lorries will be checked for radioactivity before being
allowed to leave the site
Defence Estates spokesman
About 80 tonnes of depleted uranium - showing elevated levels of
radioactivity - will be extracted. Defence Estates, who own the
site, have identified one specific area of soils contaminated
with the radioactive material below the former depleted uranium
facility. In a letter sent to residents living near the site,
levels of radioactivity are described as "slightly elevated". In
the letter, Defence Estates said: "The level of radioactivity
associated with this material is at the lowest end of material
classified as low level radioactive waste and is comparable to
natural levels of radioactivity in some parts of the world."
[Radiation symbol] The toxins will be taken away in sealed
containers
Airtight containers will be used to transport the depleted
uranium - which is used in ammunition against armoured vehicles -
to the British Nuclear Fuels Limited facility at Drigg in
Cumbria. Defence Estates have estimated that no more than four
lorry loads of the material will be transported by road for
disposal. They have assured people living near the site that
stringent checks will be made before transportation. "All the
lorries will be checked for radioactivity before being allowed to
leave the site," said a spokesman for Defence Estates. Soils
contaminated with oil, the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE),
arsenic and beryllium will also be removed and dumped at licensed
landfills. Weapons Earth removed from the site will be replaced
with clean materials sourced from within south Wales. AWE Cardiff
was one of the four government owned contractor operated sites
that formed the UK's Atomic Weapons Establishment. It was
originally established in 1940 as a Royal Ordnance factory,
manufacturing field guns and other weaponry. In 1960, it became
part of the AWE, with production switching to the manufacture of
components for the nuclear weapons programme. All production
ceased at the plant in February 1997.
© MMII | News Sources | Privacy
*****************************************************************
40 Das ist Siemens! Did the famous company help Saddam create
nuclear weapons?
Pravda.RU
¹ Oct, 07 2002
Another outrageous scandal broke out in Germany, the country that
has recently been producing lots of scandalous news. Scandal
arises after a scandal. This time it is Siemens. The well-known
comapany is in the center of attention. The company is being
accused of helping Saddam Hussein in produce nuclear weapons.
The core of the “sensation” is as follows. Financial Times
Deutschland published an article saying that special medical
interrupters used for splitting kidney stones can under definite
conditions be used as a fuse in nuclear bombs. Siemens supplied
several interrupters of this kind to Iraq from December 1998 to
June 1999. Siemens spokespersons say that the interrupters can’t
be used as fuses, as they are too weak. Armament experts and
nuclear engineers say that there is nothing impossible and Iraq
could probably use the interrupters, not for healing people, but
for producing nuclear weapons.
This is probably quite true, but for one thing: the whole world
has been anticipating a war campaign against Iraq for the several
past weeks. The article in Financial Times Deutschland perfectly
matches the limits of the information war waged by Washington
against Baghdad. The statement that Iraq holds nuclear weapons or
may develop them in the near future is one of the basic elements
of this war.
However, American authorities still fail to convincingly prove
this thesis. Therefore, German journalists have given a present
to the White House. To tell the truth, the German newspaper
wasn’t the first source to report the outrageous sensation about
Siemens' interrupters as fuses. German radio station
Suedwestrundfunk (SWR), which is hardly known outside Germany,
was the first to announce the sensation on Sunday.
It is no secret that Washington and Berlin are at odds with
America's coming war against Iraq. And the fact that such a
respectable company as Siemens is involved in the scandal may
become a trump card for Washington.
It is strange, but all experts whose opinions are mentioned in
the publication are Americans. This concerns the objectivity of
the analysis. However, objectivity already doesn't actually
matter. It is more important that the world was told once again
that Saddam has nuclear weapons. Now it’s his turn to justify
himself, together with Siemens.
Vasily Bubnov PRAVDA.Ru
Translated by Maria Gousseva
Copyright ©1999 by "Pravda.RU [http://www.pravda.ru/] ". When
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41 Iraq: Voices That Must Be Heard
(washingtonpost.com)
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, October 8, 2002; Page A25
Ambivalence, not outright opposition, is the greatest obstacle
President Bush faces in moving the nation to war against Iraq.
Ambivalence also explains the fracturing of the Democratic Party
into so many foreign policy factions that its voice can barely be
heard.
The public's ambivalence is obvious from the polls. Most
Americans share Bush's view of Saddam Hussein as a dangerous
tyrant, think the world would be better off without him and fear
what would happen if Hussein ever got his hands on nuclear
weapons.
But the public still wonders whether this war needs to be waged
immediately. It worries about the effect of a war that the United
States might have to fight almost alone. And it longs for an
approach short of war to disarm Hussein.
"Maybe, but why now?" is a perfectly reasonable position. But
it's not much of a slogan. Is it any wonder that a Democratic
Party whose broad middle ground is defined by what you might call
principled ambivalence is having so much trouble finding its
voice?
To make matters worse, Democrats are split into many factions. As
usual, there are the hawks and the doves. Sens. Joe Lieberman and
Zell Miller and, it now seems, House Minority Leader Richard
Gephardt stand firmly with Bush. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Rep.
Dennis Kucinich help lead the opposition.
Then there is the large group of doubters, who are themselves
divided. Sen. Carl Levin has been the most powerful voice for
those you might call the strong doubters. They are worried about
the unintended consequences of action. Sen. Joe Biden leads the
moderate doubters who worry about the unintended consequences of
both action and inaction.
Finally, but not insignificantly, is the camp of the political
consultants. Most of them want Democrats in Congress to pass a
war resolution -- any war resolution will do -- to push foreign
policy to the side so this fall's election can be about the
weakening economy.
The principled hawks, the moderate doubters and the consultants
were all ripe for Bush's picking, so it's not surprising that
Bush will win a strong war resolution. Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle -- pity him his job of having to hold this mess of views
together -- essentially threw in the towel on Sunday when he said
that he, too, was inclined to vote with Bush.
Democrats who have doubts about the war have been losing ground
for another reason. Most of them have been unable or unwilling to
articulate one of their primary fears: that the Bush team will
not be able to manage the policy on which it is about to embark.
The administration has fed doubts by constantly shifting its
rationale for war. It keeps trying, almost desperately, to link
Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda, even though evidence of a link is
scant. But if Hussein's weapons are as dangerous as the
administration says, Bush shouldn't need an al Qaeda link to
justify war. One clear rationale for war feeds public confidence
that the war is necessary. Many rationales for war feed the
public's anxiety that this is a policy in search of
justification.
Moreover, the administration has been, well, ambivalent about
building the sort of international coalition that the first
President Bush enshrined in public opinion as the right approach
to war with Iraq. Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld have given strong speeches on the merits of going
it alone, even as Secretary of State Colin Powell has been
working to win the support of the United Nations and our allies.
This is either a brilliant bad cop-good cop pressure strategy --
or a sign of incoherence to come.
A similar two-step has been visible in the administration's
approach to bipartisanship. By turns, the administration embraces
party concord and attacks Democrats on national security issues.
Which is the administration's true face?
Finally, there are the doubts about what will happen when Hussein
is ousted. What sort of commitment is the administration prepared
to make to restore stability to Iraq and the region? Will the
administration be split on postwar nation-building, too?
President Bush understands the importance of the ambivalent
center. In this week of congressional decision, you can count on
his spending much of his time allaying its fears. And because
ambivalence is rooted more in doubt than in confidence, more in
questions than in answers, the party of ambivalence will always
seem weaker than the party of action. The party of ambivalence
has just one advantage: It speaks for a large section of the
nation, perhaps a majority. It may not seem heroic to ask
annoying questions about war. It is merely essential.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
*****************************************************************
42 STREET THEATER AT las vegas FEDERAL BUILDING
Press Releases and Media Information
[http://www.shundahai.org]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE OCTOBER 7TH, 2002 CONTACT: Kalynda Tilges
702.743.8523
NO NUKES! NO WAR! FAMILIES FIRST!
Las Vegas, NV- More than thirty people performed a dynamic street
theater action today, Monday October 7, 2002 at the Lloyd George
Federal Building. Participants displayed the horrors of the
nuclear industry with a narrated die-in. People collapsed onto
the sidewalk with the revelation that nuclear weapons are stored
in Nevada, their bodies outlined in chalk. Vance Coffman (CEO of
Lockheed Martin), Riley Bechtel (CEO of Bechtel Corp.) as well as
HRI mining were named as responsible parties in the deaths of
millions of American men, women and children from the nuclear
chain.
Participants in today's action also left chalk outlines of those
who "died", filling them with names and communities who have been
devastated by the cycle of uranium mining, nuclear power and
weapons production and nuclear waste dumping. This action left
the sidewalk virtually covered in chalk body outlines.
Slogans like "Break the nuclear chain in your own backyard" were
also chalked on the sidewalk covering the length of the entire
block. The action was supported by honks and cheers of dozens of
people and cars passing by. Federal Building security however was
not as helpful, repeatedly threatening participants with
citations for sitting on public walls, using chalk on the
sidewalk and many other things. When asked if there were specific
ordinances against writing in chalk on the sidewalk, Officer R.
D. Virgin responded "Well, no, but it's the federal building."
In another incident an unidentified federal employee reportedly
made it a point to come out onto the public sidewalk and threaten
a Western Shoshone representative saying that he would make his
life miserable if his picture was taken. (see photo titled
"threats?" on Shundahai web site).
Threats
[Federal Guards at Rally Oct 7th 2002]
Federal Guards
Statements were also made against the proposed war in Iraq.
Michelle Peixinho, a mother of two, said "this proposed war in
Iraq is supposed to cost a billion dollars a day, that money
should go to healthcare and food for the thousands of starving
children in the U.S."
No one was arrested or cited at this afternoon's events, which
ended with a peaceful prayer circle.
Family Spirit Walk and Action for Nuclear Abolition events will
continue through October 15th.
Please visit [http://www.shundahai.org/press_and_media_info.htm]
for photos.
October 7th - 9AM PST- Las Vegas Police Department harasses
Family Spirit Walkers, legal team attempting to help resolve
issues. 11:30 AM Issues resolved with help of ACLU
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE OCTOBER 7th, 2002 CONTACT: Kalynda Tilges
702-743-8523 PEOPLE'S NUCLEAR ABOLITION SUMMIT MOBILIZING
NEIGHBORHOODS TO PROTECT THEMSELVES
North Las Vegas, NV--With the sound of fighter jets, Stealth
bombers and other military airpower gearing up for an unwanted
and unpopular war with Iraq, the participants at the People's
Nuclear Abolition Summit have learned about the toxic legacy of
the nuclear chain. Speakers from affected communities across the
nation shared horror stories of environmental destruction in
their neighborhoods. All Saturday afternoon the participants
strategized and empowered each other to break that chain.
Panel discussions featuring information about nuclear weapons,
nuclear power and nuclear waste and their relation to indigenous
communities brought tears to many eyes. Gilbert Sanchez, of the
San Ildefonso Pueblo of New Mexico spoke of the many
reservations, which have been used for uranium mining, weapons
testing or radioactive and toxic dumping grounds for the nuclear
industry; he said, "We eat the contamination we throw out, there
is no way to keep it from our food chain, once it is made, we eat
it".
Damon Watahomigie who is Supai, Indigenous to the Grand Canyon
area of Arizona, has successfully resisted a number of mines in
the areas sacred to his people. When asked about his
participation in the Family Spirit Walk and the Action for
Nuclear Abolition, he said "I have come here to defend our
children's future."
Information was given about the current state of nuclear power
plants across the country, and the news was grim. Tim Judson,
from Syracuse NY, a member of Citizen's Awareness Network said
"since September 11th, the risks to people living near reactor
sites has grown tremendously. The money which is currently being
spent on the faulty Yucca Mountain project would be better spent
protecting the communities where the waste is right now. Hardened
dry-cask storage is a better alternative than putting radioactive
waste on the nation's roads and rails".
Tim explained that he lives near the Nine Mile Point reactor,
which has been shown to have a cracked shroud and is leaking
radioactivity into the surrounding area.
Jody Dodd, national staff person with the Women's International
League for Peace and Freedom, spoke to the group about the growth
of the resistance movement, said "In the last few years, people
have been growing stronger in their resistance to high-level
nuclear waste transportation and any new nuclear weapons
development. People are refusing to sit idly by while their very
lives are being toyed with by the US."
After the Summit meeting, a group of 12 people staged and
impromptu demonstration and vigil at the Nellis AFB Air Show with
signs and chants calling for peace and the abolition of all
nuclear weapons. Protesters were made to leave after police were
called in. The police stated that the demonstrators were on
private property even though it was a public event.
The Summit begins ten days of resistance actions. On October 6th,
the Family Spirit Walk departed from the National Nuclear
Security Administration building on Losee Rd. to arrive at the
Nevada Test Site on October 11th. They will be camping at the Mt.
Charleston turnoff from Hwy. 95 North toward Reno until Tuesday,
Oct. 8th when they will resume the walk to the Nevada Test Site.
Along the way, there will be nonviolence and direct action
training's and workshops each evening. October 11th begins the
Action for Nuclear Abolition events at Peace Camp (Mercury Exit,
US 95), which will bring together thousands of people to wise up,
rise up and resist US nuclear policies.
Friday October 11th, will feature an all night electronic desert
dance party. October 12th is Indigenous People's Day and will
feature workshops, direct action demonstrations, a rally and
concert.
October 13th- 15th will see a multitude of civil resistance
actions at both the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain.
Please visit http://www.shundahai.org for photos of events.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE OCTOBER 4, 2002 CONTACT: Kalynda Tilges
702.369.2730 Office 702.743.8523 Mobile Marcus Page 505.870.2275
Mobile
FAMILY SPIRIT WALK ARRIVES AT NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY
ADMINISTRATION BUILDING,
NNSA SPOKESPERSON REFUSES TO SPEAK WITH WALKERS
"Walking to bring awareness to communities of the dangers of
radioactive waste"
Las Vegas, NV- The Family Spirit Walk arrived in a flourish of
banners, songs and solidarity today at the National Nuclear
Security Administration (NNSA) building on Losee Rd. and Energy
Way. The walk began it's journey August 9th, 2002, at Tsangawi, a
site sacred to the Tewa people Indigenous to New Mexico. The walk
proceeded through the town of Los Alamos, through dozens of
indigenous communities affected by the nuclear chain (uranium
mining, weapons production and testing, military and civilian
waste, routine radioactive releases from nuclear power plants) ,
and now, after 800 miles and two months, is on its final stretch
to the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain.
The day's walk began at approximately 6 am on Highway 604 (Las
Vegas Blvd.), and proceeded south to Cheyenne Ave, west to Losee
Road and south to Energy Way, for a total of 14.7 miles. The walk
arrived at the NNSA building this afternoon around 3 pm.
Walkers gathered in a circle in the parking lot of the building,
after being refused access to the main entrance. They were
greeted by Western Shoshone Elders Corbin Harney and Katherine
Blossom who blessed the walkers as they entered traditional
Western Shoshone lands.
Walkers asked to meet with a representative of the NNSA, and
attempted to phone public relations head Darwin Morgan. When he
was told that people had walked 800 miles to voice their concerns
about nuclear issues, he responded "I see no reason to come talk
to you."
The Family Spirit Walkers range in age from 15 months to 70+
years. Their prayer walk has been a powerful opportunity to meet
and share stories with other community members affected by the
nuclear chain. Walkers are from all over the U.S., and as far
away as Belgium and Austria. Their journey of more than 800 miles
has traveled through New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada.
Marieke Van Coppelle, who left her two sons in Belgium in order
to participate in the walk, says, "Nuclear proliferation is a
global problem. U.S. weapons of mass destruction are stored in my
home country."
Steve Lamar, a farmer from New Mexico who has been on the walk
since it began, says "Humans are the custodians of planet Earth;
we want to protect it for our children, and children's children."
African American, Asian American, Latino and Native American
representatives from other communities across the country
affected by nuclear and chemical contamination will join the
Family Spirit Walkers for the Nevada events. The multiracial
delegation consists of members of the BASE (Building Action for
Sustainable Environments) Initiative of the Peace Development
Fund, a peace and social justice foundation based in Amherst, MA.
"Environmental activists representing the 'four colors' and
traveling from the 'four directions' of the continent are coming
to stand together against the U.S. nuclear policies that have
terrorized our communities and threatened the lives of our
children and families," said Doris Bradshaw of the Defense Depot
of Memphis Tennessee- Concerned Citizen's Committee. "We are
proud and excited to join in solidarity with our Western Shoshone
neighbors to defend and protect our children's future."
Saturday October 5th, the walkers will be participating in the
People's Nuclear Abolition Summit, 1.5 mile south of I-15 at exit
58, on the left site. (Make a right at the exit, and you can't
miss it on the left side). Sunday, they will reconvene at the
NNSA building at 9 am to continue their journey. Walkers will
arrive at the Action for Nuclear Abolition events at the Nevada
Test Site the morning of October 11th.
###
MEDIA ADVISORY OCTOBER 1, 2002 CONTACT: Kalynda Tilges
702.369.2730 Office 702.743.8523 Mobile Marcus Page
505.870.2275 Mobile
FAMILY SPIRIT WALK TO ARRIVE IN LAS VEGAS AFTER 800 MILES
DEMONSTRATION AT NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
BUILDING
WHO: A group of inter-faith prayer walkers, the Family Spirit
Walk have trekked over 800 miles through indigenous communities
affected by the nuclear chain. (uranium mining, weapons
production and testing, military and civilian waste, routine
radioactive releases from nuclear power plants). The more than 25
walkers ranging in age from 15 months to 70+ years old, from
homes across the US, Belgium and Austria have traveled from Los
Alamos, NM on their way to Yucca Mountain.
WHAT: Walkers will arrive in Las Vegas at the National Nuclear
Security Administration (NNSA) building on Losee Road and Energy
way for a moving and powerful demonstration.
WHEN: Friday, October 4th, 2002 at 3 pm, P.S.T.
WHERE: Walkers will begin their day at 7 am from their campsite
at the junction of Las Vegas Blvd. and Interstate 15 (exit 58)
and will proceed south on Hwy. 604 (Las Vegas Blvd.) west on
Cheyenne Ave, turning south onto Losee Rd to the National Nuclear
Security Administration building (formerly the DOE bldg.) on
Losee Rd. and Energy Way.
WHY: To bring awareness and mobilize communities around the
dangers of the nuclear chain. The Family Spirit Walk began at a
site sacred to the Tewa People, a Native American tribe
indigenous to northern New Mexico, contaminated by the Los Alamos
National Laboratory. The Family Spirit Walkers have traveled
through the Navajo Nation (in Arizona) contaminated by over 1100
uranium mines, through parts of southern Utah (downwind of the
Nevada Test Site), en route to the Nevada Test Site for the
Action for Nuclear Abolition Event, and then to Yucca Mountain,
NV, the proposed site for the first high-level nuclear waste dump
in the world.
DYNAMIC PHOTO, VIDEO AND INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE WITH
MULTI-GENERATIONAL MEMBERS OF AFFECTED COMMUNITIES
# # #
Shundahai Network Welcomes Kalynda Tilges as Executive Director.
She will work to strengthen and expand grassroots efforts to
oppose Yucca Mountain while supporting Nuclear Weapons Abolition
and Indigenous Sovereignty.
Shundahai Network Main Office,1350 E. Flamingo Box 255, Las
Vegas, NV 89119 Office: 702.369.2730 Fax: 702.442.1880 Mobile:
702.743.8523 [kalynda@shundahai.org]
*****************************************************************
43 Pakistan steps up nuclear tests
[http://www.itv.com]
Officials said the test of the nuclear-capable missile was a
success Pakistan steps up nuclear tests 9.28AM BST, 8 Oct 2002
Pakistan has stepped up its nuclear testing programme with the
second missile launch of the week.
Officials said the test of the nuclear-capable missile was a
success and President General Pervez Musharraf congratulated
scientists who developed the missile.
The details, such as range and payload capability of the missile,
were not immediately known.
On Friday, Pakistan and India conducted tit-for-tat missile
tests.
Pakistan tested a nuclear-capable surface-to-surface missile in
the same missile series. That missile had a range of capable of
hitting most targets inside India.
Within hours, New Delhi tested its most sophisticated
surface-to-air missile, meant to bolster its air defence.
*****************************************************************
44 Fluor almost done moving spent fuel out of 300 Area
This story was published Thu, Oct 3, 2002
By John Stang Herald staff writer
Fluor Hanford is entering the final stage of moving some leftover
highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel out of the 300 Area just
north of Richland.
The fifth of six fuel shipments was to leave Hanford's 324
Building on Wednesday evening. The fuel is being moved to storage
on a pad outside the central Hanford underground vault that holds
spent fuel removed from the K Basins.
Fluor hopes to move the sixth and final cask of spent fuel by
Nov. 20, which would be four months ahead of the Department of
Energy's internal timetable to accomplish the task, said Tim
Erickson, Fluor's manager for the 324 Building spent fuel
project.
The 324 Building, slightly more than one mile north of Richland,
had been the most contaminated spot in the 300 Area.
It was used as a lab to experiment with commercial nuclear fuel
and for radioactive waste glassification tests.
The building's main work area consisted of four "hot cells"
clustered around a huge airlock. Scientists and technicians used
remote-controlled devices to perform tests inside the cells.
The biggest chamber -- the three-story-tall B Cell -- at one time
was so radioactive that an unprotected person walking inside
would get a fatal dose of radiation in less than two seconds.
Even today, chances of a worker catching a dose of radiation are
greater in the 324 Building than at most places at Hanford.
The cleanup of the B Cell and moving the spent fuel are the
hardest parts of the 324 Building cleanup, said Mal Wright,
director of the 324 Building programs for Fluor.
Work remaining includes cleaning up radioactive crusts in eight
tanks beneath the hot cell area that held high-level and
low-activity radioactive wastes. And workers must remove the
radioactive residue on the concrete inside the four hot cells.
One reason Fluor wants to remove all the fuel pins by November is
that's the month when DOE is expected to announce its new lead
contractor for Hanford's river shore cleanup.
Responsibility for the 300 Area, including Building 324, will
transfer to the new river shore corridor contractor.
Fluor is on one of three teams bidding for that contract.
Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
45 Hanford's glassification project price tag likely to be $5.6
billion
This story was published Thu, Oct 3, 2002
By John Stang Herald staff writer
A $5.6 billion price tag appears likely to build and test run
Hanford's tank waste glassification complex.
In an apples-to-apples comparison, that figure is about $800
million more than DOE wanted to spend on the project a few months
ago.
The estimate still has to be scrubbed by a team of outside
experts before Roy Schepens, manager of the Department of
Energy's Office of River Protection, presents it to DOE's cleanup
czar Jesse Roberson on Oct. 17.
Schepens still wants to see if that target could be trimmed
before then.
What Hanford would get for that price, Schepens said, would be a
glassification complex operating at full speed by 2009 and all of
Hanford's 53 million gallons of radioactive tank waste glassified
or otherwise neutralized by 2028.
"My plan all along is to beat that (2028 target)," Schepens said
Wednesday.
Right now, the Tri-Party Agreement sets a 2011 deadline to get
the glassification complex fully operational and finish
glassification by 2028. DOE originally had expected to finish
glassification by 2048. But it changed that target to 2028
earlier this year as part of a massive nationwide acceleration of
its nuclear cleanup efforts.
Originally, DOE planned to spend almost $4 billion in basic costs
plus several hundred million dollars in fees and contingency
funds to build and ramp up the glassification equipment by 2011.
But last spring, glassification contractor Bechtel National began
saying that the basic costs to speed up the project would be
greater than $4 billion. Meanwhile, figures began to crystallize
for Bechtel's fees and for the project's contingency allocations
to handle unexpected costs.
In May, Schepens' predecessor Harry Boston told Roberson that the
total price tag might reach $5.3 billion. In June, Roberson told
Boston that $5.3 billion was too high.
Then last month, an independent panel told DOE that the total
price tag would be $5.6 billion to $5.8 billion, including
contingency money and Bechtel's fees.
DOE's latest $5.6 billion estimate consists of $4.8 billion for
the basic cost and the rest to cover contingency money and
Bechtel's fees.
Acceleration efforts, more complete designs and discovery of some
omissions and errors in previous plans all contributed to the
latest cost estimate, Schepens said.
He plans to renegotiate Bechtel's contract soon to encourage the
company to accomplish its tasks for less.
The $5.6 billion estimate would put two high-level radioactive
waste melters and two low-activity waste melters into operation
by 2009. Plus it would prepare the complex to get some
yet-to-be-selected ways running by 2010 to neutralize wastes
without conventional melters. Those supplemental methods are
being studied to see if time and costs could be trimmed through
2028.
The new estimate and accelerated schedule can still get under way
with the $690 million that DOE has sought for the glassification
project in fiscal 2003, which began Sept. 24. However, budget
increases in subsequent years appear likely, Schepens said.
Right now, DOE, the U.S. Senate and U.S. House appear to agree to
allocate $690 million to the glassification project in fiscal
2003.
But Washington, D.C., budget battles on other topics have stalled
congressional approval of that budget.
Also, the federal Office of Management and Budget has not said
yet if it support DOE's request for some extra Hanford money,
which might affect the $690 million earmarked for the
glassification project in 2003.
Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
46 Group hires director
This story was published Sat, Oct 5, 2002
By Wendy Culverwell Herald staff writer
The Tri-Cities Local Business Association, a group consisting of
some of the area's best-known companies and largest labor unions,
has hired an executive director to coordinate its campaign to
alter contracting procedures for the Hanford Waste Treatment
Plant.
Sally Kirkpatrick, a lobbyist and owner of the Richland
consulting firm Sage Resources, will serve as the local contact
for potential members and will corral members for regular board
meetings.
Northwest Strategies, a Seattle-based media consultant, will
continue to manage the group's relations with federal officials.
Sid Morrison remains chairman of the group's board.
The association, formed last spring by the chief executives of
companies such as Federal Engineers and Constructors, Lampson
International, Meier Enterprises and Nuvotec, among others,
asserts the Department of Energy encourages its contractors to
internalize work on the vitrification plant, to the detriment of
local businesses.
The original group has lost some members, such as Wastren, and
gained others, such as the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council
and the Central Washington Building and Construction Trades
Council. The two trade groups represent 16,000 construction
trades workers.
DOE and Bechtel National Inc., lead contractor on the
multibillion-dollar project, hotly dispute allegations they don't
support local businesses, and have documented millions of dollars
in contracts awarded to local small businesses.
Both sides agree the project -- likely the last great round of
federal spending in the Tri-Cities -- should develop area
businesses so they can survive once the federal money dries up.
The dispute centers on whether DOE and Bechtel are using
subcontractors in a fashion that allows them to build expertise
and capital that they can use later to garner other business.
Kirkpatrick said the association has contracted with her company
for six months -- about the time when the contractor will still
be awarding major contracts.
Kirkpatrick has been active in political affairs and has spent
the past seven years lobbying, primarily for business interests,
in Olympia.
Kirkpatrick's Richland office will serve as the local contact for
potential members. The number is 946-4046.
Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
47 Patton puts priority on new plant -
[http://www.paducahsun.com/] The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky
Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Danny Orazine says the governor is on top of efforts to assure
the gas centrifuge test plant's location in Paducah.
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
Orazine
Local leaders say the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant's 50th
anniversary festivities later this month will be the backdrop for
Gov. Paul Patton to present a final proposal for new technology
to preserve at least one-third of the plant's nearly 1,500 jobs.
Patton and Economic Development Secretary Gene Strong are
expected to present the incentive package to William Timbers,
chief executive officer of plant operator USEC Inc., on Oct. 24
before the golden anniversary celebration at the Paducah
riverfront.
McCracken County Judge-Executive Danny Orazine said Patton and
his staff will provide details in closed meetings Oct. 23 with
local legislators and Oct. 24 with community leaders. Orazine and
a few other local leaders met with Patton on Friday in Frankfort
for an update on the proposal, due Oct. 25. "He didn't get into
any specifics," Orazine said. "I guess we were really trying to
gauge the governor's demeanor to see how focused he was on it. I
assure you, they (state officials) are on top of this as much as
they can be. This is the biggest economic development project in
the state right now." Orazine said he and others wondered if
Patton would be distracted by the avalanche of publicity
surrounding his admitted affair with Clinton businesswoman Tina
Conner.
"That was our normal, human reaction, but I didn't sense that in
the meeting," Orazine said. "I've been around the governor a lot
in the last seven years. He was very focused and well-versed on
the proposal. Sometimes you deal with problems by burying
yourself in your work." Orazine said Patton "knows he personally
needs a win, and I think that's another driving force."
Patton said late last month that he was spending considerable
time fine-tuning the incentive package to attract the plant,
which will test gas centrifuge technology for enriching uranium.
Paducah and Piketon, Ohio, are vying for the 50-job plant, to be
operational by 2005. USEC will decide by late November or early
December where it will build the plant. The company says whoever
gets the test plant will have a distinct advantage over the other
community in landing a $1.5 billion, 500-job commercial plant by
the end of the decade. The commercial plant will eventually
replace the outdated, energy-intensive gaseous diffusion process
used at Paducah. Also attending Friday's meeting were Ken
Wheeler, chairman of a local nuclear energy task force, and Leon
Owens, task force member and president of the Paducah plant
energy workers' union.
Both said Patton was clear that the proposal was the top economic
development issue statewide. "The long-range goal is to ensure
the commercial facility is also sited in Paducah," Owens said.
Wheeler said the University of Kentucky and Kentucky Geological
Survey have started a state-funded seismic study that could help
land the plant, whose tall cylinders spin at high speed and are
very susceptible to shaking. The task force is concerned about
the potential added cost of making the plant earthquake-resistant
in Paducah, which is above the New Madrid Fault. The study will
consider those issues as part of a broader look at U.S.
Geological Survey maps that generate county-by-county seismic
design values. Experts say the national maps are generalized,
hard to interpret and don’t take into account conditions unique
to various regions, such as western Kentucky.
"We believe the risk as portrayed in the hazard maps of the USGS
is probably overestimated," said John Kiefer, assistant state
geologist. "We're not saying the maps are wrong, but there are
different ways of looking at it and still coming up with a level
of risk that is safe yet would allow us to build a structure at
reasonable cost." Kiefer said seismometers will be installed
throughout the Paducah area to measure tiny, deep movements in
the earth to assess the local seismic risk better. "We're
targeting the new plant, but it's a critical issue for any kind
of development in western Kentucky," he said.
Kiefer said he doubts the results will be ready in time to affect
the test plant incentive package, although he hopes to have
meaningful data by the end of the year. The state survey team
will meet Nov. 18 in Lexington with various interested people —
notably the USGS staff and those who developed international
building codes that impose much tougher seismic standards — to
offer some alternatives, he said. Wheeler said the "real
significance" of the findings is to influence the decision-making
process for the commercial plant in 2004.
*****************************************************************
48 OP: Seeing the SNS site: A tonic for community complaints
The Oak Ridger Online - Opinion - Dick Smyser --
p.m. on Tuesday, October 8, 2002
Dick Smyser --
A concrete floor 5-feet thick. The weight of a 40-story building.
The impact of a 16-pound bowling ball dropped from the Sears
Tower in Chicago. A sidewalk 3 feet wide and 6 inches deep from
here to Memphis. Excavated earth sufficient to fill Neyland
Stadium to press box level. Sixty tractor-trailer loads. Four
layers of golf balls covering the entire state of Tennessee. The
weight of 1,400 elephants.
*
Al Ekkebus, manager of user services for the $1.4 billion
Spallation Neutron Source, drops comparisons like these to convey
the enormous size and complexity of this project Equating aspects
of this colossal new Oak Ridge National Laboratory device with
elephants, golf balls and Neyland Stadium helps communicate its
size and scope to the public, only a privileged few of whom have
so far been able to view it firsthand. The SNS, happening just a
couple of ridge hops to the southwest of center city Oak Ridge,
is the largest single current scientific construction project in
the United States.
I was one of that privileged few Wednesday afternoon as 50
members of Friends of ORNL rode what seemed a World War II
vintage bus west on the Turnpike to Highway 95, then to the
western extremity of Bear Creek Road and then east to the gravel
road up Chestnut Ridge to the site atop it. I describe the
routing because it surprised me. Most of us "townies," I believe,
would have expected an approach from the east via Bethel Valley
Road.
* * *
It is a "site" to behold: The tunnel-like
multiple-football-fields-long Linac through which pulsed beams of
negative hydrogen ions will be accelerated almost to the speed of
light as they are launched through the squared Accumulator Ring
and then ejected to bombard the mercury target where they produce
neutrons by the spallation process, which is what the SNS is all
about. But to be impressed by the site -- a huge yellow crane
with its 360-foot main boom hovering over it -- one need not
understand the process. Nor precisely why, when the SNS is
completed in 2006, it will attract scientists from all over the
world.
All one need do, as the FORNL visitors did, is gaze out over the
virtual village of heavy building materials in waiting alongside
the landscape of structures, some seemingly completed, others
barely begun. It was the huge yellow crane that required 60
tractor-trailers to move it from Lawrence Livermore Natonal
Laboratory in California, where it had been used in construction
of the National Ignition Facility, and before that at the
Department of Energy's Nevada Testing Site. Too bad there was no
photo opportunity for those tractor-trailers climbing up the
ridge to the site on that gravel road.
The view from the site was especially grand on this sunny, warm
early October afternoon. Very little leaf coloring was apparent
as one gazed to the northwest at portions of the Y-12 area and to
the southwest to where is the main complex of ORNL, virtually
none of the buildings of which were visible through the leaves of
the trees on the ridges in between. Elevation at the SNS site is
1,100 feet, about 300 feet above the main ORNL site. Not visible
either are any parts of the town of Oak Ridge -- business places,
homes, traffic.
* * *
Lee Magid, director of the Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences
that is being built at the SNS site, complemented impressions of
the FORNL tour just the day after as she spoke Thursday at the
Rotary Club of Oak Ridge luncheon at the Elks Lodge.
(And speaking of elk, as reported in The Oak Ridger last week,
migrants from the elk colony established in Campbell County to
the north have been spotted at the SNS site, but none during the
FORNL tour.) Magid, professor of chemistry at University of
Tennessee Knoxville, emphasized the appropriateness of the SNS as
an ORNL facility. ORNL, she pointed out, has been a center of
neutron research since its very first World War II months with
the criticality of the Graphite Reactor in 1943. The Nobel Prize
won by the late Clifford Shull was for ORNL work in neutron
research. It was the foresight of Alvin M. Weinberg, former ORNL
director, Magid said, that added neutron production to the
capabilities of ORNL's High Flux Isotopes Reactor (HFIR).
Magid spoke of the excitement in the world scientific
establishment in anticipation of the completion of the SNS in
2006. Hundreds of researchers are itching to schedule time here
to do work at what will be this newest and by far most
spectacular ORNL "user facility." The year 2008 has already been
designated the "Year of the Neutron," she said, with ORNL and the
SNS focal points of the observance. And the Joint Institute,
which will include conference and lodging facilities, will be
"prepared to house and feed them." Magid spoke also of plans for
a "Neutron Bus," a vehicle filled with exhibits and equipment to
take the message of the importance of neutron production at the
SNS to schools.
* * *
Now having viewed the SNS in the making, I wish hundreds more
from the community could see it close up too. Or that its
stunning structures were somehow at least partially visible from
town. Particularly for older and retired Oak Ridgers, this might
stir some of that same excitement that world scientists are
feeling, the same kind of excitement about the vitality of the
scientific work here that was felt in the city's earliest years.
It could be a tonic toward solution of our community's more
mundane current concerns, like tax rates and "affordable"
housing."
A town exuding such excitement might be a town more attractive as
a place to live for more of the bright young people now being
recruited to staff the SNS as well as the remarkable number of
other new buildings and programs at not just ORNL but Y-12 too.
-- RDS
Richard D. Smyser is founding editor of The Oak Ridger. You can
reach him by e-mail at rdsandmps@aol.com [rdsandmps@aol.com]
All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger
*****************************************************************
49 Opinions:Nuclear waste should be recycled at SRS, not buried in
Nevada
10/08/02
Augusta Georgia:
Letter to the Editor
Regarding opinions and editorials printed on Yucca Mountain
nuclear-waste storage project, the Department of Energy should
take the lead by building a fuel-reprocessing plant at Savannah
River Site where infrastructure and technical expertise already
exist to operate and support it. Then, build an inherently safe,
fast reactor that uses the recycled fuel with 95 percent of its
energy still there, and where essentially all of the long-lived
radioactive isotopes are consumed.
Both DOE projects would provide financial and environmental
benefits and reduce our dependency on foreign oil. Scientists
have already studied Yucca Mountain at a cost of $4 billion, and
the American taxpayers can't afford to spend the estimated $58
billion on a site that, if open today, would hold only half of
all the waste. It has been estimated that if everything goes
DOE's way, that is, the agency gets Nuclear Regulatory Commission
license approval and wins all lawsuits in court, the earliest
shipments could begin to Yucca Mountain is the year 2010.
Nevada's governor and other opponents have already begun to tie
up the project and claim that storage at Yucca Mountain will be
unsafe and that used fuel will still pile up at nuclear power
plants.
The reactor sites are running out of room to store their spent
fuel, and just building additional storage facilities wastes more
ratepayers' money. Construction was completed on a $400 million
plant 25 years ago in Barnwell, S.C., that could have reprocessed
all our commercial nuclear used fuel and eliminated the need for
a burial site. The plant operations' license was not approved, so
now we have 45,000 metric tons of waste being stored at 131 sites
in 39 states.
Let's recycle this valuable resource rather than bury it for
future generations. Contact your representatives to find out
where they stand on this issue, and let them know we want to
recycle. Terry L. Rushin, Martinez, Ga.
AugustaChronicle.com is a proud member of [http://augusta.com] .
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50 Fluor considers cuts in Hanford firefighting effort
published 10/8/02
By jstang@tri-cityherald.com John Stang
Herald staff writer
Fluor Hanford is considering trimming one fire station and up to
17 firefighters as a budget-shifting measure.
The plan has drawn the ire of Local I-24 of the International
Association of Firefighters, which represents Hanford's
firefighters and says the reductions will hurt responses to fires
and accidents on the Hanford site.
The Hanford Fire Department already has trouble meeting the
desired response times to fires and accidents with its current
fire station setup, concluded a June report to Fluor and the
Department of Energy.
Fluor is considering closing the fire station at the Fast Flux
Test Facility, which would increase response times even more,
according to figures in the report prepared by Baltimore-based
fire science consulting firm Hughes Associates Inc.
Fluor spokesman Michael Turner emphasized that Fluor has not
decided if it wants to pursue the possible cuts. The company is
looking at many potential cost-cutting measures to keep momentum
on DOE's efforts to speed cleanup at Hanford, he said.
Complicating the picture is that Fluor does not know how much
money it wants to save, nor even when it will have to make that
decision.
That's because Hanford does not know what its budget is for
fiscal 2003, which began Oct. 1.
DOE has asked the Bush administration and Congress for a $1.893
billion budget for fiscal 2003, an increase of $117 million over
the site's 2002 budget. But the 2003 budget has stalled at
various places in Washington, D.C.
Consequently, Hanford already has begun fiscal 2003 with funding
at the 2002 level until the 2003 budget is adopted.
But no one knows when that will happen, or even if the $1.893
billion figure will survive intact or be enough to speed up all
the Hanford projects earmarked for acceleration.
So, Fluor is looking for what it can trim elsewhere to meet DOE's
acceleration requirements.
"We understand accelerating cleanup but not at the expense
of safety," said Gary Bumgarner, Local I-24's president.
Local I-24 officials voiced concerns about trimming firefighters
and the FFTF fire station at the same time work will blossom at
the FFTF and central Hanford's glassification construction site.
There are 101 rank-and-file Hanford firefighters in Local I-24.
The site has four fire stations with 17 to 22 firefighters on
duty. Each station has at least one fire engine, one ambulance
and one crew member who is a paramedic. The stations and staffing
levels are as follows:
300 Area Officially five firefighters per shift, but the minimum
could be four.
FFTF Officially six firefighters per shift, but the minimum could
be four. This station also covers the nearby Energy Northwest
site. All the FFTF's station's shifts total 18 firefighters --
one more than the maximum of 17 Fluor is studying for possible
layoffs.
-- 200 Area. Officially seven firefighters per shift and a
minimum of five. A battalion commander and a radio operator also
are based at this station.
-- Two miles east of the two K Reactors. Four firefighters to
cover the 100 Area.
The Hughes report said the first firefighters and paramedics
should arrive at a fire or accident scene within four minutes of
the alarm, and 15 firefighters should be at a major fire within
eight minutes.
In 2001, it took an average of five minutes, seven seconds for an
ambulance to reach an accident site and an average of nine
minutes, 23 seconds for 15 firefighters to arrive at a scene.
"If we start eliminating stations, that's going to lengthen
the response times," said Tom Smith, past president of Local
I-24.
The 300 Area and FFTF stations are more than eight minutes from
the 200 Area, the report noted.
And if the FFTF station is eliminated, the 300 Area fire crew
would have to wait for more than eight minutes for any backup to
arrive. Also, the 300 Area fire crew is four to eight minutes
away from FFTF and Energy Northwest, the report said. The FFTF
station is two minutes from Energy Northwest, union officials
said.
Since some of Hanford's buildings and some of its open areas are
contaminated, that limits support from nearby non-Hanford fire
departments, which are not equipped or trained to deal with
radioactive environments, Bumgarner said.
In 2001, Hanford tallied fewer fires and accidents than similar
industrial sites, the Hughes report said. But a dramatic increase
in work at the FFTF and 200 Area likely will increase the number
of fires and accidents that firefighters must handle, the report
added.
"You don't get rid of emergency services just prior to
demolition and decontamination work," Bumgarner said.
Meanwhile, Greg Hughes, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's manager of
the Hanford Reach National Monument, said he didn't know how any
possible trimming of firefighters or of the FFTF station would
affect controlling range fires on the monument's lands, other
than decreasing what Hanford's department can send to a fire. The
monument makes up slightly less than half of Hanford's 560 square
miles.
Local I-24 plans to lobby Fluor, DOE and Washington's
congressional delegation to keep the FFTF station open.
www.tri-cityherald.com
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