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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 Japan: TEPCO to release data on reactors to local community
2 Nuclear power*
3 Government set to take stake in British Energy
4 Nuclear Succor for North Korea
5 Japan: 6 TEPCO cases deemed 'serious'
6 UK: BE hits new low on meltdown fears
7 British Energy set to seek extension of loan
8 In the '50s, the U.S. exported atoms for peace; could they now be us
9 British Energy set to seek extension of loan
10 Japan: TEPCO to tighten safety
NUCLEAR REACTORS
11 US: Nuclear Plant Safeguards
12 Japan: Agency to recheck nuclear power plants
13 Nuclear blast at Chernobyl power plant was caused by UFO
14 US: Closing Indian Point
NUCLEAR SAFETY
15 US: Who needs dirty bombs?
16 UK: MSP challenges Executive on Gulf war syndrome
17 Cullen under pressure to check radioactive homes *
18 UK: MSP challenges Executive on Gulf war syndrome
19 US: State: IAAP study being stonewalled
20 US: Health study researchers will visit homebound former IAAP worker
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
21 Panel named to study enrichment
22 US: Nuclear waste bills awaiting governor’s
23 US: Aborigines halt Rio Tinto project
24 US: OP: Waste shipments remain safe despite truck wrecks
25 Area leaders feeling heat of uranium plant decision -
26 UK: Nuclear ships sail into storm of protest*
27 US: Two nuclear waste bills await Davis' attention
28 LES: Filing raises issues that ended past project -
29 UK: Protesters reach nuclear cargo
30 UK: Nuclear ships face sea protest
31 UK: Protesters target N-fuel shipments -
32 Officials in five counties feel heat of uranium plant decision
33 US: Board seeks answers on NFS issue
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
34 [southnews] Iraq allows weapons inspections
35 Evil Empire: 21 countries bombed by the USA since WWII
36 Iraq operates nuclear weapons assembly line, defector claims
37 Holdout govts urged to ratify nuclear ban*
38 US: Iraq: Washington Merry-Go-Round
39 Iraqi scientist says materials for nuclear bombs in hand --
40 Exiled Iraqi says nuclear bomb months away
41 Iraqi FM seeks elimination of all NBC arms
42 'Regime Changes' Offer No Nuclear Solution
43 Ex-Inspector's Stance on Iraq Sparks Storm
44 IAEA Says Can't Prove Iraq Making Nuclear Weapons
45 Change the focus in Iraq
46 Buchanan OP: Searching for the Saddam bomb
47 'Father' of the Baghdad bomb who fled to US
48 Iraq 'will have nuclear bomb in months'
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
49 Hanford cleanup begins anew*
50 Energy Secretary Abraham Calls for International Conference to
OTHER NUCLEAR
51 Guardian has led fight over S.F. power
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 Japan: TEPCO to release data on reactors to local community
Monday, September 16, 2002 at 18:00 JST
TOKYO ?
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) will inform local communities of
the results of its voluntary inspections at nuclear reactors as a
measure to prevent another cover-up scandal, company officials
said late Sunday.
Among the steps TEPCO could announce as early as Tuesday is to
hold regular meetings with local communities where its nuclear
reactors are located to inform them of data including details
such the discovery of small cracks.
(Kyodo News)
Japan Today Discussion
*****************************************************************
2 Nuclear power*
Sep 12th 2002 From Economist.com
Nuclear power is a growing source of energy, but a highly
controversial one. Brazil, which fears electricity shortages,
wants a large nuclear-power industry. Sweden is divided, and
Asia's enthusiasm for nuclear power flagged after the financial
crisis of 1997-8. Britain, home to both a pro- and an
anti-nuclear lobby, is struggling with the botched privatisation
of its nuclear-power generator, British Energy. America seems
increasingly doubtful about whether the billions of dollars it
has spent on nuclear-fusion research will ever result in an
inexhaustible supply of clean, safe power.
The safety of the plants is one main concern. Russia?s decrepit
nuclear industry threatens the whole world. EU candidate
countries will be forced to close their most rickety reactors .
Earthquake-prone Taiwan has its own worries, as does
accident-prone Japan. Another difficulty is the disposal of
nuclear waste. No country yet has a permanent waste-disposal
facility, though America where rising oil and gas prices have
made nuclear power more attractive wants to build one in the
Nevada desert. Italy last produced nuclear power in 1987 but is
still pondering where to store its radioactive waste. Some
scientists hope that uranium-eating bacteria will help.
Economist.com
*****************************************************************
3 Government set to take stake in British Energy
Scotsman.com
Mon 16 Sep 2002
/Andrew Murray-Watson senior business reporter/
THE government is considering taking a majority stake in
beleaguered electricity generator British Energy in an attempt to
prevent the company collapsing into bankruptcy.
It is believed that the government will reject calls to force the
East Kilbride-based group into administration - a move the
company believes would cost the taxpayer significantly more than
providing the necessary financing to keep it afloat.
The group will this week appoint a heavyweight bank to work
alongside existing advisor Lazards to assist in drawing up the
plans.
The deal will see the government commit to pouring hundreds of
millions of pounds into British Energy, on top of the £410
million it has already provided.
It is understood that the next tranche of funding will be
provided in exchange for an equity stake in a debt-for-shares
swap.
A source close to the negotiations described the 27 September
deadline set by the government for British Energy to come up with
a long-term survival plan as a "staging post".
He said: "Putting British Energy into administration would be
astronomically expensive and damaging for the government. This
scenario bears comparison with that of Railtrack, but I believe
the DTI has learnt its lesson and will keep British Energy
trading."
It is believed that the financial restructuring of British Energy
will not be completed until the middle of next year at the
earliest.
A Department of Trade and Industry spokeswoman declined to
comment on the proposals, but said: "Security of supply remains
the main priority. We are still talking to the company and
looking at the issues."
Ministers are said to be in favour of the government taking a
majority stake in the company, as it would avoid complete
renationalisation of the nuclear electricity generator.
British Energy was thrown a £410 million lifeline last week by
Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
The group, which generates about one-quarter of Britain?s
electricity, warned it faced insolvency unless it received
immediate assistance.
Another less likely outcome is a more radical measure which would
see a shake-up of the nuclear energy industry as a whole, with
British Energy combined with British Nuclear Fuels.
British Energy runs eight nuclear power plants in the UK and has
been hammered by falling wholesale electricity prices.
Its financial situation has led to speculation of takeover bids
from rival firms and billionaire Warren Buffett.
Two American groups, Florida Power & Light and Entergy, are said
to be forming a queue for the business with Electricite de
France.
©2002 scotsman.com | contact
*****************************************************************
4 Nuclear Succor for North Korea
Monday, Sep. 16, 2002. Page 8
By Matt Bivens
In his famous "axis of evil" speech, President George W. Bush
said "North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of
mass destruction while starving its citizens."
Fair enough.
So why is the United States hand-delivering to Great Leader Kim
Jong Il a pair of nuclear power reactors capable of producing
enough weapons-grade plutonium each year to make dozens of
nuclear bombs?
In the early 1990s, North Korea was running domestically built
reactors that were churning out bomb-grade plutonium. It was the
heart of a covert weapons program that has, according to U.S.
intelligence, already yielded "one or two" nuclear bombs.
The Clinton administration convinced Pyongyang to shut down those
reactors and to allow in UN weapons inspectors. In return, North
Korea was to get two U.S.-designed light-water reactors, or LWRs,
and free heating oil each year until they were built. The Bush
team has not blocked the policy, and last month concrete was
poured for the reactor foundations.
If North Korea needs energy to replace its homemade reactors, why
not build them coal- or gas-fired plants? These are far cheaper
to build and run than nuclear plants. And as an added bonus, coal
plants can't moonlight as factories for weapons of mass
destruction.
Apparently the State Department has convinced itself light-water
reactors can't be used to make bombs. But they can -- something
the State Department does recognize when discussing Russia's
plans to build the same reactors in Iran.
"LWRs could be used to produce dozens of bombs' worth of
weapons-grade plutonium in both North Korea and Iran," write
Henry Sokolski, who runs a nuclear nonproliferation center (
[http://www.npec-web.org] ) in Washington, and Victor Gilinsky, a
former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"This is true of all LWRs -- a depressing fact U.S. policymakers
have managed to block out."
Even the State Department's uneasily evasive language gives up
the game: the LWRs in North Korea (apparently unlike Russia's in
Iran) are "proliferation-resistant." As opposed, one assumes, to
"proliferation-proof."
The old Korean-designed reactors had to be refueled frequently,
and it was easy for Pyongyang to quietly pull out the bombs-grade
gunk inside. Light-water reactors, by contrast, have to be shut
down for an extended period to extract such material. This is
what qualifies them as "proliferation-resistant" -- because it's
hard to do this secretly.
Sokolski and Gilinsky, writing in The Washington Post, cited a
study by the Lawrence Livermore weapons laboratory, which says
upon the first scheduled refueling -- about 15 months after the
reactors go into operation -- an LWR will contain about 300
kilograms of near-weapons grade material. Assume North Korea
diverts that material to bomb-making, and it could have "a couple
of dozen bombs in a couple of months."
Yet the program's backers argue, straight-faced, that because
North Korea knows it will eventually be caught, it will be afraid
to do this. Never mind that North Korea, like Iraq, is still
keeping out UN weapons inspectors. And never mind that since
Sept. 11 last year, Washington has denied Americans much the same
knowledge of reactor safety and operations it now intends to
share with a regime listed as a state sponsor of terrorism.
The whole arrangement is so ludicrous that it's surprising more
of America's enterprising politicians aren't piling on to
complain about it. We are using the holiest of holies -- the
American taxpayer's dollar -- to build a nuclear program for a
reclusive North Korean dictator. Duh!
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is a
Washington-based fellow of The Nation Institute [
[http://www.thenation.com] ].
© Copyright 2002, The Moscow Times. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
5 Japan: 6 TEPCO cases deemed 'serious'
Daily Yomiuri On-Line
Yomiuri Shimbun
Tokyo Electric Power Co. may have violated laws, including one
governing nuclear reactors and related facilities, in six of 29
cases in which company records were falsified, according to the
findings of an investigation by the Economy, Trade and
International Ministry's Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency.
Details of the investigation were forwarded to a government panel
for nuclear safety Friday afternoon.
The agency analyzed information gathered during in on-site
investigations into 29 cases involving falsified records, which
were disclosed by a former employee of General Electric
International Inc. (GEII), dragging TEPCO into a scandal.
The ministry agency classed the instances according the following
four categories, based on the seriousness of the falsification
involved: -- Cases suspected of violating laws relating to the
operation of power plants -- Cases that should have been
officially documented and reported to the government
-- Cases that may have contradicted the firm's safety management
policy and business ethics
-- Cases that do not require further investigation.
According to the agency, six cases fell into the most serious
category. Four of the cases took place at No. 1 Fukushima nuclear
power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, where the company failed to
report the replacement of core shrouds to the government, despite
the fact TEPCO was aware of many cracks in the shrouds.
The fifth case concerned the No. 3 reactor at No. 2 Fukushima
nuclear power plant, where the core shroud was repaired and some
damage was concealed. The sixth case concerned No. 1 reactor at
No. 1 Fukushima plant, where the operator failed to report the
replacement of a cracked steam dryer to the government.
The agency believes the power plants in question reported the
damages to TEPCO headquarters, sources said.
Copyright 2002 The Yomiuri Shimbun
*****************************************************************
6 UK: BE hits new low on meltdown fears
This is Money
SHARES in British Energy fell by a fifth to a new low of 18p as
investors, fearful that the nuclear generator could be put into
administration, fled for the exits.
With 6m shares dealt in brisk trading, BE stock was marked down
4p as accountants from Deloitte & Touche were sent into the
company to get a better picture of its finances.
At the core of BE's woes is overcapacity in the UK electricity
market, which has helped to send wholesale electricity prices to
historic lows. The company, which produces about a fifth of all
UK electricity, made a £500m loss last year. Earlier this month
it received a £410m bail-out from the Government.
© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 16 September 2002 Terms and
Conditions
This Is London
*****************************************************************
7 British Energy set to seek extension of loan
FT.com
Sunday Sep 15 2002. All times are London time.
By Juliana Ratner and Andrew Taylor
Published: September 16 2002 5:00 | Last Updated: September 16 2002
British Energy is expected to seek an extension of its emergency
£410m ($636m) loan facility for several months to allow more time
for a longer-term rescue to be negotiated.
The government has given the nuclear generator until September 27
to produce outline proposals to restructure its finances, after
which the loan facility is due to lapse.
But British Energy executives do not believe it will allow enough
time to develop comprehensive proposals to satisfy its bankers
and trading partners.
The group, which produces more than 20 per cent of the country's
electricity, warned last week it faced insolvency without further
government assistance.
British Energy in crisis
British Energy nears the brink of collapse blaming low UK
electricity prices.
The company is also seeking to strengthen its financial team with
the appointment of extra advisers. British Energy wants an
adviser with restructuring expertise and a strong fixed income
arm to work alongside Lazard, which will continue to advise the
board on strategy.
A new adviser would be expected to help with future funding. The
company is understood to have narrowed its search to ABN Amro,
Merrill Lynch, UBS Warburg and Schroder Salomon Smith Barney.
Credit Suisse First Boston is advising the government.
The Department of Trade and Industry meanwhile has appointed
Deloitte & Touche to scrutinise all payments made by British
Energy, which has hired KPMG to make sure Deloitte gets all the
information it needs.
The generator, which blames low UK electricity prices for its
predicament, has signalled a need to make annual savings of at
least £280m to enable it to refinance £200m of UK and North
American bonds and £265m of other bank facilities.
Measures being considered include a reduction in nuclear fuel
reprocessing charges by the state-owned British Nuclear Fuels,
exemption for nuclear power from the climate change levy, and a
reduction in local authority rates at British Energy power
stations.
The group says it is asking to be treated the same as other types
of generators.
But large coal and gas-fired power station operators have asked
that any solution offered to British Energy be available to the
rest of the industry.
Companies that have spoken out against a British Energy-only deal
include AES, the owner of Drax power station in Yorkshire,
Europe's biggest coal-fired generator; American Electric Power,
with two large coal-fired power stations in northern England;
Powergen, which is owned by Eon of Germany and produces about 9
per cent of the country's electricity; and TXU, the US energy
group.
"FT" and "Financial Times" are
*****************************************************************
8 In the '50s, the U.S. exported atoms for peace; could they now be used in war?
U.S. News: (9/23/02) [usnews.com]
A home-grown nuclear threat
BY DOUGLAS PASTERNAK
It began with a tip from a Mafia informant. A smuggling ring was
hawking parts for nuclear missiles on the black market, the
informer told Italian police. By the time an undercover cop
infiltrated the ring two months later, the smugglers were
boasting that they could supply uranium from the warheads of the
missiles, too. The undercover agent, posing as an Egyptian
businessman with links to terrorists, agreed to pay $12.2 million
for the first of eight uranium elements the smugglers had to
offer. The next day, Feb. 27, 1998, police swooped in as the deal
went down in a Rome apartment surrounded by armed men with links
to organized crime. Thirteen men were eventually sentenced to
prison.
As it turns out, the 28-inch-long cylinder seized from the
traffickers was not the weapons-grade stuff the criminals had
advertised; it was an unirradiated fuel rod containing
low-enriched uranium that was nevertheless potentially dangerous.
The Mafia had suggested the material was Russian in origin. In
fact, "fuel rod 6916," as it was known, came from a far less
likely source: It had been shipped in 1971 to a nuclear research
reactor at the University of Kinshasa in Zaire, now the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. And it came from the General
Atomics plant in San Diego.
Side effects. The theft of the Kinshasa uranium illustrates the
unintended consequences of an ambitious Cold War-era program
known as Atoms for Peace. Started nearly 50 years ago by
President Dwight Eisenhower, Atoms for Peace exported nuclear
technology and material for economic, scientific, and medical
purposes to nations that agreed to refrain from developing
nuclear weapons. "It is not enough to take this weapon out of the
hands of the soldiers," said Eisenhower in a 1953 speech to the
United Nations. "It must be put into the hands of those who will
know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of
peace."
And so it was that the United States came to distribute huge
quantities of nuclear material worldwide, including 749 kilograms
of plutonium and 26.6 metric tons of highly enriched uranium, to
scores of countries from the 1950s to the 1970s. The initiative
is credited with improving everyday life through advances in
nuclear medicine and the development of nuclear power.
Yet, successful as it was diplomatically, critics say Atoms for
Peace failed in its essential mission of stemming proliferation
and, in fact, has created a new security threat. Many experts now
worry that the exported materials could be used to make "dirty
bombs" or to help hostile nations develop nuclear weapons. The
plutonium used in India's first nuclear bomb test in 1974, for
instance, came from a reactor that used U.S.-supplied materials.
The United States also supplied small quantities of plutonium to
Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq. Says Matthew Bunn, assistant director
of Harvard University's Managing the Atom Project: "We should not
have been sending highly enriched uranium all around the world.
That was dumb."
Potentially more troubling, Atoms for Peace also pushed the
Russians into sharing nuclear technology of their own, with
nations such as North Korea and Iran. "The Atoms for Peace
program set the framework for Russian reactors in Iran today and
French reactors in Iraq," says Fred Ikle, a former director of
the U.S. Arms Con- trol and Disarmament Agency. In 1981, Israel
bombed the French-built Osiraq reactor in fear that Iraq was
using the facility to build nuclear weapons. And fear of Iraqi
nuclear weapons has pushed the United States ever closer to
military action against that country. Military experts also worry
that Russian-built reactors in Iran are being used as part of a
nuclear weapons program there.
Before the September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States paid
little attention to tracking low-level nuclear material and small
quantities of weapons-grade material. Even after the theft of
fuel rod 6916 and a second fuel rod–still missing–from Kinshasa,
the United States never conducted a security review there. That
is hardly an isolated case. Since 1975, the United States has
conducted only one security assessment of nuclear facilities in
Pakistan and India that use U.S. material. A Department of Energy
inspector general's report issued last March found that the
department could not fully account for 536 government-owned
sources of plutonium, provided to 33 countries, because it lacked
an adequate accounting system. "We had sort of lost our sense of
how dangerous this material could be," says Susan Eisenhower,
president of the Eisenhower Institute and granddaughter of the
former president. Adds a former Department of Energy official:
"We were thinking of the Homer Simpson problem, not the bin Laden
problem."
"Loose nukes." Even today the United States has no policy for
tracking its exported nuclear materials. This is despite the fact
that it has spent millions of dollars helping former Soviet-bloc
countries control their own "loose nukes." Just last month, for
instance, the United States and Russia conducted an elaborate
top-secret mission to spirit away 100 pounds of weapons-grade
uranium from an aging nuclear reactor in Yugoslavia. The
nighttime military-style operation, which removed enough uranium
to make as many as three nuclear bombs, took place at Belgrade's
Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences.
Now, Vinca and the 537 other active nuclear research reactors
around the world–including 53 in the United States–are considered
among the most serious and underappreciated threats to nuclear
security. Because research reactors use much less nuclear
material than power plant reactors, the potential consequences of
an attack against one would be less drastic than what would occur
at a power reactor. But research reactors also have far less
security, making them more vulnerable to attack.
Generally located at universities, research reactors vary greatly
in the materials they use and keep on hand. An attack against a
reactor using low-enriched uranium would not be devastating, but
it would almost certainly cause massive panic and huge economic
costs. Reactors that use highly enriched uranium are potentially
more dangerous; an attack against some of these facilities,
according to the Energy Department, could release more radiation
than the 1986 accident at Chernobyl.
Most nuclear weapons consist of uranium that is 90 percent
enriched or higher. But even material that is only 20 percent
enriched–such as the uranium stolen from the Kinshasa
reactor–could help jumpstart a nation's nuclear weapons program,
experts say. "If you were a state trying to make a nuclear bomb,"
says Scott Parrish of the Monterey Institute's Center for
Nonproliferation Studies, "20 percent gets you closer to that
goal."
The reactor at Kinshasa, built by the Belgians and supplied by
the United States, was the first of its kind in Africa and an
important symbol of national pride. But even at the height of the
Cold War, experts say that it was foolhardy to build such a
facility in the impoverished nation, which for years had been
ravaged by chaos and corruption. "It was just really dumb to do
that," says Daniel Simpson, who served as U.S. ambassador to
Zaire.
By the mid-1990s, the climate in Congo had only grown worse as
civil war tore the country apart and led to the downfall of
Mobutu Sésé Séko's regime. According to some reports, the outer
wall of the Kinshasa reactor–though not the reactor itself–was
hit by a mortar during the fighting. Earlier, the country's
political unrest had prompted the United States to halt the
export of a spare part for the reactor. U.S. officials also
considered ways to secure the uranium at Kinshasa, but they
ultimately did nothing. "We knew the reactor was in trouble. We
knew it had no security. We knew the country was in chaos," says
Jon Wolfsthal, a former DOE official now at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. "But we didn't care all that
much about it."
That was then. It remains unclear how the uranium from the
Kinshasa reactor ended up in the hands of organized crime. But
whatever the answer, in the sobering context of September 11,
many say that the episode underscores the need for far better
control of U.S.-exported nuclear materials. "I think the fact
that the Mafia got their hands on low-enriched uranium and not
highly enriched uranium was simply chance," says Charles Curtis,
former deputy secretary of energy. "What is certain is that they
are not going to make that mistake again."
With Eleni E. Dimmler in Rome
Copyright © 2002 U.S. News & World Report, L.P. All rights
*****************************************************************
9 British Energy set to seek extension of loan
[http://www.ft.com]
By Juliana Ratner and Andrew Taylor
Published: September 16 2002 5:00 | Last Updated: September 16
2002 5:00
BE is expected to seek an extension of its emergency £410m
($636m) loan facility for several months to allow more time for a
longer-term rescue to be negotiated.
The government has given the nuclear generator until September 27
to produce outline proposals to restructure its finances, after
which the loan facility is due to lapse.
But British Energy executives do not believe it will allow enough
time to develop comprehensive proposals to satisfy its bankers
and trading partners.
The group, which produces more than 20 per cent of the country's
electricity, warned last week it faced insolvency without further
government assistance.
British Energy in crisis
British Energy nears the brink of collapse blaming low UK
electricity prices.
The company is also seeking to strengthen its financial team with
the appointment of extra advisers. British Energy wants an
adviser with restructuring expertise and a strong fixed income
arm to work alongside Lazard, which will continue to advise the
board on strategy.
A new adviser would be expected to help with future funding. The
company is understood to have narrowed its search to ABN Amro,
Merrill Lynch, UBS Warburg and Schroder Salomon Smith Barney.
Credit Suisse First Boston is advising the government.
The Department of Trade and Industry meanwhile has appointed
Deloitte &Touche to scrutinise all payments made by British
Energy, which has hired KPMG to make sure Deloitte gets all the
information it needs.
The generator, which blames low UK electricity prices for its
predicament, has signalled a need to make annual savings of at
least £280m to enable it to refinance £200m of UK and North
American bonds and £265m of other bank facilities.
Measures being considered include a reduction in nuclear fuel
reprocessing charges by the state-owned British Nuclear Fuels,
exemption for nuclear power from the climate change levy, and a
reduction in local authority rates at British Energy power
stations.
The group says it is asking to be treated the same as other types
of generators.
But large coal and gas-fired power station operators have asked
that any solution offered to British Energy be available to the
rest of the industry.
Companies that have spoken out against a British Energy-only deal
include AES, the owner of Drax power station in Yorkshire,
Europe's biggest coal-fired generator; American Electric Power,
with two large coal-fired power stations in northern England;
Powergen, which is owned by Eon of Germany and produces about 9
per cent of the country's electricity; and TXU, the US energy
group.
© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2002. "FT" and
*****************************************************************
10 Japan: TEPCO to tighten safety
Asahi Shimbun www.asahi.com [http://www.asahi.com/]
The Asahi Shimbun
In a bid to increase oversight and prevent safety violations at
its nuclear power plants, the new safety management division
being formed by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) will be placed
under the control of the company's head office.
Repair and maintenance groups currently operate independently at
power plants, making it relatively easy to conceal problems and
falsify records to keep the plants running.
TEPCO will announce details of the plan Tuesday, when it reveals
the results of in-house probes of cover-up cases and the names of
10 officials to be reprimanded, sources said over the weekend.
In July, TEPCO executives set up safety administration
departments at nuclear power stations in an effort to keep better
track of problems.
Currently, about 20 employees of the safety administration
department are stationed at three nuclear power
stations-Fukushima First, Fukushima Second and
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa-to check on technical teams,
electricity-generating sections and repair and maintenance
groups.
The latest move places the safety administration departments into
a quality management division under the direct control of the
head office. The division's staff workers will belong to the head
office but will be stationed full-time at the nuclear power
stations, the sources said.
TEPCO will also form a panel of about 20 outside specialists to
study the nuclear-related divisions, which officials of other
companies have dubbed TEPCO's ``sanctuaries'' because of the
amount of freedom from oversight they have.(IHT/Asahi: September
16,2002)
(09/16)
[Copyright Asahi Shimbun. All rights reserved. No reproduction or
*****************************************************************
11 Nuclear Plant Safeguards
Los Angeles Times - latimes.com Miller Lite
KTLA
September 16, 2002
EDITORIAL
Recent reports that Al Qaeda terrorists originally considered
slamming airplanes into nuclear power plants but instead targeted
skyscrapers and monuments are of small comfort to Americans still
jittery about future attacks.
The nation's 103 commercial nuclear plants are already "hard
targets." Their domes and towers are made of thick reinforced
concrete. Sophisticated security systems and armed guards protect
control rooms and monitor access to plants. In the new world of
terrorism, however, where zealots are willing to die to cause
mass destruction, these plants are still not "hard" enough.
Since 9/11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the utilities
that run commercial power plants have implemented many welcome
changes. All facilities have remained on the highest state of
alert. The NRC has ordered plants to upgrade security in dozens
of ways. More than 1,000 new guards now protect the nation's
nuclear plants, bringing the total to about 6,000. New hires must
pass a comprehensive background check. The FBI has checked all
plant employees against a watch list. Many facilities have moved
their security checkpoints farther from plant buildings and added
electronic sensors and concrete barricades to keep out intruders
or truck bombs.
The NRC says it is in touch daily with the Office of Homeland
Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal
Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard and other security and
emergency-response agencies. The FAA bars planes from circling
over nuclear plants, and at the San Onofre plant in Orange County
and others on navigable waters, the Coast Guard has set up
exclusion zones barring boats, swimmers and fishing.
Yet there are still weak spots.
Federal rules, publicly available, still only require plants to
be able to repel a handful of intruders on foot and one person
inside the facility--a quaint scenario in light of 9/11. While
the NRC says its new orders postulate more realistic attacks, it
won't say how realistic--for security reasons.
Moreover, the NRC has suspended the mock assault drills it had
required in past years in favor of "tabletop," or paper,
exercises, insisting that plant managers are overwhelmed with new
hires and security directives. Yet guards at many plants
performed dismally when the drills were run. Some plants still
perform their own "force on force" drills, pitting some plant
security guards against others. But the NRC doesn't always
monitor these exercises.
Hiring more guards alone will not safeguard plants. A recent
survey of new power plant guards found that even those who had
never previously fired a gun received only limited weapons
training. Some guards told researchers that they were fearful of
their ability to defend the plant in the event of an assault.
SB 1746, now before the full Senate, would build on the NRC's
efforts to upgrade security by filling in some of these gaps. The
measure, by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada), would add hiring and
training standards for guards, assign a federal security
coordinator to each plant and establish a federal task force to
take a comprehensive look at the security of nuclear plants. The
NRC and the utilities, which oppose several provisions of Reid's
bill, don't believe that they need this help. We think his
proposals can only make everyone safer.
Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times
*****************************************************************
12 Japan: Agency to recheck nuclear power plants
Daily Yomiuri On-Line
Yomiuri Shimbun
In light of a series of nuclear reactor damage cover-up scandals
involving Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the Nuclear and
Industrial Safety Agency will recheck 14 reactors at eight
nuclear power plants owned by six power utilities, including
TEPCO, it was learned Saturday. The Economy, Trade and Industry
Ministry's agency in charge of inspecting operating safety at
nuclear power plant last September instructed six of the nation's
nine power companies that have boiling-water reactors with
core-protecting shrouds to submit reports on damage, if any, to
their nuclear reactors.
Although five of the six power companies have presented reports
as instructed, the agency will reissue instructions in the near
future, asking the six to carry out safety checks of shrouds
again, according to officials. TEPCO in August admitted it may
have falsified nuclear facility inspection reports, subsequently
finalizing a list of 29 inspection reports from the late 1980s to
the 1990s in which evidence of cracks in reactor shrouds may have
been ignored.
The reactors subject to fresh shroud inspections are: TEPCO
Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant's No. 6 reactor and its
Fukushima No. 2 plant's No. 1 reactor in Fukushima Prefecture;
the Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5 reactors of its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant
in Niigata Prefecture; Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s Onagawa No. 1
and No. 2 reactors in Miyagi Prefecture; Chubu Electric Power
Co.'s Hamaoka Nos. 2, 3 and 4 reactors in Shizuoka Prefecture;
Hokuriku Electric Power Co.'s Shiga No. 1 reactor in Ishikawa
Prefecture; Chugoku Electric Power Co.'s Shimane No. 2 reactor in
Shimane Prefecture; and Japan Atomic Power Co.'s Tokai No. 2
reactor in Ibaraki Prefecture. Regarding the need for a new round
of inspections, an agency official said the agency, in issuing
the instructions in September 2001, failed to specify in detail
what was meant by "cracks" in shrouds.
So some power utilities may not have reported "signs of possible
cracks" in inspection reports submitted at the time, the official
said. In the planned new inspection reports, findings compiled by
nuclear power plant inspection companies will be weighed against
reports to be submitted by the power plants involved, according
to the agency. Inspections of cracks in shrouds are usually
conducted by inserting a remote-controlled underwater TV camera
into the reactor core, according to the agency.
If the power utilities keep video images of the inspections, the
agency will also ask them to include the images with the reports,
it said.
Copyright 2002 The Yomiuri Shimbun
*****************************************************************
13 Nuclear blast at Chernobyl power plant was caused by UFO
Pravda.RU
¹ Sep, 16 2002
Eyewitnesses say that they saw an UFO flying above the exploded
reactor
Sixteen years have passed since the disaster at the Chernobyl
nuclear plant on April 26, 1986. The explosion happened at 1:23
a.m. Tons of radioactive products were emitted in the atmosphere.
The machine shop of the plant was gripped with fire, the fire was
about to move on to the third power-generating unit of the plant.
Firemen managed to extinguish the fire several hours after. A lot
of them died later of radiation exposure.
A lot has been written about the Chernobyl disaster, both in
Russia and abroad. It seems that the physical nature of the
tragedy was determined, as well as the people, who were
responsible for it. The fourth power-generating unit was supposed
to be repaired. Yet, before shutting it down, the administration
of the plant decided to perform several experiments. Steam
delivery was particularly cut to one of turbogenerators in order
to find out the time period, during which electric power would be
still generated due to rotation of a rotor. The experiment was
not well-organized. They cut a part of the breakdown protection
of the generating unit. There was another test conducted
simultaneously: the study of turbine vibration.
They started decreasing the capacity of the generating unit at
1:00 a.m. on April 25. The emergency cooling system of the
reactor was shut down at two p.m. The reactor was supposed to be
stopped by that time.
However, the energetic company Kievenergo did not know anything
about those tests. An energy control officer did not allow to
stop the fourth generating unit of the plant. Those were the
prerequisites of the tragedy. A lot of people are still suffering
from it.
The explosion was very strong, but luckily, it was a thermal
blast. The fourth power generating unit was basically destroyed
with overheated steam. There was no nuclear explosion. There were
about 180 tons of enriched uranium in that reactor. If a grand
blast had happened, a half of Europe would not have been depicted
on any maps right now.
There are lots of theories to explain that luck. One of them says
that it was a help from an Unidentified Flying Object. When
troublesome events started happening, some people saw a spaceship
above the fourth generating unit of the Chernobyl plant.
Eyewitnesses say, the UFO was there six hours running, hundreds
of people saw it. They started writing about it only two years
after the catastrophe. Of course, the information about that
appeared in magazines on ufology. As it is generally believed,
serious people don’t read that.
Here is what Mikhail Varitsky said: “Me and other people from my
team went to the site of the blast at night. We saw a ball of
fire, it was slowly flying in the sky. I think the ball was six
or eight meters in diameter. Then we saw two rays of crimson
light, stretching towards the fourth unit. That object was some
300 meters far from the reactor. It all lasted for about three
minutes. The lights of the object went out and it flew away in
the north-west direction.”
The UFO above the power-generating unit brought the radiation
level down. It was decreased almost four times, and it was
registered by special devices. It probably prevented a nuclear
blast.
Three years after that (on September 16, 1989), the fourth
power-generating unit emitted a lot radiation in the atmosphere.
Several hours after that a doctor saw an object in the sky above
the Chernobyl plant. Doctor Gospina described it as an
“amber-like.” She said she could see the top and the bottom of it
too.
Reporter from the newspaper the Echo of Chernobyl , V. Navran,
was photographing the machine shop of the Chernobyl plant in
October of 1990. “I photographed the top of it, getting a part of
the hole above. I remember everything very well – I did not see
any UFO over there. However, when I developed the film, I clearly
saw an object that was hovering above the hole in the roof.” The
object looked like the one that doctor Gospina saw.
It seems that aliens are not worried with the fate of the
humanity. They are basically worried about the living conditions
on the planet.
Anomalia.Ru
Translated by Dmitry Sudakov
Copyright ©1999 by "Pravda.RU [http://www.pravda.ru/] ". When
*****************************************************************
14 Closing Indian Point
New York Times Opinion
*September 16, 2002*
To the Editor:
The resolution passed by the Westchester County Board of
Legislators calling for the closing of the Indian Point nuclear
power plant "at the earliest possible time" (news article, Sept.
10), while not carrying the weight of law, sends an important
symbolic message to the state and federal authorities.
The unanimous vote reflects the opinion of the majority of county
residents and shows that this issue supersedes partisan politics.
Its passage makes a clear statement that the financial and
energy-related benefits of the plant, even to its home county, do
not justify the potential risks of an accident or attack.
In 1979, Indian Point was described as one of the most
inappropriate sites in existence by Robert Ryan, the director of
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of State Programs. It
is even more inappropriate in the post-Sept. 11 world. GARY SHAW
Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. Sept. 11, 2002
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
*****************************************************************
15 Who needs dirty bombs?
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 22:04:16 -0500 (CDT)
[All ads are inserted by Topica without our consent. Ignore them.]
If a commercial plane containing depleted uranium crashes into a
building containing depleted uranium, creating lots of dust...
who needs to construct dirty bombs?
I was interested in this story for reasons other than ABC's border
security test. I didn't know about depleted uranium being "used
widely for commercial purposes such as counterweights in elevators
and in aircraft." I now wonder how many sealed verdicts there
have been in lawsuits over that one. "Radiation less than a typical
chest X-ray" is "safe"??? What about the elevator repair and
maintenance folks who spend their lives in them? What about flight
attendants and pilots already dosed with cosmic rays? How much
depleted uranium was released on 9/1l? How much in ordinary
accidents?
ABC Tests U.S. Border Security Fri Sep 6,10:18 PM ET
By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - While some news organizations have tried to sneak
material through airport screeners, ABC News thought bigger: the
network smuggled depleted uranium into New York.
ABC conducted its operation to test how authorities are guarding
against the possibility of a nuclear "dirty bomb" attack. Correspondent
Brian Ross' investigation will air as part of ABC's Sept. 11
anniversary coverage next week.
Federal authorities are angry that they've had to spend time on
ABC's experiment.
"The U.S. Customs Service is engaged in a deadly serious business,"
said its spokesman, Dean Boyd. "The American public wants us to
focus on real threats, not fake ones."
The story comes amidst controversy over stories in the New York
Daily News and on CBS this week about how journalists tried to test
airport security by trying to pass items that should have set off
alarms.
ABC said it borrowed 15 pounds of depleted uranium from an
environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, to send
on its journey. The network said it consulted with experts to make
sure it was safe; the Customs Service said such material has less
radiation than a typical chest X-ray.
Boyd noted that depleted uranium is used widely for commercial
purposes such as counterweights in elevators and in aircraft.
Ross carried it by train from Austria to Istanbul, Turkey. The
contents clearly marked, it was packed in a container with wooden
horse carts and terra cotta vases and shipped overseas to New York.
Through it all, the depleted uranium went undetected.
"Seven countries, 25 days and 15 pounds of uranium," Ross said,
"and not a single question."
The network was careful to obey all laws, federal and international,
he said. The route and manner of transport followed a path outlined
in court documents by an Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites)
associate, who was investigated for his role in a plot to smuggle
nuclear material, he said.
"One of our big concerns going into this was that we didn't want
to teach terrorists something they didn't already know,"
he said.
ABC sent the container from Istanbul, a known smuggler's hotbed,
to an address that had never received overseas shipping before
because, in both cases, that should have made authorities suspicious,
he said.
ABC and Customs differ on how authorities responded to a potential
threat.
Of 1,139 containers on the vessel, the ABC package was one of fewer
than a dozen identified for closer inspection before the ship even
reached port, Boyd said. It was inspected by X-ray equipment and
a separate device that tests for radiation and was found to pose
no threat, he said.
Ross said, however, that the suitcase of depleted uranium would
emit about the same radiation as live uranium would if it had been
shielded in a lead-lined case. The container should have been opened
and checked, he said.
"They missed it," he said. "They could say that it was no danger,
which is true because we made sure there was no danger. But I think
that misses the point."
Boyd insisted inspectors have ways to determine without opening
the container whether the uranium was live or not.
"It was a fake threat that we were forced to divert resources and
manpower to address," he said.
Responded Paul Friedman, executive vice president of ABC News:
"When did they divert any resources? They didn't catch a thing."
Friedman said the press plays an important role in testing how well
government is protecting its citizens.
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16 UK: MSP challenges Executive on Gulf war syndrome
By Alan Crawford Political Correspondent
The Scottish Executive is to come under pressure to recognise the
existence of Gulf war syndrome, potentially throwing MSPs into
conflict with their Westminster counterparts.
Labour MSP John McAllion has lodged a motion urging the Executive
to acknowledge concerns over the health conditions of Scottish
Gulf war veterans and ensure that they receive the appropriate
medical treatment they say they need.
The motion is attracting cross-party support -- although not from
the Tories -- and has received the 12 signatures necessary to
trigger a debate .
McAllion said that the 'massive jabs' given to servicemen in the
Gulf to counter the potential effects of biological weapons such
as anthrax , along with their exposure to weapons containing
depleted uranium, meant veterans' immune systems were 'shot to
pieces'.
'The MoD's defence is it does not exist, that there's no Gulf war
syndrome. Eleven of the countries of the coalition [formed to
fight the Gulf war against Iraq] recognise Gulf war syndrome and
accept it does exist so that servicemen are getting compensation
and help with medical treatment. Britain is one of five countries
which does not.
'That's where the Scottish parliament can come in. We certainly
have an interest in how the health service is reacting to people
suffering from Gulf war syndrome,' McAllion said.
www.gulfweb.org
©2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
17 Cullen under pressure to check radioactive homes *
/online.ie 16 Sep 2002/
The Minister for the Environment is being called on to legalise a
grant scheme that helps householders protect their homes against
radon gas.
Minister Cullen is being asked to sign into law the grant scheme
because nearly 10% of homes are thought to have unacceptable
levels of radon.
Next to smoking, long-term exposure to radon gas in the home is
the greatest single cause of lung cancer in Ireland.
The radioactive gas is a natural occurring substance from rocks
and soil.
While it is harmless in open air, it is dangerous in enclosed
spaces or indoors.
It is now thought that almost 91,000 Irish homes probably have
radon levels above what is the recommended amount.
However, according to the Radiological Protection Institute of
Ireland, only 2,500 of these have been identified.
Martin Cullen is expected to be asked to sign the checking scheme
into law when the National Radon Forum holds its inaugural
meeting in Dublin today.
Plans to develop uranium mine are abandoned after protests at
Johannesburg summit. Jason Nissé reports
15 September 2002
Mining giant Rio Tinto has indicated it is about to abandon plans
to develop a giant uranium mine in northern Australia in the
teeth of opposition from the local Aboriginal people.
However, the move will not avert a full- scale senate
investigation into uranium mining in Australia, which will focus
heavily on Rio Tinto's activities.
Rio Tinto had been hoping to develop the Jabiluka mine in
Australia's Northern Territories, which is based a couple of
miles from its existing Ranger mine, one of the largest
uranium-producing facilities in the world. It acquired the
projects when it bought a rival miner, North, for £1.1bn two
years ago.
The Jabiluka development is in the middle of a national park
called Kakadu, which is occupied by an Aboriginal group called
the Mirrar people. Rio Tinto bored a 1.2km underground tunnel
between Ranger and Jabiluka, despite court action taken out by
the Mirrar people to stop it. They have been protesting for more
than five years against the development, taking their cause to
the Australian senate, top cricket matches and the Johannesburg
summit on sustainable development.
At a meeting during the summit, Rio Tinto's chairman, Sir Robert
Wilson, said that there would be "no development of that project
without the consent of the traditional landowners, the Mirrar
people. We won't develop it without their consent, full stop."
In response to Sir Robert's comments, Yvonne Margarula, the
senior traditional owner of the Mirrar people, said: "I'm not
going to agree to the development of the mine, for whatever
reason they want from it, money or whatever else. I'm not going
to allow them to destroy any more of my land." Ms Margarula's
comments need to be ratified by a land commission, but as she is
the effective head of her community, this is being seen as the
last word on the matter.
Rio Tinto said it had no plans to develop Jabiluka, not least
because of weak uranium prices. But the Mirrar opposition
indicates there is no chance of developing the mine at all, and
Rio Tinto will come under pressure to end the care and
maintenance operation on the site and return it to its natural
state.
The protests over Jabiluka have prompted the senate to start an
investigation into uranium miningin Australia at the end of this
month. One major issue will be pollution from the Ranger mine,
which is pumping out about a litre of contaminated water a
second.
Rio Tinto, through its majority owned subsidiary Energy Resources
of Australia, operates two other uranium mines, Honeymoon and
Beverley in South Australia.
* to New Scientist
print edition.
New Scientist Archive
*****************************************************************
27 Two nuclear waste bills await Davis' attention
SignOnSanDiego.com > News > State/The West --
By Jennifer Coleman ASSOCIATED PRESS September 15, 2002
SACRAMENTO Gov. Gray Davis has signed one bill about nuclear
waste, creating standards for the state's first low-level nuclear
waste facility, and two other bills concerning radioactive waste
are on his desk. One would require an inventory of low-level
nuclear waste stored in California, including hospitals and
laboratories that produce the waste. The inventory is long
overdue, say supporters, but the list of specific sites won't be
available to the public. The other bill would ban the dumping of
any debris with residual radioactivity at municipal landfills,
essentially overturning a regulation adopted by the state
Department of Health Services.
On Thursday, Davis signed a bill by Assemblyman Fred Keeley,
which is intended to help California find a burial site for
low-level nuclear waste, as it is obligated under a four-state
compact. The new law takes a proposed site at Ward Valley out of
consideration until the state develops the facility's guidelines.
The site was stalled by lawsuits, and Keeley said the law will
let the state meet its obligation with Arizona, South Dakota and
North Dakota. The approval of Keeley's bill makes it even more
important to have an inventory of how much low-level radioactive
waste is stored in California and where it is held, said Sen.
Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica. Kuehl, the author of the bill to
compile that information, said the lack of data has hindered
other nuclear cleanup legislation because of "wildly conflicting
data about how much there was, where it was going. I was tired of
getting conflicted pseudo science."
Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter
of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said his organization
supported the inventory, but would have liked to see the
information made public. Instead of listing the sites, the bill
calls for an inventory of the total waste, which, Kuehl said, was
done to avoid providing information for terrorists looking for
supplies for a "dirty bomb." Davis hasn't taken a position on
Kuehl's bill, or a bill by Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles,
that would tighten regulations for disposal low-level radioactive
waste.
That bill would set aside DHS regulations that allow sites with
residual radioactivity of up to 25 millirem to be released from
DHS oversight. That's roughly equivalent to having four
additional chest X-rays each year. Debris from decommissioned
sites could then be taken to municipal garbage dumps or metal
recyclers, Romero said, without notifying the landfills or
requiring additional training for landfill workers. DHS officials
said the new regulations mirror federal guidelines and pose no
public threat.
But Romero said DHS didn't anticipate what would happen to items
with residual radioactivity after the nuclear sites were
decommissioned and no longer regulated by DHS.
Romero's bill would also bring the Department of Toxic Substances
Control and the California Integrated Waste Management Board into
discussions on the regulations.
Her bill has a broad coalition of support, from metal recyclers
to the Sierra Club, Romero said. But the state's two largest
utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Southern California
Edison, oppose it and question its scientific support.
Romero said the utilities are more worried about money than
science. Parfrey said he supports the goals of Romero's bill,
which would ban decommissioning of a site with any radioactivity
above what would occur naturally, but that it's probably too
strict for Davis to sign. An anti-nuclear group, the Committee to
Bridge the Gap, successfully sued the state in April over the
regulations, saying DHS didn't examine the environmental impact
and the public was left out of a rule-making process that
included only one public hearing. In August, DHS lawyers told
Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Gail Ohanesian that they
would follow federal guidelines that would let sites be released
at 25 millirem.
Ohanesian rejected the state's response, saying DHS was
"attempting to avoid the clear meaning of this court's ruling."
The state has until Oct. 7 to turn over additional information to
the court, including any sites that were released since the
judge's order.
On the Net: Read the bills, SB1970 by Romero, AB2214 by Keeley,
and SB2065 by Kuehl, at www.leginfo.ca.gov
[http://www.leginfo.ca.gov]
© Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
*****************************************************************
28 LES: Filing raises issues that ended past project -
Sunday, 09/15/02 | Middle Tennessee News &Information
The Tennessean
By KATHY CARLSON Staff Writer
In April, Louisiana Energy Services raised six issues on which it
wanted federal regulators to rule before licensing hearings were
held on its proposed uranium enrichment plant in Hartsville,
Tenn.
The issues were discussed with officials of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission later that month at a public meeting at
which prior notice was given, said Nan Kilkeary, spokeswoman for
LES, an international consortium that proposes to build the $1.1
billion nuclear-fuel plant.
Plans for the Tennessee plant were announced last week, more than
10 years after LES' plans for a plant in Claiborne Parish, La.,
surfaced.
Information on how each issue was addressed in the Louisiana case
was gathered from LES materials as well as from nuclear industry
trade journals.
LES will not pursue one request, on whether proof of the need for
the plant must be presented, Kilkeary said Friday. Federal
regulators have made it clear that that issue will be addressed
at the licensing hearing. LES' request on this point is thus ''a
non-issue at this point,'' she said.
Here are the five other issues:
• How to address issues of environmental justice, or the plant's
effect on minority and low-income communities.
This was a key issue in the Louisiana case, in which foes of the
plant charged LES with ''environmental racism.'' LES strongly
denied the charges.
Moreover, according to a 1995 report in the trade journal Inside
NRC, agency staff said environmental justice factors should not
impede licensing of the proposed plant.
In the Louisiana case, the judges panel that hears and decides on
applications for NRC licenses ruled against LES, saying its
environmental report plus a similar NRC report did not fully
address some key issues, Nucleonics Week reported in 1997. The
following year, the full NRC partially overturned the panel but
said it could consider whether a facility would
disproportionately affect minorities, Inside NRC reported.
In April, LES suggested six ways to define environmental justice
issues, including the issue of disproportionate impact.
• How to review LES's financial qualifications to build the
plant.
The judges panel ruled in 1996 that LES was not financially
qualified, but the next year, the full commission overturned that
ruling. In April, LES asked the NRC to affirm the ruling that it
made in 1997 on how to assess the company's financial
qualifications.
• Disposal of depleted uranium that remains after the enrichment
process.
In April, LES asked the NRC to rule that paying the U.S.
Department of Energy to take the depleted uranium, as LES says is
permitted under federal law, meets the licensing requirement of a
''plausible strategy'' for handling the materials.
''As a result, no further consideration of this issue would be
required by the licensing board,'' LES wrote to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
LES officials consider the depleted uranium a byproduct or
reusable resource, rather than waste.
The NRC must define the material as a waste before the DOE would
have to accept it under federal law, NRC officials said last
week.
• The final two issues raised in April, the need for an antitrust
review and the fact that foreign companies are part of the LES
venture, did not seem to have been major issues in LES' Louisiana
case, based on available news materials.
LES says its comments on these issues ask that the NRC recognize
changes in the law.
© Copyright 2002 The Tennessean
*****************************************************************
29 UK: Protesters reach nuclear cargo
BBC NEWS | UK |
Monday, 16 September, 2002, 18:06 GMT 19:06 UK
[The Nuclear Free Irish Sea flotilla] The flotilla reached the
shipment
A flotilla of environmental campaigners has reached two ships
carrying nuclear fuel to Cumbria.
The lightly armed ships with their cargo of radioactive fuel are
heading to the Sellafield nuclear processing plant and are due to
dock in Barrow-in-Furness on Tuesday.
Protesters - led by the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior -
reached the vessels at 1500 BST off the Welsh coast on Monday.
Greenpeace activist Mhairi Dunlop, on board the organisation's
flagship Rainbow Warrior, said they were determined to carry out
a "peaceful protest" against the shipment of potentially
weapons-usable material.
[Map of Irish Sea area] The transport could pass Ireland or Wales
The environmental group said the protest was not designed to stop
the ship, but highlight an embarrassing three years for British
Nuclear Fuels (BNFL). The BNFL's shipment has caused protests
around the world since setting off from the Far East on its
18,000-mile voyage in July. Environmental groups and governments
of countries the shipment passed feared the mixed uranium and
plutonium oxide (Mox) fuel could prove a target for terrorists.
Ms Dunlop said: "The international trade in plutonium must stop.
"It is unnecessary, it is not wanted and it is not needed. "We
will be peacefully protesting against the two nuclear freighters.
We will not be impeding the safe navigation of either ship but we
will make sure the ships see us."
A second flotilla of protest yachts was heading for
Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, to meet the shipment at its
destination. Security risk
BNFL's marine transport head Malcolm Miller said: "We recognise
individuals and groups have the right to peacefully and lawfully
protest about our activities."
The company said it expected the two ships, the Pacific Teal and
Pacific Pintail, to reach Barrow-in-Furness at about 0900 BST on
Tuesday.
[Nuclear fuel container being lifted] Container flasks like this
carry nuclear fuel
Irish pop star Jim Corr, from the group The Corrs, is one of the
protesters onboard the Rainbow Warrior.
The ships are part of a purpose-built fleet carrying more than
200 kilos of Mox fuel.
The cargo of fuel, which came from Sellafield originally, has
been sent back from Takahama in Japan after safety records at the
plant operated by BNFL were exposed as false in 1999.
Mox fuel is made by reprocessing spent uranium fuel rods from
nuclear plants. The Sellafield plant separates the rods'
plutonium radioactive waste from the remaining unused uranium.
Recycled uranium and plutonium is made into ceramic pellets which
can be used again in a nuclear power plant.
BNFL said one fingernail-sized pellet could generate as much
energy as a ton of coal.
© MMII | News Sources | Privacy
*****************************************************************
30 UK: Nuclear ships face sea protest
[Nuclear ships face sea protest] Plutonium on board the BNFL
ships was originally shipped out to Japan in 1999 Nuclear ships
face sea protest 20.35PM BST, 16 Sep 2002
Two ships carrying radioactive material are expected to face a
mass protest as they enter Barrow-in-Furness docks in Cumbria.
The two ships, carrying plutonium fuel, are expected to reach
Barrow at 9am.
Ships crewed by protesters will meet the Pacific Teal and the
Pacific Pintail there in a sea-borne protest - but a
150m-exclusion zone around each ship will be supervised by
police.
Earlier, a mini-flotilla led by the flagship Rainbow Warrior
located the ships as they sailed up the Irish Sea.
But none made contact as activists maintained a safe distance
from the heavily armed vessels.
Greenpeace said it does not intend to board the vessel or hinder
its progress.
The Irish Government, backed by all opposition parties, condemned
the shipment, which passed within 30 miles of its shores.
Dublin deployed Navy vessels and spotter aircraft to monitor the
shipment as it passed.
Captain Malcolm Miller, head of BNFL's Marine Transport business,
said he recognised that individuals and groups had the right to
"peacefully and lawfully protest".
However, he called on anyone who wished to protest to do so in a
"safe and responsible manner".
After arriving at Barrow, the reactor grade plutonium mixed oxide
- along with some uranium, which the ships are also transporting
- will be taken to Cumbria's BNFL-owned Sellafield plant to be
stored.
Plutonium on board the BNFL ships was originally shipped out to
Japan in 1999 for Tokyo Electric who wanted to load it into a
nuclear reactor to generate electricity.
But the shipments are now having to be returned after a legal
battle over safety information relating to the consignment.
Greenpeace say their protest has global backing and claim 80
governments have condemned the BNFL convoy since it set off from
Japan, denying the ships access to waters around their countries.
Tim Rogers of ITV News reports from Barrow
[http://www.g-wizzads.net
ITV.NEWS
*****************************************************************
31 UK: Protesters target N-fuel shipments -
CNN.com -
September 16, 2002
SELLAFIELD, England -- Anti-nuclear protesters led by Greenpeace
have set sail into the Irish Sea to intercept two tankers
carrying five tonnes of spent nuclear fuel.
The fuel, said to be a mix of plutonium and uranium oxides (MOX),
has been sent back to Britain from Japan where it was rejected
because of discrepancies over documentation.
British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) confirmed on Monday that the
two transport ships -- the Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal --
are headed for the Sellafield nuclear plant, in northwest
England.
A BNFL statement said: "The ships will complete the final leg of
their 18,000 mile journey by sailing through the Irish Sea on
route to Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.
"It is expected that they will arrive at around 09:00 hrs (BST)
on Tuesday 17 September 2002."
Greenpeace said in a statement that its flagship vessel, the
Rainbow Warrior, is leading up to 20 yachts calling themselves
the Nuclear Free Irish Sea Flotilla.
It said: "The flotilla aims to raise a global outcry at this
deadly and dangerous shipment of weapons-useable plutonium from
Japan to Sellafield in the UK.
[Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior is leading the flotilla]
Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior is leading the flotilla
"BNFL's two armed ships are carrying a lethal cargo of faulty MOX
fuel, rejected by Japan -- a cargo that contains enough plutonium
to make 50 nuclear bombs."
The protesters say the nuclear fuel aboard the Pacific Pintail
and Pacific Teal is vulnerable to terrorist attack and should not
travel by sea.
Among the protesters is Jim Corr, a member of the Irish rock band
The Corrs, who told Reuters: "The Irish Sea should never be used
as a nuclear highway ever again."
Captain Malcolm Miller, head of BNFL's Marine Transport business,
said: "As the ships sail through the Irish Sea, we recognise that
individuals and groups have the right to peacefully and lawfully
protest about our activities.
"I would call upon anyone wishing to protest to do so in a safe
and responsible manner.
"I very much welcome the public assurances repeatedly given by
Greenpeace that they will not interfere with the safe navigation
of our ships.
"I hope they will be true to their word and that other members of
the Greenpeace-organised flotilla will also respect the rules of
the sea."
© 2002 Cable News Network
*****************************************************************
32 Officials in five counties feel heat of uranium plant decision
The Oak Ridger Online -- State News --
Monday, September 16, 2002
The Associated Press
HARTSVILLE -- Officials in the five counties that jointly own
land at the site of a proposed uranium processing plant are
trying to assess the potential dangers before agreeing to sell
the property. But some residents wonder whether the scientific
aspects of the project are too much for their leaders to handle.
"You got country, hometown boys here, and this (international
project) is very impressive to these folks," said Cynthia "Sandy"
Malone, who has helped form the group Citizens for Smart Choices.
"These boys are really taken." The officials -- from Sumner,
Wilson, Smith, Macon and Trousdale counties -- say they want
unbiased information about the risks and rewards of putting a
uranium plant in their area, but that it isn't easy to find.
"You just have to do a lot of reading and studying," said Jerry
Clift, newly elected Trousdale County executive and owner of a
discount grocery store. "That's the reason we are trying to find
people who are mid-line, other than the company or the ones that
oppose everything." Louisiana Energy Services, a consortium
including American and European energy companies, announced last
week that it wants to bring a new processing plant to Hartsville
in Trousdale County. If county leaders decide to sell the land,
LES will build the first such uranium processing plant in this
country in 50 years. The plant would process uranium into
material for nuclear fuel but would not have nuclear reactor
capabilities or use materials with high-level radiation, LES
officials said.
Some leaders wish that the residents who elected them would trust
them to make a smart choice.
"Everyone is looking at all aspects of this, not just looking at
money," said Michael Nesbitt, newly elected Smith County
executive and a church pastor. He said he is consulting a range
of government, corporate, scientific and watchdog Web sites to
help make his decision. Prayer will also play a part, he said.
"It's like (some residents) don't trust us to make the right
decisions." Meanwhile, a Washington-D.C.-based anti-nuclear group
last week accused LES of trying to limit debate by asking the
federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission in April to take some
topics off the table. The issues included the plant's effect on
minority and low-income communities and disposal of depleted
uranium that remains after the enrichment process.
"LES is attempting to change the rules so that local people
cannot even raise the same type of issues," raised by foes of a
similar plant LES proposed and later withdrew in Louisiana in the
1990s, said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear
Information and Resource Service. LES spokeswoman Nan Kilkeary
denied the group's claims and told The Tennessean newspaper that
the company was seeking clarification about changes in federal
law on nuclear licensing and on precedents the agency set in the
Louisiana case..
[http://www.oakridger.com]
All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger
*****************************************************************
33 Board seeks answers on NFS issue
Story published in the Johnson City Press: 9/13/2002.
By Chris Garland Erwin Bureau
ERWIN ? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has until Sept. 19 to
answer three questions from the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board
in Rockville, Md., in regard to a Federal Register notice of
license amendment published for Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. on
July 9.
The AS&LB reviewed various hearing requests on NFS? proposed
amendment to a special nuclear-material license filed before Aug.
9. The license, if amended, would allow construction and
operation of a low-enriched uranyl nitrate storage building for a
Tennessee Valley Authority project at NFS, Banner Hill Road.
The request for the amendment led to the filing of petitions by
several people and groups requesting that a public hearing be
held on the project. The petitioners are also requesting to be
able to see the application for the amendment.
Petitions reviewed by the AS&LB Wednesday were filed with the NRC
by Greeneville attorney Todd Chapman on behalf of 15 local
citizens, Greeneville actress Park Overall on behalf of State of
Franklin Chapter of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Nolichucky
River Valley, Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance and the
Tennessee Environmental Council. Concerns were also submitted to
the NRC by David and Trudy Wallack of Greeneville.
The petition filed by Overall said the group would like to have a
public hearing on the amendment request and would like to see
amendment denied.
All petitions filed raised concerns about drinking water from the
Nolichucky River downstream from NFS.
Alan S. Rosenthal, an AS&LB administrative law judge, asked in a
brief filed Wednesday that the NRC answer several questions.
Those questions include:
? What failure occurred to not allow a person to access contents
to the application?
? If the failure was inadvertent, how would it be justified?
Might the amendment application be of assistance to the
petitioner to comply with burden of the Rules of Practice to
establish their standing?
? If it is determined the amendment notice was defective, what
should the remedy be at this juncture? Should a new notice be
issued to correct the defect, or would it be enough if the
petitioners inspect the license amendment application and are
allowed to supplement requests? If so, NFS and the petitioners
may provide views on these questions and file them by the Sept.
19 deadline.
NFS spokesman Tony Treadway said Thursday that the judge asked
the NRC to explain why the notice did not set a date of the
license amendment or supply information as to how its contents
could be located.
?The NRC process for petitioning against an important project is
proving that the public is heard and important in these matters,?
Treadway said. ?However, they must share in some responsibility
in the process by sufficiently showing that they would be
adversely affected. That requires an effort beyond simply
demanding to halt to the project.?
An Environmental Impact Statement prepared for the project was
also questioned by the petitioners, saying it is not sufficient
and a new study is needed.
Treadway said the EIS was prepared by the U.S. Department of
Energy and found the Erwin plant project would pose no
significant risk to safety.
?We have responded to petitions initially,? Treadway said. The
petitioners and NFS will have the opportunity to make comments on
the questions asked by the AS&LB.
?There have been many ways the petitioners have had to learn more
about the Blended Low Enriched Uranium project, the environmental
assessment and obtain NFS?s requested license amendment,?
Treadway said.
/(Contact Chris Garland at cgarland@johnsoncitypress.com
)./
© 2001-02 Johnson City Press and Associated Press All Rights
*****************************************************************
34 [southnews] Iraq allows weapons inspections
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 21:28:29 -0500 (CDT)
Sell a Home with Ease!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/SrPZMC/kTmEAA/MVfIAA/7gSolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
----------
Iraq allows weapons inspections
17 Sept 02
IRAQ has unconditionally accepted the return of UN weapons
inspectors, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said.
"I can confirm to you that I have received a letter from the
Iraqi authorities conveying its decision to allow the return
of inspectors without conditions to continue their work," he
said.
The offer, delivered by Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri,
will now be considered by the UN Security Council.
Before Annan's announcement, Sabri said he had delivered
"some good news" from his government.
There is good news and the secretary-general ... will
announce the good news to you," he said as he left UN
headquarters.
The United States has been urging the United Nations to act
on Iraq, which it accuses of stockpiling weapons of mass
destruction.
President George W. Bush, whose stated aim is to oust
Saddam, has threatened US military action if the
international body does not get results.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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35 Evil Empire: 21 countries bombed by the USA since WWII
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 21:44:53 -0500 (CDT)
[All ads are inserted by Topica without our consent. Ignore them.]
[But hey! We're a superpower - now the only superpower - so we can do any
damn thing we want. Right?
Wow!! Wait just one minute buster. Who do you mean by "we"? Lots of us
object strenuously to the actions our government committed on behalf of
powerful private interests and for personal power and greed. Why Bush was
not even elected. He was appointed by the Supreme Court.
Well, if you don't want to be part of the "we" that the world has come to
fear and hate, then it's up to you and people like you to reclaim your
government, put a stop to it, and begin the long road back to
respectability by dismantling the war machine and offering reparations to
those who have suffered at the hands of the U.S. elite.]
21 countries bombed by the USA since WWII (english)
Since the second world war THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT has bombed 21
countries
Full article here:
http://indymedia.org:8081/front.php3?article_id=201912&group=webcast
21 countries bombed by the USA since WWII (english)
kropotkin 12:07pm Fri Sep 6 '02 (Modified on 7:52pm Fri Sep 6 '02)
article#201912
Since the second world war
THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Has bombed 21 countries
China 1945-46, 1950-53
Korea 1950-53
Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-61
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Lebanon 1983-84
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Bosnia 1985
Sudan 1998
Former Yugoslavia 1999
Afghanistan 1998, 2001-02
Iraq 1991-????
Why are people surprised by the world-wide rise of anti-Americanism since
WWII? I am not surprised, because it is directly proportional to the slow,
but steady, rise of American fascism!
Protect the peace!? What fucking peace!?
Defend freedom!? Who's freedom!? Are you free!? Free to do what, 'speak
your mind'? Being raised by the family television, how sure are you that
you have a mind of your own? Free to starve if you don't agree with your boss?
Freedom to vote? Vote for what, yet another Democrat or fucking
Republican!? They do nothing but erode the democracy more and more with
each election, by transferring more and more power away from you to their
corporate sponsors.
Make the world safe for HYPOCRISY!
When 50% of those eligible don't participate because they can not tell the
difference between two tired old whores, there is no democracy to defend!
The wealthy white christian fascists, that run the show, have no idea
what's boiling below the surface in their own country, let alone on the
other side of the world. They live in a world of their own manufacture, a
media soup .. the CNN universe, which is completely 'other than' the world
which the vast majority of Americans are grated against on a daily basis.
Something wicked this way comes! Wake up before it's too late. Demand
change! Vote for it whenever you get the opportunity! Force an opening of
the political process to allow for diverse points of view to get a fair
hearing.
If democracy in America is resurrected, there is a real shot at saving this
planet, otherwise.. 'you' and yours are fucked and you know it, it's just a
question of how soon.
But hey, if you have no siblings, are childless, and planning your own
death, you don't have anything to worry about! ;-)
Added Comments:
22 countries (english)
a. spies 2:34pm Fri Sep 6 '02
comment#201953
It's 22 countries if you count the US as well. While obviously no mega-ton
type bombs have been dropped, the US hasn't shied away from using weapons
against certain 'undesirable' elements of it's population. Wasn't an
incendiary (sp?) device dropped on a MOVE house?
And shit, what about vieques?
23 Countries (english)
Still Counting 3:46pm Fri Sep 6 '02
comment#201961
Don't forget the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where atomic blasts have
contaminated the Bikini Atoll and sickened its people for decades.
24 Countries (english)
Not Quite Done 4:04pm Fri Sep 6 '02
comment#201964
France was also bombed by the U.S. in April of 1986. Under International
law, embassies and their grounds are sovereign soil of their home
countries. During the 1986 bombing of Libya, which was provoked by a
top-secret Israeli plot to frame Libya as a sponsor of terrorism, U.S.
bombs fell on the French embassy in Tripoli. It's important to note that
France denied the U.S. passage through its airspace for the bombing raid on
Libya.
http://www.afa.org/magazine/march1999/0399canyon.html
Similarly, the U.S. also bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999
www.washington-report.org/backissues/109...
And Counting... (english)
. 7:52pm Fri Sep 6 '02
comment#202005
GREECE 1947-49
Supports and directs extreme right in civil war.
PHILIPPINES 1948-54
CIA directs war against leftist Huk Rebellion.
PUERTO RICO 1950
Nationalist insurrection challenges American occupation; US command
operation puts down rebellion.
KOREAN WAR 1950-53
Joins South Korea and other allies to fight China and North Korea.
IRAN 1953
CIA directs overthrow of elected left-leaning government, installs Shah.
GUATEMALA 1954
CIA directs exile invasion and overthrow of leftist government; military
junta installed.
LEBANON 1958
US occupation ends under UN Observer Group.
VIETNAM WAR 1960-75
Fought South Vietnam rebels and North Vietnam forces; 1-2 million killed.
CUBA 1961
CIA-directed "Bay of Pigs" invasion.
LAOS 1962
Green Berets active in training, military buildup, support of rightist
forces during guerrilla war.
PANAMA 1964
Control of Panama Canal Zone challenged; rioting against US forces.
INDONESIA 1965
Army coup assisted to an unknown degree by CIA; left-leaning elected
government toppled; between 250,000 to 1,000,000 lives lost.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1965-66
Troops invade during election as pre-emptive action against leftist
rebellion or communist government.
GUATEMALA 1966-67
Command operation; Green Berets aid in combat against leftist rebels.
CAMBODIA 1969-75
War against leftist forces; intense bombing; up to 2 million killed.
OMAN 1970
US directs Iranian invasion in support of Omani government against Marxist
"Dhufar rebellion."
LAOS 1971-73
US directs South Vietnamese invasion.
CHILE 1973
CIA-backed coup ousts elected leftist president; rightist dictator installed.
ANGOLA 1976-92
CIA assists South African-backed rebels.
EL SALVADOR 1981-92
Advisors aid government forces against leftist rebels.
NICARAGUA 1981-90
US directs guerrilla exile invasion ("Contra war") against revolutionary
government; US forces plant mines.
LEBANON 1982-84
Marines help police negotiated evacuation of Palestine Liberation
Organization; US forces combat Muslim and Syrian fighters in support of
Christian government.
HONDURAS 1983-89
Military bases established for US-backed "Contra war" with Nicaragua.
GRENADA 1983-84
US troops topple pro-Cuban government.
LIBYA 1986
Air strikes against nationalist government with terrorist links.
BOLIVIA 1986
Operation Blast Furnace; US troops and Bolivian police face peasant
resistance in cocaine-producing regions.
IRAN 1987-88
Intervention on side of Iraq in war against Iran.
U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS 1989
Troops restore order after civil unrest spurred by Hurricane Hugo.
PHILIPPINES 1989
Armed US aircraft support constitutional government against failed coup.
PANAMA 1989-90
Nationalist government ousted by 27,000 US soldiers; more than 2,000 people
killed.
GULF WAR 1990-
Operation Desert Storm drives Iraq out of Kuwait; 200,000+ killed. No-fly
zone ongoing; periodic bombing.
SOMALIA 1992-94
US-led United Nations occupation during civil war.
YUGOSLAVIA 1992-94
US troops in NATO operation to enforce sanctions against Serbia and
Montenegro.
BOSNIA 1993-95
Operation Deny Flight patrols civil war no-fly zone; air combat, Serbs bombed.
HAITI 1994-96
Troops restore elected leftist president to office three years after coup.
CROATIA 1995
American and NATO forces attack Bosnian Serb airfields prior to Croatian
offensive.
SUDAN 1998
Pharmaceutical factory with terrorist links bombed; retaliation for
terrorist attacks on US embassies in Africa.
AFGHANISTAN 1998
Bombing of Islamic fundamentalist military camps; retaliation for terrorist
attacks on US embassies in Africa.
YUGOSLAVIA 1999
US aircraft play the key role in heavy NATO air strikes against Serbian
forces in Kosovo.
COLOMBIA 2000
Special Forces train anti-narcotics and anti-rebel battalions, supply
combat aircraft.
MACEDONIA 2001
US forces in NATO's Operation Essential Harvest partially disarm Albanian
rebels.
AFGHANISTAN 2001
In retaliation for terrorist attacks in US, forces attempt ouster of
Afghanistan's Taliban government, attack bases linked to Islamic militant
Osama bin Laden.
thanks to adbusters
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/39/interventions.html
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"War does not determine who is right - only who is left." -
Bertrand Russell
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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36 Iraq operates nuclear weapons assembly line, defector claims
Times Online
September 16, 2002
By Paul Martin
Saddam Hussein is developing nuclear capability, using pirated
centrifuges to refine uranium
IRAQ is using pirated copies of German equipment to process
nuclear material in an assembly line that will regularly produce
nuclear weapons, an Iraqi scientist who led a section of the
Iraqi nuclear bomb programme before his defection in 1994 claims.
President Saddam Hussein may need only months more to put
together up to three nuclear cores, if he has not already done so
while his programme has not been monitored, the defector says.
Dr Khidir Hamza also said that, even if given unfettered access,
UN inspectors would find it far more difficult to detect the
nuclear assembly line. “The beauty of the present system is that
the units are each very small and in the four years since the
inspectors left they will have been concealed underground or in
basements or buildings that outwardly seem normal,” he said. In
an interview with The Times Dr Hamza painted a more alarming
picture than had been laid out in a report last week by the
International Institute for Strategic Studies. It concluded that
Saddam’s regime could make a bomb within months as Iraq had
almost all the hardware and technology needed to build it, but
only if it succeeded in smuggling in the necessary uranium or
radioactive material.
The Iraqi defector claimed that the necessary uranium was already
being processed inside Iraq. The material, he said, comprises 1.3
tonnes of low-enriched material bought many years ago from
Brazil.
He said that Iraq had also been processing many tonnes of
yellow-cake uranium, which has been extracted from large supplies
of phosphates dotted around the country. Nuclear inspectors had
been shown 162 tonnes of the material, but Dr Hamza said there
were several other phosphate sites that were not inspected.
“The amount of uranium it already has — conservatively estimated
in a German intelligence report at ten tonnes of natural uranium
and 1.3 tonnes of low-enriched uranium — is enough for three
nuclear weapons,” Dr Hamza said. Before their expulsion, the
inspectors dismantled an illegally imported German centrifuge
installation that had been used to refine progressively natural
or low-enriched uranium until it becomes suitable for weapons.
But Dr Hamza said that by then the “cat was out the bag”.
The key was provided, he said, when the German Karl Schaab
smuggled in the centrifuge in 1989 and later helped Iraq to build
a second.
“We videoed as it was put up, so we could build identical ones.
Then he also provided 130 classified documents and charts
detailing every aspect of the construction. When the inspectors
took away the original centrifuge, we already had the know-how. I
believe there are probably hundreds of copies today,” said Dr
Hamza, who now lives in the United States. “They are easy to hide
— undetectable from satellites if built within or under other
buildings.” The problem for Iraq, he said, is simply to keep
reprocessing the material so that after each run it gets more and
more enriched, until it reaches the 90 per cent needed for
nuclear weapons explosion. Having 1.3 tonnes of low-enriched
uranium (3 to 4 per cent enriched) rather than only natural
uranium (0.7 per cent enriched) meant that the process was
speeded up.
For a really efficient nuclear weapons programme, thousands of
such centrifuges were needed because each had a very small output
of uranium, he said. The centrifuges spin at very high speeds and
the joints are held together by magnets at top and bottom. The
centrifuge tubes are made either of steel or aluminium.
The United States said this month that a shipment to Iraq of such
highly refined aluminium tubes had been intercepted. Last week
Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, disclosed that Saddam has been
secretly attempting to buy aluminium tubes.
For every intercepted shipment of either small motors or
precision tubes for the centrifuges, several would probably get
through, Dr Hamza said, pointing out that a container could hold
thousands. Orders would be placed for the tubes with a Western
company via a third country at relatively low precision, and then
a later order would suddenly specify far more precise production,
costing four or five times as much and giving the factory far
higher profits, he said.
“The whole centrifuge method of getting to a bomb is much easier
for Iraq than, for example, it was for Pakistan, which took 17
years in going the same route. They had to steal bits and pieces,
whereas we got a whole centrifuge and all the plans,” Dr Hamza
said. Experts suggest that the method used by Iraq can take
between four and seven years, depending on the number of
centrifuges, and the process would have begun in earnest again as
soon as the inspectors left in 1998 and possibly even earlier, Dr
Hamza said. “This means, unless he’s stopped soon, Saddam will
have set up a whole nuclear bomb industry, not just have made a
couple of bombs,” he added.
Dr Hamza said that it would be suicidal for the West to wait much
longer before eliminating Saddam’s regime. “Inspectors going in
now will have an almost impossible task to discover what’s going
on in the nuclear field,” he said. “Since the inspectors left,
Saddam has had four years at least to hide what needs to be
hidden. Now he’s well on the road, his game will be to stall and
stall — if America lets him.”
Copyright 2002
[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,549,00.html]
Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****************************************************************
37 Holdout govts urged to ratify nuclear ban*
thestar.com.my
*Monday, September 16, 2002*
UNITED NATIONS: Eighteen nations urged holdout governments
including the United States, China, India, Pakistan and North
Korea on Saturday to ratify a global nuclear test ban they said
was vital to world peace and security.
The treaty, known as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or CTBT,
would ban all nuclear blasts, whether in the atmosphere, in space
or underground. To take effect, it must be ratified by 13 more
states.
?The prevention of the proliferation of materials, technologies
and knowledge which can be used for weapons of mass destruction
is one of the most important challenges the world is facing
today,? the 18 governments said in a statement issued after a
meeting of their foreign ministers at UN headquarters.
?We affirm that the CTBT has an essential role to play in
strengthening global peace and security. This role should be
recognised by all of us,? said the statement, issued on the
sidelines of a session of the 190-nation General Assembly.
Cuba, meanwhile, announced it would sign a second pact, the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, as a contribution to peace in
the post-Sept 11 world.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told the General
Assembly his country had not signed the treaty before because it
allowed a club of nuclear powers to exist with no commitment to
disarming.
Among the 18 governments meeting on Saturday were Russia, France,
Britain, Japan, Australia, Jordan, South Korea, Nigeria, South
Africa, Peru and Turkey.
Washington has turned its back on the CTBT over concerns it would
threaten the safety of US and Russian nuclear arsenals. Some
aides to US President George W. Bush have said the reliability
and safety of nuclear weapons could not be assured without
testing.
The CTBT pact was opened for signature in 1996. Since then, 165
states have signed it and 93 of those ratified it.
But before it can enter into force, it must be ratified by 44
particular states deemed nuclear arms-capable.
To date, 31 of those 44, including nuclear powers France, Russia
and Britain, have signed and ratified the pact.
But India, Pakistan, which have at times been on the brink of war
in the last few years, and North Korea, which the United States
calls a rogue state, have neither signed nor ratified the treaty.
The United States and China, both world military powers, have
signed but not ratified. Algeria, Colombia, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Israel and Vietnam
have also signed but not ratified the pact.
These states ?bear a special responsibility,? Netherlands Foreign
Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference.
In remarks to the General Assembly this week, Russian Foreign
Minister Igor Ivanov urged governments to ?universalise? the
CTBT, arguing the risk of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass
destruction falling into the hands of terrorists ?multiplies the
destructive potential of international terrorism.? ? Reuters
Copyright © 1995-2002 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd
*****************************************************************
38 Iraq: Washington Merry-Go-Round
The Salt Lake Tribune -- Washington Merry-Go-Round
Monday, September 16, 2002
BY JACK ANDERSON and DOUGLAS COHN
PORTLAND, Ore. -- This is not war country. It is not the land of
hawks. The natural predilection here is for people to be more
"show me" than the "show me" folks of Missouri, more anti-war
than San Franciscans, and more mentally removed from the nation's
capital than even geography can justify. So it was an interesting
place to hear President George W. Bush's speech to the United
Nations.
There is a strong case to be made for the ouster of Iraq's Saddam
Hussein, but the president's words missed the mark here. He gave
a list of reasons why Saddam should have been toppled during the
past 10 years, but no compelling reasons why he should be toppled
immediately.
This was not President Kennedy going to the American public with
photographs and detailed explanations during the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis. It was not his ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, doing
likewise before the United Nations. In that most critical point
of the Cold War, when a nuclear exchange seemed imminent, the
president and Stevenson made their cases with irrefutable
evidence and undeniable urgency.
Russian missiles were present on the island of Cuba and were only
days away from being armed and ready. The president called up
reserves, troops were deployed to Florida, and overflights of the
island were stepped up. It was a dangerous time, and the
president eloquently and convincingly conveyed this to the
nation.
Like so much else in American politics, Kennedy is the example,
and measured against that example, President Bush failed. It was,
however, not an irredeemable failure. He must provide evidence --
and sources tell us such evidence is available -- to prove why
Saddam Hussein provides a clear and present danger to the peace
of the world.
Spy satellite photographs are available that show the Iraqi
dictator's heinous activities. Then-and-now photos show the
buildings, trucks and people associated with Iraq's nuclear,
chemical and biological buildup. They show the development of
Iraq's Scud missiles that would deliver these weapons to their
targets.
It is not enough for the president to say that time is running
out or that a "grave and growing" threat exists. He must prove
it. He must do more. He must prove that the situation demands
immediate attention, and he must announce unilateral steps, such
as troop movements, to indicate actions are matching words, just
as President Kennedy did 40 years ago.
A failure of the president to do so would reinforce the arguments
of those people who agree that the situation must be addressed,
but who do not see the urgency. It reinforces the arguments for
more sanctions, more air activity and more U.N. resolutions.
To counter this, the president must provide details. Besides spy
photos, he needs to present scientific data, facts and figures.
It is not enough to say Iraq is arming, but rather that it is
already armed and dangerous. Only then will the skeptics in
Portland and elsewhere be convinced of the need to preemptively
strike.
The president can do this, and if he does, his U.N. speech will
be regarded as an appropriate -- even necessary -- preliminary
message.
Prediction: The president, probably through subordinates at the
Pentagon, will lay before the world evidence sufficient to
justify pre-emptive military action against Iraq.
© Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on
*****************************************************************
39 Iraqi scientist says materials for nuclear bombs in hand --
The Washington Times
September 16, 2002
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
LONDON — Iraq is already using copies of pirated German equipment
to process nuclear material for an atomic weapons program,
according to a former Iraqi nuclear scientist who testified
before the U.S. Senate this summer.
Khidir Hamza, who led a section of the Iraqi nuclear bomb program
before his defection in 1994, said the devices may not be
discovered even if U.N. inspectors are allowed to return to Iraq.
"The beauty of the present system is that the units are each very
small, and in the four years since the inspectors left, they will
have been concealed underground or in basements or buildings that
outwardly seem normal," he said.
Mr. Hamza was one of the first witnesses at Senate hearings on
Iraq in July. But in a series of interviews over the past several
weeks, he painted a much more alarming picture than was laid out
before the Senate or in a widely discussed report released last
week by the London-based International Institute for Strategic
Studies.
That study concluded that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's
regime could make an atomic bomb within months if it succeeded in
acquiring the necessary nuclear fuel from an outside source.
But Mr. Hamza said Iraq already has, and is processing some 1.3
tons of low-enriched material bought many years ago from Brazil.
He maintained that Iraq has also been processing many tons
of its own yellow-cake uranium, which has been extracted from
large supplies of phosphates in the north.
U.N. inspectors were shown 162 tons of the material before their
expulsion in 1998, but Mr. Hamza said there are several other
sites that can be used.
"The amount of uranium it already has — conservatively estimated
in a German intelligence report at 10 tons of natural uranium and
1.3 tons of low-enriched uranium — is enough for three nuclear
weapons," Mr. Hamza said.
Before their expulsion, the inspectors dismantled an illegally
imported German centrifuge that had been used in a program that
progressively refines natural or low-enriched uranium until it
becomes suitable for weapons.
But Mr. Hamza, who was the science adviser to the Atomic Energy
Establishment and later helped start and direct Iraq's nuclear
weapons program, said by then the "cat was out the bag."
He said he suspects the Iraqis have taken advantage of the four
years since the inspectors' expulsion to make numerous copies of
the original smuggled centrifuge and are busily refining uranium
into the necessary material for nuclear bombs.
"It's a relatively simple process once you have the plans and
some experience operating one or two centrifuges," he said.
The key was provided, he said, when German Karl Schaab showed the
Iraqis how to build and operate a centrifuge in 1989, and later
helped them build a second.
"Our engineers videoed as it was put up, so they could build
identical ones. Then he also provided 130 classified documents
and charts detailing every aspect of the construction.
"When the inspectors took away the original centrifuge, we
already had the know-how. I believe there are probably hundreds
of copies today," said Mr. Hamza, who now lives in the United
States.
"They are easy to hide — undetectable from satellites if built
within or under other buildings."
The problem for Iraq, he says, is simply to keep reprocessing the
material so that after each run it gets more and more enriched,
until it reaches the 90 percent level needed to make a nuclear
weapon.
The process can be completed more quickly if one begins with
low-enriched uranium — which is at 3 percent to 4 percent —
rather than only natural uranium, which is at about 0.7 percent.
A really efficient weapons program requires thousands of such
centrifuges, as each has a very small output of enriched uranium,
Mr. Hamzi said.
Further evidence that such a program is in place came this month
when the United States announced the interception of a shipment
to Iraq of highly refined aluminum tubes suitable for making
centrifuges.
"The whole centrifuge method of getting to a bomb is much easier
for Iraq than, for example, it was for Pakistan, which took 17
years in going the same route," Mr. Hamza said. "They had to get
it in bits and pieces, whereas we got a whole centrifuge and all
the plans."
Experts suggest the method being used by Iraq can take from four
to seven years, depending on the number of centrifuges. Mr. Hamza
said Iraq would have begun work in earnest as the inspectors left
in 1998.
"This means, unless he's stopped soon, Saddam will have set up a
whole nuclear bomb industry, not just have made a couple of
bombs," he said.
Iraq has repeatedly denied having such a program.
"It's not that Iraq has no material," said Foreign Minister Naji
Sabri in a televised interview last week. "From the beginning of
1991 the government had a decision to leave the
weapons-of-mass-destruction club. So we presented all we had to
UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors]. There is nothing."
Mr. Hamza, who was working on Saddam's weapons program when
Israeli jets bombed the French-supplied 40-megawatt Osirak
research reactor in 1981, confirmed long-held suspicions that the
facility was to have been used to develop nuclear weapons
material.
Scientists had planned not to divert the existing French-supplied
highly enriched nuclear fuel — enough for one bomb — but rather
blanket the reactor with natural or depleted uranium, which would
produce plutonium. That would have made it possible to continue
producing, eventually allowing repeated bomb production.
"From the moment Osirak was hit we knew we had to try another
method to get the bomb, and the centrifuge approach is the
easiest to conceal," Mr. Hamza said.
*****************************************************************
40 Exiled Iraqi says nuclear bomb months away
Last update - 08:56 16/09/2002
By Amos Harel , Ha'aretz
Correspondent, Ha'aretz Service and Agencies
An exiled Iraqi nuclear scientist believes Baghdad is closer to
building an atomic bomb than previously thought, The Times
newspaper said on Monday.
The British newspaper said Dr Khidir Hamza, described as a top
Iraqi nuclear researcher who fled to the West in 1994, believed
that Iraq was able to make copies of a German-built centrifuge
and use them to enrich uranium smuggled from Brazil to produce a
nuclear bomb within the next few months.
The German-built centrifuge was dismantled by international arms
inspectors before they were withdrawn from Iraq in 1998. But
Hamza told the Times that Iraqi scientists had studied how the
centrifuge was built and learned how to copy it.
"We videoed as it was put up, so we could build identical ones,"
the paper quoted the Iraqi as saying.
"When the inspectors took away the original centrifuge, we
already had the know-how. I believe there are probably hundreds
of copies today."
The Times said unnamed "experts" believed the centrifuge method
would take four to seven years to make enough nuclear material
for a bomb. The program may have begun in earnest when the
inspectors left in December 1998, or possibly even earlier, Hamza
told the newspaper.
A respected British think tank, the International Institute for
Strategic Studies (IISS), said this month that Iraq could build a
nuclear bomb within months if it received nuclear material from
abroad.
The Times story appeared to suggest that Iraq could produce the
material itself, and quoted Hamza as saying the IISS had "missed
a few tricks".
*Analysts: Iraq readying planes with 'dirty bombs' to hit Israel*
Western intelligence analysts say that Iraq has readied a number
of its longer-range aircraft for "one-way missions," carrying
non-conventional payloads and targeting cities in Israel.
According to the analysts, the Iraqi air force has managed to
prepare a number of its Soviet-made Tupolev-16 and Sukhoi-25
aircraft for suicide missions against Israel, which would be
equipped with a "dirty bomb" (radiological weapon) as a possible
payload.
Meanwhile, a British newspaper quoted reports from the United
States on Sunday suggesting that British and American troops have
already been deployed in western Iraq, in order to prevent an
attack on Israel.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, the special troops are there
to prevent the mobilization of Scud missile launchers for an
attack on Israel.
IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said Sunday that Israel is
prepared for a possible missile attack in case Iraq fires
missiles at the country in retaliation for a U.S. strike.
Speaking to Israel Radio, Ya'alon said there are enough gas masks
for everyone in the country in case Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
loads his missiles with chemical or biological weapons.
"The other side very well knows Israel is capable of defending
itself if attacked," he said.
Ya'alon also did note rule out the possibility of Israeli
retaliation against Iraq.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Benjamin
Ben-Eliezer have both said that Israel would respond to an attack
by Iraq, unlike in the 1991 Gulf War.
The prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Shamir (Likud) bowed to
U.S. pressure and did not retaliate for the some 40 Scud missiles
that landed in Israeli territory, due to American concerns that
such a move would break up the international coalition against
Saddam, which contained a number of Arab states including Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Syria.
© Copyright 2002 Ha`aretz. All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
41 Iraqi FM seeks elimination of all NBC arms
The Frontier Post */
Rs 200m to be provided to authorities
/ Updated on 9/16/2002 6:51:23 PM/
* BERLIN (APP): United Nations weapons inspections in Iraq must
eliminate all weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East,
particularly in Israel, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said
Sunday.?Iraq?s sovereignty must be respected, and the inspections
must result in the easing of sanctions against Iraq and the
elimination of all weapons of mass destruction in the Middle
East, particularly in Israel,? Sabri said. *
Speaking to German television news station N24, Sabri said that
Israel had an enormous arsenal of nuclear, biological and
chemical (NBC) weapons and long-range missiles.
?We could let the UN inspectors return, but what about our right
to security? The United States could attack Iraq tomorrow.
What about our security and that of the Iraqi people?? he said.
?We accept the resolutions.
We did not expel the inspectors, they were withdrawn.
Their return can only be part of applying UN resolutions,? said
Sabri, who was speaking from New York.
© Copyright 2001 The Frontier Post
*****************************************************************
42 'Regime Changes' Offer No Nuclear Solution
*****************************************************************
43 Ex-Inspector's Stance on Iraq Sparks Storm
Los Angeles Times - latimes.com
KTLA
September 16, 2002
THE WORLD
* Weapons: Scott Ritter says U.N. teams rid 95% of Saddam
Hussein's arsenal. Critics and colleagues question the depth of
his knowledge.
By JOHANNA NEUMAN and BOB DROGIN, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
WASHINGTON -- When former United Nations arms inspector Scott
Ritter got home from Baghdad Tuesday night, he was greeted by a
flood of e-mail messages.
Some applauded his courage in standing up to the Bush
administration's war rhetoric by telling Iraq's National Assembly
that the U.S. had no "hard facts" that Baghdad possesses weapons
of mass destruction. Others, saying he'd been brainwashed by
President Saddam Hussein, suggested that he turn in his U.S.
passport and move to Iraq.
"People who call me a traitor are disrespecting American
democracy," Ritter said in an interview, one of dozens he juggled
in the days after his return. "It's mind-boggling."
Mind-boggling is a word often applied to Scott Ritter these days.
As a weapons inspector, he pioneered new techniques to ferret out
Hussein's most virulent weapons. When Ritter resigned in 1998, he
was hailed by conservatives in Congress for standing up to what
he saw as lack of spine in the Clinton administration and the
U.N. Security Council.
"Iraq today is not disarmed and remains an ugly threat to its
neighbors and to world peace," Ritter told a Senate committee in
September 1998. "Americans who think that ... something should be
done about it have to be deeply disappointed in our leadership."
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), called him "a true American hero."
Democratic Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware was less kind,
faulting Ritter for reaching "above his pay grade" in presuming
to tell White House officials how to conduct foreign policy.
"That's why they get paid the big bucks," Biden said. "That's why
they get the limos, and you don't."
These days, Ritter is sounding a different warning. Concerned
about the White House's drumbeat for "regime change," he argues
that 95% of Hussein's arsenal was disarmed by the U.N. inspection
teams between 1991 and 1998. The only way to determine whether
Iraq has rearmed in the last four years, he says, is to let
inspectors back in.
"There is no hard evidence, no hard evidence whatsoever," Ritter
told CNN on Friday. "I'm not saying Iraq doesn't pose a threat. I
am saying that it has not been demonstrated to pose a threat
worthy of war."
So this former Marine, a tough-guy Republican with a taste for
intelligence work and a knack for media splash, has been embraced
by the anti-war movement. He says he has little in common with
his latest allies--"they're tree-huggers and I'm for chopping
down the forests," he explains--except for an understanding that
war without provocation is wrong.
His passion for inspections is born of adrenalin-pumping days in
Iraq. There were the "dog ate my homework" excuses Iraqi
officials used to deter detection: Books were missing; documents
had been destroyed during the war; the key to the office was
lost. There were confrontations in parking lots when inspectors
refused to leave after being denied entry to a building. Shots
were fired over their heads.
'Underdogs' in the Game
"It was a great game, and we were the underdogs," recalled
another weapons inspector, who asked that his name not be used to
avoid a personality clash with Ritter. "We were like hotel
thieves, cooking up all kinds of creative methods to get in."
Being on the inspection team, he said, "was the highlight of all
of our lives."
If some see Ritter's obsession with inspections as nostalgic,
others ridicule him for taking a 180-degree turn and for
demonstrating--as former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North did in
embroiling the Reagan White House in an arms-for-hostages swap
with Iran--that Marines are sometimes better at "taking the hill"
than understanding it.
"This is the classic Marine problem," said Patrick Clawson,
deputy director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"It's building a bridge over the River Kwai, when it's not
apparent that a bridge is what is needed."
Since 1998, Ritter has earned his living as a lecturer. He wrote
"Endgame," which Simon & Schuster is reissuing in paperback. With
$400,000 from an Iraqi American businessman, Shakir Alkhafaji, he
produced a documentary about Iraq, "In Shifting Sands," which
will also be the title of his next book. Ritter bristles at the
comparison to North, who invoked his 5th Amendment rights before
Congress granted him immunity. Ritter also insists that he has
done no 180-degree turn, being a fan then and now of the power
and efficacy of inspections. And he is quite angry about
accusations that he has become Hussein's lobbyist.
"I despise what Saddam has done to his people, I wish ... he'd
drop dead," he said.
The trip to Baghdad--funded in part, he says, by peace
groups--was not meant as propaganda for Hussein but as a counter
to the White House media blitz against Iraq. "I used the address
to the Iraqi National Assembly to put my message before the
American public," he said. "I knew Bush was meeting with [British
Prime Minister] Tony Blair. I knew the administration would have
its voice on the Sunday talk shows. I decided to launch a
preemptive strike."
A Born Military Man
Ritter is the youngest of four children--and the only son--born
into a military family. His father was in the Air Force. His
mother was a military nurse. The formative high school years, he
says, were spent in Hawaii, Germany and Turkey.
As a kid, he had a special fondness for history, painting
Napoleonic toy soldiers in uniforms researched for accuracy.
Ritter remembers enjoying the combat simulation games in
"Strategy & Tactics," a military history magazine.
He became a Marine, then a weapons inspector sent to the Soviet
Union to enforce the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty.
There he met his future wife, Marina Khatiashvili, a translator
from the Soviet republic of Georgia. His marriage raised eyebrows
in intelligence circles, where Soviet translators were assumed to
be working for the KGB.
Ritter later applied to the CIA but was derailed by a lie
detector test in which he admitted sharing intelligence with
Israel while an inspector in Iraq--one of his tactical maneuvers
to outsmart Hussein, he says. In two interviews before he left
for Iraq, Ritter argued that the U.N. teams destroyed all the
weapons and fundamentally disarmed Iraq before Hussein barred
further inspections in late 1998.
"There was nothing left that we were aware of that we hadn't
destroyed," he said. "We had suspicions. We had concerns. But we
had no hard evidence."
One reason, he asserts, was his own success as an inspector. "You
wouldn't believe how thorough we were," he said. "In 1992, I went
through Iraq like Attila the Hun."
He dismisses concerns that Baghdad retains several highly
sophisticated devices, called lenses, used to help trigger
nuclear explosions. Iraqi troops tossed the lenses into a truck
and then onto the ground, he said. "Whatever they had was
smashed."
He challenges assertions that Iraq has reserves of VX, a deadly
nerve agent, and the means to make more. "The R&D is destroyed.
The major production equipment is destroyed. The warheads are
destroyed. So they don't have the capability to produce VX."
And he ridicules fears that Iraq could deliver anthrax, smallpox
or other deadly biological agents via a long-range missile. "The
only way an Iraqi biological bomb would kill you is if it hit you
on the head," he said.
As for Iraq's nuclear program, "absolutely nothing is going on in
nuclear," he said. "Everything was destroyed. They'd have to be
buying new stuff [from abroad], importing it, installing it,
putting in electricity feeds. We'd see it. We'd know it."
Ex-Inspectors Skeptical
Ritter's statements have stunned other former U.N. weapons
inspectors. Richard Spertzel, the chief biological weapons
inspector in Iraq from 1994 to 1998, ridiculed Ritter's
assertions during a Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday.
"How does he know what 100% is?" Spertzel asked. "I don't. And
how many biological sites did he visit? The answer is none. He
has no knowledge of those sites."
David Kay, the chief nuclear inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1993,
agreed. He said Ritter sharply criticized the ability of U.N.
inspection teams to disarm Iraq when he testified before
Congress.
"Either he lied to you then or he's lying to you now," Kay said.
"He's gone completely the other way. I cannot explain it on the
basis of known facts."
So Long, Baghdad
But Ritter says he has been more consistent than critics allow,
favoring inspections instead of either war or a shrug of
indifference. Sobered by the intensely angry reaction over his
trip to Iraq, Ritter says he has no plans to visit Baghdad again.
But he does plan to keep speaking out. This fall he will be in
Britain for the Labor Party conference, and in Berlin, Vienna and
Copenhagen to talk to anti-war groups.
"People who call me a traitor today cheered me wildly when I
resigned," he said. "But I can't let them fabricate the facts for
war. If we want to sell American democracy, by God we have to
live it."
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at
latimes.com/archives .
LATSIClick here for article licensing and reprint options
Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times By visiting this site, you are
*****************************************************************
44 IAEA Says Can't Prove Iraq Making Nuclear Weapons
Yahoo! News -
Sep 16, 9:16 AM ET
VIENNA (Reuters) - The United Nations nuclear watchdog said
Monday it had information that could indicate Iraq was attempting
to revive its nuclear weapons program, but on-site inspections
were needed to draw clear conclusions.
Asked if the U.N. had information that could be evidence of a
revival of Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program,
International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed
ElBaradei told a news conference: "Yes, we do have some
information...but we cannot draw any definite conclusions based
on it," he said, adding that the information had come from
analysis of commercial satellite images.
"Without on-site inspections we cannot verify whether Iraq has
revived its nuclear weapons program," he said. ElBaradei urged
Iraq to let the weapons inspectors return to the country as soon
as possible, adding that it was in their best interests to permit
U.N. weapons inspectors to carry o the country as soon as
possible, adding that it was in their best interests to permit
U.N. weapons inspectors to carry out a thorough verification of
Iraq's position that it has no nuclear weapons capabilities.
President Bush has said that he wanted Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein's regime toppled as it was still trying to develop
weapons o f mass destruction. U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq
in December 1998.
Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
45 Change the focus in Iraq
| csmonitor.com
for 09/17/2002
'War on terror' moves toward Iran
Commentary > Opinion from the September 16, 2002 edition
By Michael McFaul
PALO ALTO, CALIF. – A year ago, a group of terrorists from Saudi
Arabia and Egypt attacked the United States using box cutters as
their weapons and citing extremist versions of Islamic
fundamentalism as their cause. Today, the Bush administration and
Congress are focused almost solely on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
and his weapons of mass destruction, with almost no reference
whatsoever to his ideology.
This narrow focus has only a loose relationship to the grander
vision of "securing freedom's triumph" that President Bush has
outlined as the mission of American foreign policy in the new
millennium.
As currently framed, the debate about Iraq has produced three
dangerous distortions. First, the discussion has confused the
means-ends relationship between weapons of mass destruction and
regime change. Suddenly, both hawkish Republicans and antiwar
Democrats now have asserted that the destruction of Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction is the new paramount objective in the
war on terrorism.
For the hawks, regime change is the means to achieving this
objective. Those less eager to go to war assert that this same
goal can be achieved by other means, such as sending in the
weapons inspectors or even by a surgical strike against weapons
facilities.
Both sides of this debate are focused on the wrong objective.
Regime change – democratic regime change – must be the objective.
If over the next years and decades, a democratic regime
consolidates in Iraq, then it will not matter to the United
States if Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or not.
Does anyone in the United States know how many weapons of mass
destruction the British or French have? Does anyone even lose
much sleep over the fact that Russia still has thousands of
nuclear weapons and launch vehicles capable of reaching the US in
a matter of minutes?
Specialists are rightly worried about the safety and security of
Russian weapons, but most Americans no longer make plans for what
to do in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack. It was not a
robust nonproliferation regime, coercive weapons inspections, or
a preemptive war against the Soviet Union that produced this
shift in our attitudes about Russia's weapons of mass
destruction. Rather, it was regime change in the Soviet Union and
then Russia.
Someday, the same will be true in Iraq. Israel already destroyed
Iraq's nuclear weapons program once in 1981, delaying but not
eliminating the threat. The real objective of any strategy toward
Iraq, therefore, must be the creation of a democratic,
market-oriented, pro-Western regime.
The singular focus on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction – not
unlike the misplaced focus on arms control during the cold war –
prevents the US from pursuing a grander strategy that could
secure the more important objective of democratic regime change.
Moreover, many of the means for achieving this objective are
nonmilitary by nature, an aspect forgotten in the discussion.
A second distorting consequence of the current debate is that we
have become obsessed with one leader, one country, and one
category of weapons, none of which were involved directly in the
Sept. 11 attacks.
The Iraqi dictatorship (and not simply President Hussein) is
certainly part of the problem, but Iraq cannot be the only front
of the war on terrorism. In fact, victories on other fronts could
create momentum for the Iraqi regime's demise. Ronald Reagan's
strategy for defeating communism did not begin with a military
invasion of the Soviet Union, but rather aimed first to roll back
communism in peripheral places like Poland, Afghanistan, and
Nicaragua. Imagine how isolated Hussein would be if democratic
regimes took hold in Iran, Palestine, and Afghanistan.
A third distortion of the debate is the near silence about the
kind of regime the Bush administration plans to help build in
Iraq after the war. The Bush administration is busy making the
case against Hussein, but has devoted much less attention to
outlining the plan for a new regime in Iraq. Will it be one state
or three, a federal or unitary state, governed by the US or the
United Nations? How many decades will occupation last?
We need to have the same "frenzied" debate about Iraq's
reconstruction that is now being devoted to Iraq's
deconstruction. A serious discussion of the postwar regime in
Iraq will help inspire support in Congress, the international
community, and within Iraq. Now is the time to be concrete about
future blueprints.
To be credible, the message of change must also be directed at
other dictators in the region. The probabilities of fanatics
coming to power in Pakistan and using weapons against American
allies are greater than the probabilities of Hussein doing the
same.
Without reform, revolution in Saudi Arabia is just as likely as
an Iranian attack on American allies. Failure to define a grand
strategy of transformation in the region will condemn American
soldiers to fighting new dictators like Hussein over and over
again.
• Michael McFaul is an associate professor of political science
and Hoover Fellow at Stanford University, and a senior associate
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Copyright © 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights
*****************************************************************
46 Buchanan OP: Searching for the Saddam bomb
TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Pat Buchanan
[http://www.townhall.com]
Pat Buchanan (archive)
September 16, 2002
By most opinion surveys, the majority that supports the
president's resolve to invade Iraq has been shrinking. But were
Saddam close to getting an atom bomb, four in five Americans would
back a pre-emptive war. Thus, the administration and the Brits last
week have trumpeted a report by the International Institute of
Strategic Studies on Iraq's progress and got the headline they
wanted in the London Evening Standard: "Saddam A-Bomb
'Within Months'"
A look at that IISS report, however, suggests the Evening Standard
is dishing up war propaganda as news. What does it say?
Saddam, almost surely, does not have an atom bomb. He lacks the
enriched uranium or plutonium necessary to build one and would have
to acquire fissile material from some other country. He is like a
fellow who wants to cook rabbit stew, in a country where there are
no rabbits. And there is no evidence Saddam is in the market for
enriched uranium or plutonium, or is even at work on a
bomb.
However, if Saddam could acquire 40 pounds of enriched uranium, he
could probably build a bomb of the explosive power of the "Big Boy"
we dropped on Hiroshima. But even that is not certain. IISS
conclusion: Saddam was closer to an atom bomb in 1991 than he is
today. As for his chemical and biological weapons, Saddam's arsenal
was largely destroyed by 1998, though a five-year
absence of U.N. inspectors has given him time to rebuild his
stockpile. Yet, even if Saddam has these dread weapons, can he
deliver them? His decimated air force consists of a few hundred
Russian and French planes, generations older than the latest U.S.
models. Most of his missile force was shot off in the Gulf War or
destroyed by U.S. bombs or U.N. inspectors. Iraq
may retain a dozen al-Hussein missiles of 400-mile range. But
America now has drones that can spot flaring rockets at lift-off
and fire missiles to kill them in the boost phase.
In every military category, then, Saddam is weaker than when he
invaded Kuwait. IISS's conclusion: "Wait and the threat will grow.
Strike and the threat may be used."
What the IISS is saying is: Saddam is probably beavering away on
weapons of mass destruction. But a pre-emptive war could trigger
the firing, upon U.S. troops, of the very weapons of mass
destruction from which President Bush is trying to protect us.
How did we get here? In 1998, Clinton, anxious to distract our
attention from a lady named Monica, ordered air strikes on Iraq.
U.N. inspectors were pulled out. Thus, we know less now than we did
in 1998 about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
And Bush's bellicosity has probably convinced Libya, Syria, Iran
and Iraq that their only safety from a U.S. "pre-emptive war" lies
in a nuclear deterrent. If the "axis-of-evil" regimes we have been
daily threatening are trolling petrodollars in desperation in front
of the Russian Mafia to buy some second-hand Soviet nukes, would
anyone be surprised? Which begs the question: Has the Bush-Cheney
shift in policy -- asserting a U.S. right to launch pre-emptive war
to deny weapons of mass destruction to U.S.-designated rogue
regimes -- created the most compelling of incentives for
rogue regimes to acquire those weapons? Is the Bush-Cheney
anti-proliferation policy the principal propellant of Islamic
nuclear proliferation? From hard evidence, what may we reasonably
conclude? A) Saddam does not have an atom bomb or the critical
component to build one, and is not known to be in
the market for the uranium he would need. B) While he has chemical
and biological weapons, his delivery systems have been degraded. C)
He has had these toxins for 15 years and never once used them on
U.S. forces, though we smashed his country, tried to kill him half
a dozen times and have a CIA contract out on his head.
Why, if Saddam is a madman, has he not used gas or anthrax on us?
Osama would -- in a heartbeat. Probable answer: Saddam does not
want himself, his sons, his legacy, his monuments, his dynasty, his
army and his country obliterated and occupied by Americans, and
himself entering the history books as the dumbest Arab of them all.
Rational fear has deterred this supposedly irrational man. Has it
not? Why, then, is the United States, having lost 3,000 people in
an terrorist atrocity by an Al Qaeda network that is alive and
anxious to kill thousands more, about to launch a new war on a
country that even its neighbors -- Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran and
Saudi Arabia -- believe to be contained. What is this obsession
with Saddam Hussein?
Contact Pat Buchanan
| Read his biography
[http://www.townhall.com/columnists/BIOS/cbbuchanan.html]
©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
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47 'Father' of the Baghdad bomb who fled to US
Times Online
September 16, 2002
By Paul Martin
DR KHIDIR HAMZA was at the heart of the Iraqi nuclear programme
from its inception and is regarded as the “father” of the Baghdad
bomb. He worked on Saddam’s plans for the ultimate weapon as
science adviser to the Atomic Energy Establishment until fleeing
to the United States in 1994. As the first United Nations weapons
inspections took place he was working in Baghdad and says the
inspectors must have walked right past the locked room where
uranium supplies where being enriched for use in the bomb.
Since then he is convinced the process has continued, despite the
denials of Saddam’s officials, including Naji Sabri, Iraq’s
Foreign Minister, who told a CNN correspondent in Baghdad last
week that America and Britain had no evidence against his
country.
Mr Sabri admitted that Iraq had indeed launched a nuclear weapons
programme but it had ended, he said, early in 1991 when Iraqi
forces were expelled from Kuwait.
“It’s not that Iraq has no material,” he said. “From the
beginning of 1991 the Government had a decision to leave the
weapons of mass destruction club. So we presented all we had to
Unscom (the UN weapons inspectors). There is nothing. Let them
ask the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).”
Dr Hamza said the International Institute of Strategic Studies
report had “missed a few tricks”. Its authors had noted that
Saddam’s main nuclear programme had been eradicated by the 1991
bombings and later UN inspections, but they added: “Against this
scenario, however, there is a nuclear wildcard. If, somehow, Iraq
were able to acquire sufficient nuclear material from foreign
sources, it could probably produce nuclear weapons, perhaps in a
matter of months.”
The report said it was unlikely that Saddam could produce his own
fissile material without detection, a belief that Dr Hamza now
contradicts. Journalists were taken to the Tuwaitha nuclear site
about 20 miles (30km) outside Baghdad, where the French-supplied
40-megawatt Osirak research reactor had stood until Israeli jets
bombed it in 1981. Its existence was first disclosed by The Times
in 1978. They were told that it had been the site of a peaceful
research reactor, although Dr Hamza said that at the time he had
been in charge of the planning to use that facility to develop
nuclear weapons material.
“Inspectors since 1991 have gone to the site to check things out
and have walked right past our locked room where we were working
on enrichment,” Dr Hamza said. The Osirak reactor was to use
natural or depleted uranium that would produce plutonium,
eventually allowing repeated bomb production.
By 1994 the United Nations inspectors, expelled from Iraq four
years ago after being accused of spying for the United States,
had removed French-supplied highly enriched uranium bars but,
according to Dr Hamza, had failed to uncover most of the
clandestine work that now threatens the West and the rest of the
Middle East.
Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****************************************************************
48 Iraq 'will have nuclear bomb in months'
Times Online
September 16, 2002
By Katty Kay in Washington, Paul Martin and Melissa Kite
Bush security chief tells of Saddam links with al-Qaeda
months using pirated German equipment and uranium smuggled from
Brazil, according to a dissident Iraqi nuclear scientist.
The revelations painting an alarming picture of President Saddam
Hussein’s nuclear capabilities came as the White House made its
strongest link yet between Saddam and al-Qaeda, and demanded a
United Nations resolution as soon as this week.
Dr Khidir Hamza, who was science adviser to the Atomic Energy
Establishment and later helped to start and direct Iraq’s nuclear
bomb programme before he defected in 1994, claims in an interview
with The Times today that Saddam could be in a position to make
three nuclear weapons within the next few months, if he has not
already done so. Dr Hamza gave warning that UN inspectors would
be useless because even if they were given “unfettered access”
they would find it far more difficult than before to detect the
nuclear assembly line. “
The beauty of the present system is that the units are each very
small and in the four years since the inspectors left they will
have been concealed underground or in basements or buildings that
outwardly seem normal,”
Dr Hamza said. Dr Hamza gave evidence before Senator Joe Biden’s
Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Iraq in Washington
last August but it was only after the recent International
Institute for Strategic Studies report on the threat from Saddam
that he became aware of the West’s imperfect understanding of the
urgency of the situation.
Dr Hamza’s new estimation of the speed with which a nuclear bomb
could be produced is centred on the number of pirated centrifuges
that Baghdad has been able to produce and the rapidity with which
the re-processing programme is being undertaken. The scientist’s
intelligence suggests a more immediate threat than reported last
week by the IISS, which concluded that Iraq could make a bomb
only if it smuggled in the necessary uranium or radioactive
material.
According to Dr Hamza, that material is already inside Iraq and
is currently being processed to weapons grade. He said that Iraq
was using a centrifuge method to get a bomb which is easier and
quicker than other methods. “Unless he’s stopped soon, Saddam
will have set up a whole nuclear bomb industry, not just have
made a couple of bombs,” Dr Hamza said. The Bush Administration
yesterday made its strongest public connection between Iraq and
al-Qaeda. National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said that
al-Qaeda personnel had been spotted in Baghdad and that the Iraqi
regime had ties to the network.
Until now the Administration has shied away from linking Iraq to
al-Qaeda, prompting widespread speculation that the US had no
evidence of links between the two. Yesterday Dr Rice suggested
that was not the case: “Iraq has clearly links with terrorism
that would include al-Qaeda.” Dr Rice backed away from any
implication that Saddam was involved in the September 11 attacks,
but said that there was sufficient evidence against him to
justify action without ties to the attacks on New York and
Washington. “Let’s be clear.
There’s plenty to indict Saddam Hussein without a direct link to
9/11,” she said.
There were growing signs that the international community was
moving in America’s favour to support an urgent UN deadline for
Iraq to readmit weapons inspectors. Washington maintained
pressure on the international community to move fast and start
work on resolutions in the next few days.
“I expect we’d work on a resolution in fairly short order, in the
next week,” Dr Rice said. In a key strategic victory for the US,
Saudi Arabia said yestrday that if America had UN authority, it
would be allowed to use bases in the desert kingdom for an attack
against Iraq.
Jack Straw, at the UN General Assembly, said there was a growing
consensus about the nature of the demands to be imposed on the
Iraqi regime. The Foreign Secretary said that the five permanent
members of the UN Security Council — the US, Britain, France,
China and Russia — had not yet made a final decision about
whether there would be one resolution or two. As diplomats
discussed their options for Baghdad, US and British jets bombed
an air defence communications facility near Tallil, 160 miles
(257km) south of Baghdad. There were no reports of casualties.
Copyright 2002
[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,549,00.html]
Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****************************************************************
49 Hanford cleanup begins anew*
Spokane.net
Sunday, September 15, 2002
Construction starts on $4 billion nuclear waste treatment complex
*Linda Ashton* Associated Press
RICHLAND _ In the scrubby sagebrush desert, not far from the
Columbia River, the biggest environmental cleanup project in the
country is under way at Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
After a decade of fits and starts, the concrete and rebar are
going in for the $4 billion waste treatment complex that will
turn the lethal leftovers from Cold War-era plutonium production
into more manageable and stable glass cylinders.
In the treatment process, called vitrification, radioactive waste
is mixed with glass-forming materials and melted at 2,000 degrees
Fahrenheit to make a molten glass. The mixture is poured into
canisters for long-term storage.
The most radioactive glass will end up at some kind of national
repository, likely Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where it will take
10,000 years to decay. The lower-activity radioactive waste will
be buried in trenches in the central part of the 560-square-mile
reservation here, where it will take about 300 years to decay to
safe levels.
"This is the fourth try at building a vit plant at Hanford," said
John Britton, a spokesman for Bechtel National, which was hired
to rescue the stranded project last year. "There's a lot at
stake."
One of the things at stake is the Columbia River, which borders
Hanford and is seven miles from the 177 underground tanks holding
almost 54 million gallons of radioactive waste.
The urgent need to clean the tanks has been a bone of contention
between the U.S. Department of Energy and regulators since the
early 1990s, when the Energy Department scuttled a plan to turn
some of that waste into grout and bury it in sealed containers.
At least 67 of the tanks, some of them decrepit and well past
their intended service lives, have leaked more than 1million
gallons of radioactive brew into the soil, contaminating the
aquifer and threatening the river.
The turning point came last year, when the Energy Department
hired Bechtel National to finish the design and build the
vitrification complex after firing contractor BNFL in 2000, when
cost estimates more than doubled to $15.2 billion.
State regulators and the Energy Department subsequently scuffled
over the resulting missed deadlines and uncertain federal budgets
before a kind of detente was achieved. There is a guarded
optimism among regulators now that the job will get done.
The test facility is a mega-tank, 75 feet in diameter and 28 feet
high, where crews -- using safe, simulated waste -- will try out
equipment and work out the bugs as they figure out the best way
to remove the radioactive mix of liquid, salt cake and sludge
from the tanks.
"For the next two years, all the focus is going to be on
construction," Britton said. The work force for the project will
peak at about 4,300 people.
In 2005, the vit plant should be ready for nonradioactive testing
and in 2007, hot testing is scheduled to begin.
*****************************************************************
50 Energy Secretary Abraham Calls for International Conference to
Counter the Threat of "Dirty Bombs"
energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release
RELEASE DATE: September 16, 2002 [Print Friendly Version]
VIENNA, AUSTRIA – Speaking before the Forty-Sixth General
Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
today, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham called for an
international conference to address the threat posed by the
potential misuse of radiological materials to construct
Radiological Dispersal Devices (RDDs), often referred to as
“dirty bombs.”
A dirty bomb contains radioactive material, but does not use that
material to produce a nuclear explosion, as is the case with a
nuclear weapon. Dirty bombs are constructed of conventional
explosives and radioactive material and are designed to disperse
that radioactive material. Such weapons are ideal for terrorists
because of their relative simplicity and the widespread
availability of suitable radioactive material in medical
isotopes, radiography sources, and power sources used in remote
areas.
“Although these dirty bombs are not comparable to nuclear weapons
in destructiveness, they are far easier to assemble and employ,”
said Abraham. “While the physical destruction they would cause is
comparable to conventional explosives, the disruption caused by
widespread contamination is far greater. And it is disruption
that terrorists seek.” In addition to the psychological
disruption, use of a dirty bomb could have significant economic
consequences.
Abraham’s call for an international conference builds on several
earlier U.S. initiatives, some taken jointly with the Russian
Federation and the IAEA. In May 2002, Secretary Abraham and his
Russian counterpart, Minister of Atomic Energy Aleksandr
Rumyantsev, agreed to work cooperatively to secure radioactive
sources in Russia. Under this agreement the United States has
worked with Russia to identify the specific sources of greatest
concern, has committed $1 million for security upgrades at the
largest radiological repository in Russia, reached agreement on
upgrades at several other high priority sites, and began
discussion on material consolidation.
Building on this agreement, in June 2002, the United States,
Russia, and the IAEA established a tripartite working group on
“Securing and Managing Radioactive Sources.” This working group
will “develop a coordinated and proactive strategy to locate,
recover, secure and recycle orphan sources throughout the Former
Soviet Union.” It represents the first concerted international
response to the threat posed by vulnerable radioactive sources in
the non-Russian states of the Former Soviet Union. Under this
initiative contracts were signed in August with Georgia for
upgrading security for at-risk sources. In parallel with these
foreign efforts, the U.S. Department of Energy and Nuclear
Regulatory Commission are examining areas in which Federal
resources should be directed to improve protection against
radiological dispersal devices.
Plans found in Afghan bunkers revealed in detail the interest of
al Qaeda in radiological dispersal devices (RDDs, or “dirty
bombs”). The discovery of these plans demonstrates the importance
of incorporating radiological dispersal devices into the world’s
nonproliferation and counterterrorism strategy.
Under Abraham’s proposal, the United States would work closely
with the IAEA to make the proposed conference a reality. As
Abraham has noted elsewhere, “Safeguarding weapons usable
material should always be the highest priority of the IAEA. But
the organization also needs to seek ways to formally expand its
scope to deal with dangers posed by lower grade nuclear
materials. The international community must do more, and the IAEA
is the best and most appropriate vehicle for marshalling our
collective resources.”
The IAEA has the technical expertise to help states respond
appropriately to this problem. The conference the United States
proposes would help states understand the need to draw on that
expertise to develop appropriate national standards for
accounting for and tracking radiological materials.
Media Contact: Jeanne Lopatto, 202/586-4940 Corry Schiermeyer,
202/586-5806 Release No. PR-02-186
*****************************************************************
51 Guardian has led fight over S.F. power
1969 article began long campaign to create city utility
Chuck Finnie, Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writers
[cfinnie@sfchronicle.com]
Monday, September 16, 2002 -->
In the early 1960s, a UC Berkeley biochemist fighting Pacific Gas
& Electric's ultimately unsuccessful plans for a nuclear power
plant at Bodega Bay heard about the Raker Act, the 1913 federal
law granting San Francisco the right to build its Hetch Hetchy
Water and Power system. When J.B. Neilands looked at the Raker
Act - and saw PG's continuing monopoly in San Francisco, despite
the law's intent - he saw a scandal. On March 27, 1969, Neilands
published his findings in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, then in
its first year, in a story edited by the weekly newspaper's
founder, Bruce B. Brugmann.
Describing the city's arrangement with PG, Neilands wrote: "How
could this happen when it is a specific condition of federal law
for San Francisco, unlike any other American city, to build its
own municipal electric distribution system?"
The Guardian and Brugmann have been howling about the Raker Act
and PG ever since on a lone, frequently bombastic crusade to make
the city establish the municipal power utility Congress intended.
"When PG spits, City Hall swims," Brugmann growled in a recent
interview. "When PG spits, the daily papers swim."
The 6-foot-5, Iowa-born Brugmann is spitting mad especially at
Hearst Corp., owner of The Chronicle, and former owner of the San
Francisco Examiner, for what he sees as a "blackout" of
developments advancing the public power agenda.
"It allows PG and others to say, 'That's just Bruce Brugmann and
the Bay Guardian, and they're crazy,'" says the editor, 67.
Combative in the extreme, Brugmann made an easy target for anyone
who wanted to mock his public power campaign.
Stephen Buel, editor of a rival weekly, the East Bay Express, said,
"The sad fact is that a lot of the Bay Guardian's criticisms of PG
are very apt, but the way in which the paper hammers home its
message makes it get lost because it is so mind-numbingly
repetitive."
William Randolph Hearst's papers in the early 20th century were
fervent supporters of municipalization, but began wavering in the
mid-1920s. In 1937, his Examiner opposed a $50 million bond issue
to underwrite city purchase of PG's transmission lines.
At The Chronicle, owned by descendants of Charles and Michael de
Young, the editorial page opposed public power, and in 1942
backed an unsuccessful move to amend the Raker Act to allow San
Francisco to sell its Hetch Hetchy power to PG.
Last November, The Chronicle, having been acquired a year earlier
by the Hearst Corp., editorialized against Propositions F and I,
the two most recent public power measures. Both were defeated.
In Sacramento, only 90 miles away, the fight for public power
went very differently, thanks in part to the backing of the
Sacramento Bee. In 1923, voters approved a ballot measure
creating a municipal utility district and later adopted bond
measures to finance the purchase of the city's transmission lines
from PG - at an ultimate cost of $13 million. C.K. McClatchy,
grandfather of the family-owned paper's current publisher James
McClatchy, felt so strongly about the issue that when he died in
1936 he left a will that said he hoped the people responsible for
the newspaper in the future would remember the importance of
local public ownership of utilities. A municipal power system
began operating there in 1947.
E-mail the writers at
cfinnie@sfchronicle.com [cfinnie@sfchronicle.com] and
ssward@sfchronicle.com [ssward@sfchronicle.com] .
HETCH HETCHY
A power vision betrayed
[http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/09/16/MN80443.DTL]
SF caught in a bind by contracts
[http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/09/16/MN162952.DTL]
Bay Guardian has led the fight over SF power
[http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/09/16/MN86925.DTL]
Sunday:
Water system in peril
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle. Page A - 11
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