------------
* News from Kobe
* A Lawmaker's Work Is Never Done
* Legacy of Silkwood Case Recalled
* A Lightweight He's Not
* 'Super Bug's' DNA Deciphered
* NBC Runs Disclaimer on Y2K Movie
* What money can't buy (loyalty at UN)
* China says it can overcome U.S. defenses
* China Space Test Has Military Role
* Chinese Test Craft For Manned Orbits
* China Takes a Giant Leap Closer to Manned Spaceflight
* China's space heritage
* Russian FM plans visit to Iran
* Iran Issues Russia Ultimatum to US
* Iran May Be Selling Scud Missiles
* Campaign to Stop the Sale of CANDU Reactor, Akkuyu Bay Nuclear Plant
* Bulgaria Mulling Effects of Y2K
* Yeltsin Urges Test Ban Ratification
* New Life for 'Star Wars' Response
* Chernobyl Plans To Restart Reactor By The Associated Press
* Puerto Rico Can't Shut Navy's Water
* Conspiracy of Silence: THE PLUTONIUM FILES
America's Secret Medical Experiments In the Cold War
* Road to Hiroshima: DOWNFALL
The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
* Wide Open Spaces
* BGE Still Seeking Renewal of Nuclear Plant License
* Subject: IAEA report on Tokai criticality accident
---------
News from Kobe
From: NOBUE KUGIMAYA - KBNOBU@email.msn.com
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 22:38:30 +0900
http://www.iijnet.or.jp/c.pro/shinfujin/
The following is the gist of Japan Press Weekly (by Japan Press Service) No.2163 (November 20,1999):
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Foley spoke to a meeting with local assemblymen from Osaka and Hyogo on 11 November that he wanted U.S. Navy vessels to call at Kobe Port while he was in office. This was the first meeting held at the U.S. Consulate General in Osaka. Japanese Communist Party local assembly members were not present at the meeting.
Shushi Kajimoto, the secretary of the Hyogo Gensuikyo: "This is intended to express U.S. desire to break the nuclear-free Kobe Formula. His statement to Kobe City Assembly members should be taken as pressure on the unanimous resolution of the city assembly."
Ken-ichi Morihara, JCP Kobe City Assembly member: "This is a challenge to the citizens movement by which the nuclear-free Kobe Formula has been maintained for 24 years, and also an attempt to infringe on local self-government. This must be rejected by all means. To the world's peace movements the citizens of Kobe have an obligation to abide by its non-nuclear Kobe Formula. We will make our utmost efforts to defend it."
Angered by this remark, Hyogo Gensuikyo staged a protest in the busy shopping area on 12 November. They collected many signatures from passers-by opposing the military use of Kobe Port.
Japan Gensuikyo also protested Foley's remark holding a rally in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. It sent a protest letter addressed to U.S. Ambassador Thomas Foley.
-------- us nuc plants
A Lawmaker's Work Is Never Done
Washington Post, November 22, 1999; Page A21 By Al Kamen http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/22/046l-112299-idx.html
Before leaving town last week, however, the Senate did confirm a batch of Clinton nominees including: Ivan Itkin for director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management at the Energy Department; Neal S. Wolin as general counsel at Treasury; Paul Steven Miller for the EEOC; Irasema Garza as head of the Women's Bureau at the Department of Labor; T. Michael Kerr to run Labor's Wage and Hour Division; Alan P. Larson to be undersecretary of state for economic matters; Susan Wachter as an assistant secretary of housing and urban development; and Linda J. Bilmes to be an assistant secretary of commerce.
---
Legacy of Silkwood Case Recalled
New York Times November 21, 1999 Filed at 4:45 p.m. EST By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-LookBack-Silkwood.html
CRESCENT, Okla. (AP) -- Karen Silkwood died in a mystery-shrouded car crash 25 years ago this month, a tragic end to events that transformed her into a heroine to anti-nuclear activists and dumbfounded residents of this small town.
``We're country folks and didn't realize all the hullabaloo was going on,'' recalls 67-year-old Phil Yenzer of the plutonium contamination controversy at the nearby Cimarron Facility, where Ms. Silkwood was a lab technician.
Although the recent anniversary of Ms. Silkwood's death went largely unnoticed in Crescent, many people retain vivid memories of the Silkwood case and ``all the myths that grew up around it,'' said police Chief Jack Harris.
``I think her death has been milked for about everything people can get out of it,'' Harris said last week at the tiny Crescent Police Station.
Yenzer, who now operates a downtown antique store, remembers the slightly built Ms. Silkwood shopping in his grocery store.
Like Yenzer, many merchants and townspeople in the town of 1,600, gave little thought at the time to the contamination threat at the now-closed Kerr-McGee Corp. plutonium processing plant.
``We were never scared,'' Yenzer said. ``We were just tickled to death that the plant was there and some people had jobs.''
Ms. Silkwood, a 28-year-old mother turned environment activist, was killed when her car careened into a culvert on a highway south of town on Nov. 13, 1974.
She was on her way to see a New York Times reporter, purportedly carrying documents showing lax security at the plant. No documents were recovered.
Her death was depicted in a movie starring Meryl Streep and has been the subject of several books.
Through the years, reporters and investigators have resurrected Ms. Silkwood's memory in this farming and ranching community, but the case isn't the subject of day-to-day conversation.
Service station employee Travis Holliday, 23, grew up in Crescent but knew nothing of Karen Silkwood until he was a teen-ager and happened to catch the 1983 movie, ``Silkwood,'' on television.
Now, he occasionally hears talk, such as speculation that ``somebody became upset with her and ran her off the road. But I don't know anything. It's just talk.''
Ms. Silkwood had become contaminated by plutonium prior to the accident. Her Edmond apartment also was found to be contaminated.
The woman's union and environmental activism pitted her against Oklahoma-based Kerr-McGee Corp., whose subsidiary ran the plutonium processing plant.
Harris worked in Guthrie at the time of the car accident, but the officer who made the initial investigation told him ``it was pretty evident that she had gone to sleep.''
Official police reports declared it a single-car accident and a medical examiner's autopsy showed a sedative in her body.
But her supporters, attorneys and various private investigators have contended she was bumped off the road by another vehicle.
``I think the case has been used for different people's agendas,'' Harris said.
While saying he did not know whether there were security problems at Cimarron, Harris said a friend that worked there resented Ms. Silkwood's activities because ``it was the beginning of the end of the plant.''
Bill Silkwood, father of Karen Silkwood, filed a $71 million lawsuit against Kerr-McGee on behalf of her three small children. A jury found Kerr-McGee had a responsibility in the woman's contamination and awarded a $10.5 million judgment that was eventually reduced to $1.38 million.
Lead attorney Gerald Spence said the case was important in the quest for safety in a nuclear age.
Officials of Kerr-McGee have repeatedly pointed out that the settlement with the Silkwood estate was not connected to her accident and death.
Last week, spokeswoman Debbie Schramm said Kerr-McGee had nothing futher to say about the case.
The Cimarron site is still being decontaminated and cleaned up under supervision of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency.
Related Information From Hoover's Inc. Kerr McGee Corp
http://www.nytimes.com/partners/quote/hoovers.cgi?ticker=KMG
-------- us nuc weapons
A Lightweight He's Not
New York Times November 22, 1999 ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/safire/112299safi.html
WASHINGTON -- The political news of the week is that George W. Bush can comport himself confidently under sustained, serious questioning.
This is not to denigrate his first foreign policy speech. The surprise in that committee product was the way he did not follow his father and Bill Clinton into kowtowing to China's ruthless leaders.
Though he left Wei Jingsheng off his honor roll of Communism's dissidents, Bush denounced China as "alarming abroad and appalling at home . . . an espionage threat to our country . . . an enemy of religious freedom and a sponsor of forced abortion -- policies without reason and without mercy."
Free Chinese on Taiwan were heartened by his "we deny the right of Beijing to impose their [sic] rule on a free people" and his promise that admission of China to the World Trade Organization "should open the door to Taiwan as well." Would Bush, as president, flip-flop on China, as Clinton did at the behest of Riady contributors? Nobody knows, but it was good to see Bush alert to "China's poor record in honoring agreements."
The import of that speech was not so much in what he said but in what he got into his head. Speech preparation is the best kind of homework. In working on a largely thematic address with an experienced team of realists and hard-liners, the Texas Governor prepared himself for the First Exam.
On NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday, he displayed both his new familiarity and his old fuzziness on the third of the program directed to foreign affairs.
Tim Russert pressed him on his speech pledge to "help Taiwan defend itself." Did this mean we would consider an attack on Taiwan an attack on the U.S.? Bush's answer was correct: "we would consider it a need to enforce the Taiwan relations law" -- which commits us to help Taiwan, but is deliberately ambiguous about going to war.
Asked if we would give Taiwan the weapons we are developing to shoot down incoming missiles, Bush had a sophisticated reply: "Whether we own it or Taiwan owns it, whether we own it or Japan owns it, it's not a matter of ownership; it's a matter of deployment." China will take that to mean that the U.S. would maintain control of antiballistic missiles to be installed in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and other threatened allies, or on warships in the area, much as we did with our NATO nuclear weapons on European soil.
It did not trouble me that Bush flunked Russert's subtle test about the number of missiles agreed to in Start II, or that he ducked a commitment when provided the answer in the follow-up: "If Start II brings it down to 3,500," the host asked, "would you be willing to do down to 1,000 with Start III?" Such figures are drilled into memory before a negotiation; a better criterion in judging his capacity is his realism about the next step: "I want to work with the Russians to dismantle the nuclear warheads and weaponry that's in place that already is a part of the first Start series."
Bush has a good foreign policy theme in nuclear "safety," which he pushed without being asked. Republican candidates agree on the need for deployment soon of a theater missile defense, followed by a space-based national one, costly though it will be; Gore or Bradley will be dragged along by next summer.
And asked about the Clinton record with Russia, Bush was alert enough to put a shot across Al Gore's bow: "We'll find out more about Viktor Chernomyrdin and the vice president [Gore] and the relationship they have."
In all, a respectable performance. Anybody can read a speech; few politicians can come out of a full hour in the ring with Russert relatively unscathed.
Now, about his pronunciation of the word nuclear . . .
-------- us nuc other
'Super Bug's' DNA Deciphered
Compiled from reports by Kathy Sawyer and Rob Stein Monday, November 22, 1999; Page A11 Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/22/055l-112299-idx.html
In 1956, scientists discovered a bacterium thriving in samples of canned meat that were thought to have been sterilized by exposure to radiation. Researchers subsequently determined that the reddish organism, dubbed Deinococcus radiodurans, is the most radiation-resistant creature known to exist.
It can survive 1.5 million rads of gamma irradiation--a dose 3,000 times the amount that would kill a human.
Now, scientists report in the Nov. 19 issue of Science that they have deciphered the organism's complete genetic code, an advance they hope will lead to insights into how it manages to so efficiently repair damage caused by radiation.
The work, funded by the Energy Department and done by Owen White of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville and colleagues, involved determining all of the nearly 3.3 million individual chemical units that make up the bacterium's DNA.
The researchers determined that the bacterium's DNA contains an unusually high number of redundant genes that enable it to repair damage to its DNA caused by radiation, heat and other assaults.
Scientists hope to find a way to use the organism to clean up pollution and perhaps provide new insights into cancer, which can involve faulty repair of damaged DNA.
---
NBC Runs Disclaimer on Y2K Movie
By The Associated Press New York Times November 22, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/e/AP-Y2K-Movie.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- In ``Y2K'' the movie, power outages darken a chunk of the East Coast and a nuclear meltdown threatens when computers misread the year 2000 as 1900.
With the made-for-TV movie about a world gone haywire this New Year's Eve, NBC and its affiliates tried to ease any fears viewers might have with disclaimers -- it's just a movie -- and news stories about the so-called Y2K computer glitch.
``This program is a purely fictional thriller,'' said an NBC disclaimer before the movie. ``The characters and situations are not based on fact. This program does not suggest or imply that any of these events could actually occur.''
The Y2K glitch could result from programming shortcuts that used two digits to denote the year. Experts have warned that systems could fail if computers are not fixed to properly read 2000.
In the movie, Times Square goes dark at midnight and star Ken Olin single-handedly averts a nuclear meltdown.
Several NBC affiliates ran stories about actual Y2K preparedness after the broadcast.
KARK-TV in Little Rock interviewed Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who said state offices, utilities and banks are ready for the new century.
``I don't think it's necessary to dig a big hole in the backyard and store 3,000 gallons of water in it,'' Huckabee said. ``If we have anything at all, it'll be minor glitches.''
In Pennsylvania, a state agency bought air time during a break in the movie to calm viewers' concerns.
``We believe Pennsylvania's utilities are ready,'' said the commercial from the state Public Utility Commission that aired on Pittsburgh's WPXI-TV. ``We want to make sure the only interruption you experience from us is the one you're watching.''
Some local NBC affiliates set up telephone banks to answer viewers' questions during the movie.
In Denver, KUSA-TV commissioned a poll that found most Coloradans are not worried about the so-called Y2K bug. Nonetheless, the station set up a phone line for viewers to call in with Y2K-related questions and assembled a panel of 15 experts to answer them.
In Columbus, Ohio, Deborah Countiss, executive director of the local Y2K Council, ran the call line at WCMH-TV. She said calls started coming in about 20 minutes into the movie.
``They are pretty much the typical Y2K questions,'' she said. ``People ask basic questions: Will there be power? What about the banks? What about phone service?''
Countiss said some viewers called to complain about the movie.
``People are saying that the movie is irresponsible, it's making people feel panicky,'' she said.
At least one company was profiting from Y2K panic.
Y2kmart, a Dexter, Maine-based purveyor of gas masks, dehydrated food and other millennium supplies, said its sales tripled in the days after NBC began broadcasting promotional spots for the movie.
``A lot of people are saying, 'I want to get my order in before it gets real busy,''' said company president Mark Miclette.
-------- us other
What money can't buy
Embassy Row By James Morrison Washington Times November 22, 1999
http://www.washtimes.com/internatl/embassy.html
U.S. foreign assistance does not generally translate into support in votes of the U.N. General Assembly, according to a Heritage Foundation study of U.S. foreign aid to 128 U.N. member countries.
"Seventy-five percent voted against the United States a majority of the time," the foundation complained in its report.
Some of the most frequent opponents are also some of the largest recipients of U.S. dollars.
Egypt, which with $2 billion last year is the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid, voted against American interests 68 percent of the time. India, which got $144 million, opposed the United States on 81 percent of the votes.
Israel, the largest recipient of U.S. aid with $3 billion last year, was the strongest supporter of the United States. It opposed Washington only 6 percent of the time.
Jordan, the fourth-largest beneficiary of U.S. aid, opposed the United States 72 percent of the time. Jordan received $193 million last year.
Russia, which received $134 million voted against the United States on 45 percent of the votes.
The Clinton administration, in its "Strategic Plan for International Affairs," said, "From a strategic planning perspective, foreign assistance strategies are critical investments . . . in advancing Americans interests and values."
However, the Heritage study found that "most recipients of U.S. foreign aid vote against the United States more often than they vote with it."
"This casts serious doubt on the claims from the administration and proponents of foreign aid that such spending is vital to the national interests of the United States," the study said.
"There are many reasons for a country to vote with or against the United States at the United Nations," the study adds.
"The most obvious reason is self-interest -- a motivation that will not be overridden by a promise of greater foreign assistance from the United States or the threat of losing it, especially since the United States has shown little evidence in the past of withdrawing assistance as a consequence of opposing U.S. interests in the United Nations."
-------- china
China says it can overcome U.S. defenses
USA Today 11/22/99- Updated 08:07 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwsmon02.htm
BEIJING (AP) - China's first successful test of a spacecraft for manned flight also had major military implications, proving China has mastered technology that could defeat U.S. anti-missile defenses, an official Chinese newspaper reported Monday.
The same low-power propulsion technology used to adjust a spacecraft's orbit in flight could also be used to alter the path of offensive missiles, helping them evade proposed U.S. anti-missile defense systems known as TMD and NMD, military expert Song Yichang told the state-run China Business Times.
China's development of low-momentum rocket propulsion ''is equivalent to having a trump card to counter TMD and NMD,'' the newspaper said. ''We can use this technology to change trajectories in flight, making missiles do a little dance and evade opponents' attacks.''
TMD, shorthand for Theater Missile Defense, and NMD, or National Missile Defense, would shoot down incoming missiles. The Clinton administration, with the support of Congress, is developing a limited national missile defense that could be deployed as early as 2005. It also is carrying out research with Japan on a regional missile defense.
China is vehemently opposed to both systems, saying they could spark a costly and dangerous arms race. It also fears TMD technology could be passed on to Taiwan, allowing the island that Beijing regards as a renegade province to defend itself against Chinese missiles.
The China Business Times report was rare official confirmation that China is not just relying on diplomatic pressure, but is interested in seeking technological ways to combat the proposed anti-missile systems.
''With low-power space rocket technology, it will be hard for the opposite side to control the cost and difficulty of defending against Chinese missiles,'' the newspaper said. ''Even though the opposite side has TMD, it will have to sit down and negotiate with you.''
People interviewed on Beijing's streets Monday welcomed the weekend flight of the Shenzhou capsule. All insisted China could afford a manned space program even though tens of millions of Chinese still live in poverty.
''First we had the atom bomb, then satellites, now this,'' said Yang Dengqing, a 77-year-old retired automobile plant engineer.
Song, the military expert quoted by the China Business Times, said the test flight ''indicates that our country has grasped the trump card to restrain TMD.''
The newspaper did not clearly explain whether or how information from the spacecraft's flight could be used to make defense-evading Chinese missiles. But it said a manned space flight could provide ''a large amount of practical data'' on low-power rocket propulsion technology, and added that testing the technology on the ground is difficult, in part because of the force of gravity.
China is striving to become the third country, after the United States and the former Soviet Union, to put human beings into outer space. The successful completion of the unmanned test flight, a breakthrough for China's secretive space program, remained top news Monday in many national newspapers.
The spacecraft Shenzhou was launched by a new model of China's Long March rocket at 6:30 a.m. Saturday at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest Gansu province. It orbited Earth 14 times and landed as planned in Inner Mongolia in north China early Sunday, state media reported.
More unmanned flights are expected before China launches a craft carrying astronauts - or ''taikonauts'' as they are known here, from the Chinese word for space. Western experts say China will probably send its first manned mission into space next year.
---
China Space Test Has Military Role
By The Associated Press November 22, 1999
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991122/aponline071433_000.htm
BEIJING (AP) -- China's first successful test of a spacecraft for manned flight also had major military implications, proving China has mastered technology that could defeat U.S. anti-missile defenses, an official Chinese newspaper reported today.
The same low-power propulsion technology used to adjust a spacecraft's orbit in flight could also be used to alter the path of offensive missiles, helping them evade proposed U.S. anti-missile defense systems known as TMD and NMD, military expert Song Yichang told the state-run China Business Times.
``We can use this technology to change trajectories in flight, making missiles do a little dance and evade opponents' attacks,'' the newspaper said.
TMD, shorthand for Theater Missile Defense, and NMD, or National Missile Defense, would shoot down incoming missiles. The Clinton administration, with the support of Congress, is developing a limited national missile defense that could be deployed as early as 2005. It also is carrying out research with Japan on a regional missile defense.
China is vehemently opposed to both systems, saying they could spark a costly and dangerous arms race. It also fears TMD technology could be passed on to Taiwan, allowing the island that Beijing regards as a renegade province to defend itself against Chinese missiles.
The China Business Times report was rare official confirmation that China is not just relying on diplomatic pressure, but is interested in seeking technological ways to combat the proposed anti-missile systems.
``With low-power space rocket technology, it will be hard for the opposite side to control the cost and difficulty of defending against Chinese missiles,'' the newspaper said. ``Even though the opposite side has TMD, it will have to sit down and negotiate with you.''
A Western diplomat said the main goals of China's manned space program are to build national prestige and reap economic and scientific benefits.
``It is really hard to see what military advantages are gained out of this,'' the diplomat said who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But Song, the military expert quoted by the China Business Times, said the test flight ``indicates that our country has grasped the trump card to restrain TMD.''
The newspaper did not clearly explain whether or how information from the spacecraft's flight could be used to make defense-evading Chinese missiles. But it said a manned space flight could provide ``a large amount of practical data'' on low-power rocket propulsion technology, and added that testing the technology on the ground is difficult, in part because of the force of gravity.
China is striving to become the third country, after the United States and the former Soviet Union, to put human beings into outer space. The successful completion of the unmanned test flight, a breakthrough for China's secretive space program, remained top news today in many national newspapers.
The spacecraft Shenzhou was launched Saturday at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest Gansu province. It orbited Earth 14 times and landed as planned in north China early Sunday, state media reported.
More unmanned flights are expected before China launches a craft carrying astronauts -- or ``taikonauts'' as they are known here, from the Chinese word for space. Western experts say China will probably send its first manned mission into space next year.
People interviewed on Beijing's streets today welcomed the weekend flight. All insisted China could afford a manned space program even though tens of millions of Chinese still live in poverty.
``First we had the atom bomb, then satellites, now this,'' said Yang Dengqing, a 77-year-old retired automobile plant engineer.
---
Chinese Test Craft For Manned Orbits
Space Launch Boosts National Pride
Washington Post Monday, November 22, 1999; Page A01 By Michael Laris
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/22/151l-112299-idx.html
BEIJING, Nov. 21-Chinese scientists launched the country's first spacecraft designed to carry humans into orbit and guided it back to Earth today, making a key breakthrough in the government's seven-year effort to join the United States and Russia in the elite club of manned space flight.
The unmanned module--dubbed the Shenzhou, or Magic Vessel, by Chinese President Jiang Zemin--was thrust into space before dawn Saturday aboard a new version of China's Long March rocket, officials said. It orbited the Earth 14 times before hurtling back through the atmosphere and parachuting into a field in Inner Mongolia this morning, 21 hours after taking off.
"The successful launch of the Shenzhou has fulfilled a long-cherished dream of the Chinese people," the country's official New China News Agency said. "As early as 500 years ago, Chinese test-fired rockets into the sky in an attempt to realize the dream."
Decades after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth and President John F. Kennedy vowed that the United States would put a man on the moon, Chinese leaders have taken a page from the playbooks of the former Cold War rivals as they seek to boost the country's national pride and international stature.
China began pursuing manned space flight in the late 1960s but abandoned the effort because Premier Zhou Enlai thought the program too costly. Jiang revived the effort in the early 1990s, after he was appointed the country's leader following the crackdown on democracy demonstrations in Beijing in 1989. The expressed goal was to achieve manned space flight by the end of the century. That deadline is now virtually impossible to meet, but analysts said China would likely be able to make it within a year or so.
China has been launching satellites into space since 1970, and telecommunications companies around the world have turned to China's cheap and relatively reliable launch services to put their satellites into orbit. But today's successful mission marked a big step forward for China's space program, analysts said. Designing and building a spaceship capable of safely carrying people into space and back is a much more difficult task, and one with much higher stakes.
"The fact that they were successful is a major step forward," said Charles Vick, an expert on space issues at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists who said China could send an animal into space as early as next month and a person before the middle of next year. The Chinese tested "everything but having a man on board . . . The launch vehicle and the spacecraft worked together as they should."
The government said thousands of scientists have worked on the so-called 921 Program, but it gave no estimate of the costs. The government said it would conduct several more unmanned missions before trying to put humans into space. Chinese astronauts and technical personnel have trained at Russia's Star City space center since 1996.
The launch of the space module comes as China's leaders are facing a host of challenges at home, from unemployment to a loss of faith in the Communist system after 20 years of breakneck economic reforms.
At the same time, international developments--from this spring's NATO campaign against Yugoslavia and its bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade to tensions with the United States over Taiwan and China's alleged nuclear spying--have sparked nationalist sentiment, making leaders eager to offer clear examples of China's power.
"Launching space vehicles needs the most sophisticated technology and is a comprehensive demonstration of a country's political, economic, scientific and technical strength," said the official news agency, which emphasized that the rocket and spacecraft were designed and built independently by Chinese engineers. The effort will "boost the nation's sense of pride and cohesiveness [and] arouse the enthusiasm of all ethnic groups."
Wu Yan, a leading Chinese science fiction writer who has done extensive research on China's space program, said that even if China cannot surpass the world's leaders in space exploration, Chinese officials' decision to move ahead with the manned space program is a way to develop technology, inspire national confidence and leave a lasting mark.
"For now, China doesn't have any plan to try to compete with the United States or Russia. But China wants to be better than other countries like Japan and India," Wu said. "Although it's not number one, there aren't many countries in the world that can do it. It's still worth it."
Wu also said he hopes the successful mission and the eventual sight of a Chinese astronaut floating in zero gravity will awaken scientific curiosity and a sense of the fantastic among Chinese. Scientific knowledge is often handed down from on high to students in China, and teaching often de-emphasizes the importance of imagination in the process of discovery, he said.
Former astronaut and senator John Glenn, who became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962, 10 months after Gagarin, suggested to national security officials several years ago that the United States provide China with technical assistance for its space program. Glenn argued that China would be in danger of sacrificing lives unnecessarily just to learn lessons already known by the United States.
The U.S. administration rejected the idea because of concerns about sensitive technology, among other things.
Vick said the craft launched this weekend was based on technology from the Russian Soyuz, as well as home-grown designs and openly available material about early U.S. space flights. The Chinese craft weighs 8.4 tons and is capable of carrying at least two people.
China has had a mixed record in space safety. A Long March rocket carrying a telecommunications satellite exploded after liftoff in 1995, killing six people. In February 1996, a rocket carrying an Intelsat 708 communications satellite exploded. Six months later, Chinese scientists put a $120 million Chinese satellite in the wrong orbit. But in the last three years, China has had 17 straight successful launches.
In a sign that even the government was not a hundred percent certain of the outcome of this weekend's mission, Chinese television--which has begun to broadcast more live events--showed only taped footage of the launch and pictures of the module on the ground after it landed. The broadcast was authorized by Chinese censors only after the spacecraft had arrived safely back on Earth.
---
China Takes a Giant Leap Closer to Manned Spaceflight
By ERIK ECKHOLM New York Times November 22, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/112299china-spacecraft.html
BEIJING -- China announced its first successful launching and recovery of an unmanned spacecraft on Sunday, an important step toward the goal of putting its own explorers in space.
The launching was not a surprise to Western diplomats and space experts, some of whom think that China may be able to put its scientists in space as early as some time next year.
But it was the most significant breakthrough yet in President Jiang Zemin's drive for China to join the small club of nations that have succeeded in putting people in space. Jiang personally spurred the project in 1992 as part of his effort to make China a respected global power.
Even as it kept secret critical details of the event, the Chinese government immediately began working to harvest publicity gains. Accounts of the flight, and the reported excitement and pride it inspired among the Chinese people, practically took over this evening's television news.
The capsule, which was hoisted atop a Long March rocket with four external engines at the base, was fired into orbit at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday from a pad in the northwestern province of Gansu, according to the New China New Agency.
After completing 14 orbits at an altitude of about 186 miles, the craft received a signal from a ship to slow down, arced toward earth and parachuted to a landing zone in Inner Mongolia at 3:41 a.m., according to the official news reports.
The spaceflight was kept secret until its successful conclusion, after which television pictures of the launching and official journalists' articles were released.
The apparent success "once again demonstrates that China is fully capable of independently mastering the most advanced technology," said a "leading expert" who heads the country's manned spaceflight program, in an interview issued by the New China News Agency.
The program chief's name was concealed, apparently because it is considered classified.
David Shambaugh, an expert on the Chinese military at George Washington University and the Brookings Institution in Washington, said: "The research and development, production and launching activities of the Chinese space program are all under military control."
The Long March rockets, used to put satellites as well as the spacecraft into orbit on Saturday, are nearly identical to the Dong Feng intercontinental ballistic missiles in China's nuclear forces, Shambaugh said.
China has been stung in recent years by accusations that it stole American rocket and nuclear-bomb secrets, and this weekend's 21-hour flight is being trumpeted as a validation of indigenous science.
Development of a manned space program will promote "the country's comprehensive national strength, promote the development of science and technology, enhance national prestige, and boost the nation's sense of pride and cohesiveness," the unnamed program chief was quoted as saying.
The official added that more unmanned test flights would be conducted before astronauts were sent into space. Though much of the program has been kept secret, photographs purporting to show the rocket and orbiter at the Jiuquan launching site in Gansu, the one used on Saturday, had mysteriously appeared on the Internet last summer.
The spacecraft, which Western experts said is similar to the capsules used by the Soviet Union and the United States in the heyday of manned earth orbiting in the 1960's, was named Shenzhou, which means magic vessel but is also a pun on a word for China.
Jiang supposedly chose the name, and this morning's issue of the People's Daily carried that name written in his calligraphy, along with a brief report of the successful flight, which ended just before a delayed press time.
For Jiang, the manned space project is a matter of both personal and national prestige. Only the United States and Russia, and the Soviet Union before it, have marshaled the technology and money to send people into space.
In 1970, China launched its first satellite, named The East is Red.
While pursuing its own space program, China has maintained a profitable business using its rockets to launch commercial satellites from other countries, including the United States. Official reports here today noted that this was the 59th launching of the Long March series of rockets, and that the last 17 in a row, over the last three years, had been successful. Well-known explosions of rockets carrying satellites in 1995 and 1996 were not mentioned.
In 1995, China made a deal with Russia to acquire certain space technologies, including information on life-support systems, spacecraft docking mechanisms and spacesuits. Then in 1996, two Chinese astronauts along with more than a dozen trainers and support workers began a year of training at a Russian cosmonaut center outside Moscow, according to Western experts.
Chinese officials at that time suggested that a manned flight would occur by the 50th anniversary of the People's Republic, on Oct. 1 of this year, but that target proved too ambitious.
---
China's space heritage
A hand-painted poster trumpets the space voyage
By BBC News Online 22 November, 1999, Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991122/aponline071433_000.htm
The Chinese media has swelled with national pride following the first launch of the country's spaceship, despite the lack of a crew on board.
The China Daily hailed the launch and touchdown of the unmanned "Shenzhou" with a front page photo captioned "Landmark launch shakes the world".
China's success comes 42 years after the former Soviet Union became the first nation to go into space. After the former Soviet Union and the United States, China is only the third nation to launch a vehicle capable of carrying a man into orbit.
Soviet-style
But a close look at China's technology reveals how much it owes to the former Soviet Union's spacecraft design and, possibly, American electronic technology.
Nonetheless, in prestige terms the spacecraft test has allowed China to thumb its nose at US critics who accuse it of stealing American space technology.
In May, a US congressional report by Representative Christopher Cox, a California Republican, alleged Chinese agents stole US space, missile and nuclear secrets.
China, which has vehemently denied the Cox report, says both the rocket and the spacecraft used in the launch were home-grown.
But that is clearly not the case.
Larger Soyuz
The Shenzhou spacecraft is obviously a larger derivative of the Russian Soyuz design, probably outfitted with Chinese avionics.
The design of the capsule, which could hold up to three Chinese astronauts, shows that it is intended to be docked with another spacecraft in orbit.
It could be the first piece of a Chinese manned space station or, less probably, docked to the International Space Station now being built by an international collaboration, led by the US and Russia.
Domestically, the launch is a boost to national pride and the standing of President Jiang, analysts said.
Jiang has identified himself personally with the project by naming the craft "Shenzhou", or "Divine Ship". That name, in Jiang's calligraphy, appeared on the front pages of major Chinese newspapers on Monday.
Several unmanned test flights of Shenzhou are expected to take place but a manned flight is probably two years away.
'Hugely influential'
On Monday, China's state press championed the technological breakthrough of the first test launch but revealed little more.
"The road to manned space flight is long and is a huge undertaking that is full of risks," the leading People's Daily said in an editorial.
"But for the future of mankind and our country's politics, military, economy and science and technology it will be hugely influential," it added.
People interviewed on Beijing's streets on Monday all welcomed the weekend flight of the Shenzhou capsule. All insisted China could afford a human-flight space program even though tens of millions of Chinese live in poverty.
---
First Space Launch Fills China Media With Pride
New York Times November 22, 1999 By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-space-c.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese media swelled with national pride on Monday over the country's first space launch, and some newspapers that missed the weekend news splashed their front pages with reports and pictures of the blast-off.
The China Daily hailed the launch and touchdown of the unmanned ``Shenzhou'' with a first page photo captioned, ''Landmark launch shakes the world.''
The space mission dominated the front page of the Communist Party flagship People's Daily for two days.
``Promote spaceflight and bring glory to the nation,'' urged a sidebar in its Monday edition.
China on Sunday announced it had successfully launched its first unmanned spacecraft, putting it in the exclusive space league with the United States and Russia.
The craft was launched in the northwestern province of Gansu on Saturday morning and spent 21 hours in space, orbiting the earth 14 times.
Local newspapers hit the streets only at midday on Sunday, apparently having been delayed until the successful touchdown of the spacecraft early Sunday morning in Inner Mongolia.
Many newspapers such as the Beijing Morning Post and the Beijing Youth Daily featured a four-page special edition on Monday with details of the mission and pictures of the spacecraft in orbit and the capsule after touchdown.
The Beijing Youth's special edition had a centerspread which ``unclouded the mysteries of Shenzhou's maiden mission.''
-------- iran
Russian FM plans visit to Iran
UPI November 22, 1999 By MOHAMMED el-SEYYED
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/991122/13/international-russia
TEHRAN, Iran, Nov. 22 (UPI) An Iranian official said Monday that Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was expected to visit Tehran next week to discuss cooperation and regional issues.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Rida Asefi said Ivanov's official visit was part of "continued consultation between the two friendly countries" and was meant to tackle "bilateral ties as well as regional and international issues of joint concern."
Asefi said the visit was expected to help consolidate the already good ties between the two countries.
A Foreign Ministry source told United Press International that Ivanov's talks in Tehran next week were to focus on Russia's cooperation to help build a nuclear power plant in the Iranian city of Bushehr, the crisis in Afghanistan and last week's summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The Bushehr nuclear plant has been paralyzed by Iran's economic problems and Russia's own inability to help operate it.
The United States has accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons and has limited some forms of aid to Russia in an attempt to pressure Moscow into stopping the flow of key technologies to Iran.
---
Iran Issues Russia Ultimatum to US
New York Times November 21, 1999 By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Israel-Iran.html
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- Unless the United States pressures Russia to end its military assistance to Iran, the Islamic republic will possess a nuclear capability within five years, a senior Israeli military official said Sunday.
Israel has intelligence that Iran plans to upgrade its Shahab-3 ballistic missile, currently still in the testing phase, to make it capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and to extend its range to 1,300 miles, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official said that the Iranians were working on advanced versions of the missile, named Shahab-4 and Shahab-5.
Iran has confirmed testing the Shahab-3, a ballistic missile capable of reaching 800 miles, but says it is purely for defensive purposes.
The official said that in light of the new intelligence, Israel and the United States were discussing ways to increase pressure on Russia to stop military assistance Israel accuses Moscow of providing Iran.
Russia has repeatedly denied reports that it is helping Iran develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, and has rejected past U.S. pressure. Moscow is helping Tehran build a nuclear power plant that both insist is only for peaceful purposes.
The official said Israel regards the combination of surface-to-surface missiles and nonconventional weapons in Iranian hands as ``a threat to the world.''
Israel regards Iran as the chief backer of the Hezbollah, a guerrilla army fighting Israel's occupation of south Lebanon. Prime Minister Ehud Barak has promised a negotiated withdrawal from Lebanon by July.
The official said that the military would have a withdrawal plan ready for Barak's approval by next month. Syria is the main power broker in Lebanon, and Barak regards relaunching negotiations with Syria as crucial to ensuring a smooth withdrawal.
However, he has not discounted a unilateral withdrawal, should talks with the Syrians fail to materialize.
Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli army's chief-of-staff, told Israel TV on Sunday that the army was prepared to examine the feasibility of a unilateral withdrawal should the government consider the option.
The army established its ``security zone'' in south Lebanon in 1985 to protect Israel's northern towns from attack.
Wary of the impending withdrawal, residents of the northern towns protested the army's failure to include them in any post-withdrawal planning by blacking out street lights Sunday evening and calling for a strike of schools and municipal services on Monday.
Another question facing Israel after any withdrawal is the fate of some 3,000 members of the South Lebanese Army, an Israeli-sponsored militia in the security zone. Mofaz said Israel would guarantee the security of militia members and their families.
---
Iran May Be Selling Scud Missiles
New York Times November 22, 1999 Filed at 2:17 p.m. EST By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Iran-Scuds.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iran sold Scud missiles to the Democratic Republic of Congo last month in the first export of a homemade version of the short-range missile, The Washington Times reported today.
The paper said Iranian Scud B and Scud C missile systems were detected by U.S. spy agencies over the past several weeks.
A White House spokesman said today the administration was checking into the report.
``We take these kinds of reports very seriously,'' said Jim Fallin, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council. Still, he said, ``We have no credible evidence that such a sale has occurred.''
Quoting Clinton administrations officials not further identified, the Times said it is the first time Iran has exported missile systems and highlights the spread of missile systems to central Africa for the first time.
The paper said the sales undergird the view of U.S. intelligence analysts who have cautioned that nations that have received missile technology from countries like Russia, China and North Korea are themselves becoming sources of missiles and related goods for other nations.
---
Report: Iran sells missiles to Congo
UPI November 22, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/991122/04/international-congo-missiles
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 (UPI) Iran is selling Scud missiles to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Washington Times reported Monday that U.S. spy agencies detected Iranian Scud B and Scud C missiles systems in the African state in the past several weeks. The newspaper, citing anonymous sources, said Iran has military officers in the DRC as part of team to assemble the systems.
The presence of missiles could spread the DRC civil war into a regional conflict. DRC President Laurent Kabila is battling rebels who are receiving support from neighboring Uganda and Rwanda.
The intelligence seems to support U.S. concerns that countries, such as Iran, that received missile technology from Russia, China and North Korea, are now becoming exporters of the technology.
The DRC is believed to be the second country in Africa to have missile capability, joining South Africa, which, the Washington Times said, is reported to have built its arsenal with help from Israel.
---
Iran sold Scud missiles to Congolese
Washington Times November 22, 1999 By Bill Gertz
http://www.washtimes.com/news/news1.html
Iran sold Scud missiles to the Democratic Republic of Congo last month in the first export of its homemade versions of the widely used short-range missile, The Washington Times has learned.
Iranian Scud B and Scud C missile systems were detected by U.S. spy agencies over the past several weeks.
It is the first time Iran has exported complete short-range missile systems, which it has been working to produce since the 1980s. The sales highlight the spread of missile systems to central Africa for the first time as well, said Clinton administration officials familiar with the reports.
Iranian military officers currently are in Kinshasa, the capital of what was formerly known as Zaire, as part of a delegation of technicians that arrived in the country last month to assemble the missile systems, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Iranian missile sales support the view of U.S. intelligence analysts who say nations that have been the recipient of missile technology from states like Russia, China and North Korea, are themselves becoming sources of missiles and related goods for other nations.
The CIA has identified the main weapons "proliferators" as Russia, China and North Korea. A senior intelligence official said that in the future such nations as Iran, Pakistan, Libya and Syria also will join the ranks of the missile suppliers.
Iranian missile exports to Africa also are raising new fears among Pentagon officials that Iran could export its 700-mile range Shahab-3 missile, which was tested for the first time last year.
"That's a major concern," said one official.
The Shahab-3 is believed to be based extensively on the design and components used in North Korea's 620-mile No Dong missile.
Iran is developing two medium-range missiles known as the Shahab-3 and Shahab-4, and also is believed to be working on an intercontinental ballistic missile dubbed Shahab-5.
The Scud B is a Russian-design missile with a range of about 187 miles. The Scud-C is a longer range version with a range of about 300 miles. The missiles were initially designed as tactical battlefield weapons, but they have become strategic "terror" weapons in recent years because of their impact.
An Iraqi Scud missile killed 28 U.S. soldiers during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, causing the largest single number of casualties in one attack during the conflict.
Russia has been firing scores of its Scuds against the breakaway province of Chechnya, causing numerous civilian casualties.
In addition to the deployment in Congo, Scuds are currently in the arsenal of 13 nations: Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Belarus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Vietnam and Yemen.
The only other nation in Africa that is believed to have ballistic missiles is South Africa, which is reported to have built its missiles with help from Israel.
The Iranian missiles have increased the danger that Congo's ongoing civil war could spread into a wider regional conflict.
The government of Congolese President Laurent Kabila is fighting rebel groups backed by neighboring Uganda and Rwanda. Both countries oppose the Kabila government.
Congo's military also is receiving military assistance from North Korea, which is helping to train Mr. Kabila's forces. U.S. intelligence agencies recently reported that the assistance has raised concerns that the Congo will pay for the training with uranium ore, which could be used in North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program.
The officials did not say how many launchers or missiles Iran has sold to Congo, but one official said it was a small number.
Iran has been importing missile technology and materials from Russia and China for years, according to a CIA report on weapons proliferation made public in February. "Tehran is using these goods and technologies to achieve its goal of becoming self-sufficient in the production of [medium-range ballistic missiles]," the report said. Scud production in Iran is under way "with North Korean help," it said.
Congo is a former Belgian colony that became independent in 1960. The country was taken over by Mobutu Sese Seko in 1965 and was renamed Zaire. He was overthrown by the current president in 1997.
Mr. Kabila has been battling rebels since last year. The fighting was halted temporarily by a recent peace agreement. But the agreement has not held, and fighting is continuing in the northern part of the country. International aid groups have estimated that at least 9,000 people have been killed in the fighting.
-------- canada
Campaign to Stop the Sale of CANDU Reactor, Akkuyu Bay Nuclear Plant
By Sofia S. Kostos (Free-lance journalist)
Jim Karygiannis, a Liberal Federal Member of the Canadian Parliament is, on a mission to stop the sale of the Candu nuclear reactor from being sold to the earthquake prone area of Akkuyu Bay in Turkey. Scientists, environmentalists, people from the Eastern Mediterranean, Canadians, Americans, Germans, Britain's and concerned politicians who oppose the bid say the recent quake, which killed more than 13,000 people and injured 26,000 is evidence that Turkey should not have nuclear power. "The Eastern Mediterranean is an earthquake-prone region -- for God's sake, don't put a nuclear plant there," said Liberal MP Karygiannis. "I'm terrified to think what an earthquake the magnitude of the one that occurred this past summer in Turkey could unleash in Akkuyu."
The Honorable Karygiannis is actively involved in educating people and gathering signed petitions against the Canadian government's proposal. To meet his goal, he is touring North America and other countries to discuss compelling concerns about Turkey's effort to buy two nuclear reactors.
When I heard about Karygiannis' lecture circuit, I asked him if he would add Philadelphia to his itinerary and speak at the Saint George Cathedral. His response was affirmative. The next step was set into motion when our beloved Proto-Presbyter Father Demetrios Katerlis invited Karygiannis to our church. Father Demetrios enthusiastically followed the example of our Patriarch Bartholomew, who has earned the name "Green Patriarch" because of his leadership role for the protection of the environment.
Concurrently, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, leaders of more than two dozen church bodies, including the Greek Orthodox Church, Protestant denominations, and the Philadelphia Board of Rabbis, signed the historic "Religious Leaders' Statement on Global Warming." This document warns that human beings are doing violence to God's creation by causing global warming and calls for people of faith to be stewards of His creation.
In Philadelphia, Karygiannis delivered his message in English and Greek and spoke from his heart and deep convictions before the congregation at Saint George. He reminded us of Turkey's lack of respect for the human rights of its own citizens; of its repression of minorities and of their use of force and military aggression against its smaller neighbors. The sale of nuclear technology to such a country can possibly give it the ability to produce nuclear weapons of mass destruction that could destabilize the whole region.
He further explained that if the proposed Candu nuclear reactor were sold to Turkey, the first would be installed at the Akkuyu Bay on Turkey's Mediterranean Coast north of Cyprus. He said that Turkey has been actively pursuing the acquisition of nuclear technology and is willing t put all its neighbors including the Mediterranean Sea at risk.
He elaborated, "If there is an accident from an earthquake at an Akkuyu plant, it would make the Chernobyl accident look like a mere highway car pileup." And David Martin who is the Research Director of the Canada based Nuclear Awareness Project, a non-government organization has described the combination of a nuclear plant plus an earthquake with this analogy: "It is like creating a pool of gasoline in the Middle East and an earthquake being the matchstick." Martin often joins Karygiannis on the lecture circuit and brings with him 20 years of experience on nuclear issues and has written several reports on the proposed Akkuyu nuclear plant.
The installation of the proposed nuclear plants in Akkuyu Bay will not serve the energy needs of Turkey; but could be used for nuclear proliferation. Instead of investing billions in nuclear power for covering only 2-3% of its energy needs, Turkey should instead promote energy efficiency and conservation, and exploit its vast reserves of renewable energy.
Karygiannis reported that the Cirrus reactors given to India and Pakistan by Canada for use in the 1960s were used instead to produce nuclear bombs. Furthermore in 1997, Turkey collected bids from three international consortia, led by America's Westinghouse, Canada's Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) which is considered to be the leading contender to build the Turkish nuclear plant. AECL is competing against Nuclear Power International (NPI) a German company Siemens and the French company Framatome, and a third bidder, a partnership of Westinghouse (USA) and Mitsubishi (Japan).
The proposed nuclear power plant site would be placed on a possible seismic area. And if an earthquake of more than eight on the Richter scale were to take place close at the nuclear power plant, this would cause an incalculable devastation in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Yet, imminent danger is always a distinct possibility through human error and negligence as was proven in Japan's recent nuclear disaster.
In a recent letter to Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit of Turkey, Karygiannis wrote, "Mr. Prime Minister your TEAS [Turkish Electric Company] is using earthquake studies that are over 16 years old. Why not take the responsible step and update your earthquake studies... Mr. Prime Minister, why did your army move into the area and confiscate the ballots from the Referendum held by Green Peace, which asked the people in the immediate area if they wanted the Nuclear Plant in their area?" Still, Turkey and Canada remain intractable.
Karygiannis' message energized people into actively seeking ways to help spread the word in order to prevent the sale of the Nuclear Vendor governments. In contrast to our freedom to express ourselves, there were12 members of the ecological organization, Green Peace, who were not so fortunate. They were arrested in Turkey for protesting against the proposed construction of the Akkuyu nuclear plant. Nine members of Green Peace were from Denmark, Germany and Holland and three members were from Turkey.
Some members of the Turkish-Canadian community have expressed their reluctance about building a nuclear reactor upon their often-volatile homeland. " I wouldn't build a house in Turkey right now, let alone a nuclear reactor," said Soner Asa, President of the Turkish-Canadian Youth Association in Edmonton, Canada.
Mr. Karygiannis is an active voice in the Canadian Parliament for a peaceful solution of the conflicts that have risen in the Balkans, and has promoted peace and safety in the eastern Mediterranean for many years. He has been active in many community organizations. In 1999 he was awarded the "Order of the Phoenix" the highest award bestowed to a civilian and was given the title of an officer by the President of the Republic of Greece.
Since Karygiannis' recent visit to Philadelphia, he has gone to Cyprus and is scheduled to visit New York City by week's end; he is propelled by the urgency of his message -- that collectively we can all make our voices heard.
More information is available at:
http://www.diaspora-net.org/nuclear (English) http://www.phantis.com/nuclear.awareness (Greek)
http://www.radiation.org http://www.prop1.org
-------- bulgaria
Bulgaria Mulling Effects of Y2K
New York Times November 22, 1999 By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Bulgaria-Y2K.html
KOZLODUI, Bulgaria (AP) -- After assurances that the country's only nuclear plant is safe from the Y2K bug, few Bulgarians are concerned about the potential effects of the millennium rollover.
Why bother, they ask, when trains and buses rarely run on time, power failures are common and telephone lines are often jammed. Daily life in Bulgaria already means dealing with basic services that don't work.
Prolonged economic hardships that began before the end of communist rule 10 years ago in a country President Clinton was visiting today have left little money to modernize public transport, the country's electricity grid or the postal and telephone networks.
That translates into bothersome breakdowns unthinkable in more prosperous countries: Creaky old buses expire during daily runs; heat and power are on one day, off the next; local phone calls can be a challenge.
``The public transport is a total mess and I can never manage to be on time,'' says Elena Damyanova, a former state Cartography Institute employee who used to draw maps but now works as a cleaning lady.
A well-dressed woman in her 50s, shivering in the November cold as she waited for a bus she expected to arrive late and overcrowded said she couldn't imagine how Y2K could make transportation any worse. ``The drivers have to worry more about the holes that cover the streets.''
On the bright side, low-tech life in Bulgaria represents an advantage as computers roll over to year 2000. With few services computerized, there is less chance Bulgarians will experience major problems.
The only real concern was the Kozlodui nuclear plant because of fears that Soviet-era reactors are unsafe.
CIA expert Lawrence Gershwin told a congressional hearing in Washington last month that the chance of a nuclear incident in states with Soviet-designed reactors during the Y2K rollover is ``higher than normal because of the likelihood that the power grid could experience failures.'' Chances of radioactive releases cannot be discounted, he said.
But government officials say Kozlodui, 125 miles north of Sofia, is prepared for Y2K. Most computer-guided systems there have been tested and the rest will be well before New Year's Eve, they say.
Much of the $500 million Bulgaria received from the World Bank for dealing with the Y2K problem was used to make sure the Kozlodui plant does not present a problem.
``The power industry is ready for the year 2000,'' said Mario Tagarinski, minister of state administration and chairman of the Y2K Consultation Council, during a recent visit to the country's only nuclear plant, accompanied by Western diplomats.
On that tour, U.S. Ambassador Richard Miles said the government was ``making very big efforts to calm people's concerns and to take the steps that are necessary so there won't be any problems.''
``I don't anticipate any serious problems here at all,'' he said. A decision to have embassy staff pulled out to avoid possible trouble caused by the millennium bug had been canceled in recognition of the state's efforts to fix possible glitches, Miles added.
Indirectly, the Y2K concerns might benefit Bulgarians because money spent to ensure nothing goes wrong has led to improvements to notoriously bad basic services, like the power grid.
As a result, Bulgarians this time can be sure of light over New Year's, said Ivanka Mechkarska, an official with the state energy committee.
``We can assure the public that we will not leave Bulgaria without electricity,'' she said.
-------- russia
Yeltsin Urges Test Ban Ratification
By The Associated Press, New York Times November 22, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Treaty.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- President Boris Yeltsin pressed forward Monday with his effort to persuade parliament to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, delegating the foreign, defense and atomic energy ministers to take his case before lawmakers.
Yeltsin named Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov as his envoys to the two houses of parliament, the State Duma and the Federation Council.
In a letter to Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov, Yeltsin stressed that Russia had been a major force in drafting the treaty and that the agreement was ``a most important instrument for strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation system,'' the presidential press office said.
Yeltsin announced Wednesday in Istanbul, Turkey, that he had asked the Duma to ratify the treaty, which Russia signed in 1996. However, a new Duma is to be elected Dec. 19, and lawmakers have expressed doubt that they would ratify the document before then.
The test ban treaty has been signed by 154 countries, but only about 30 have ratified it.
The U.S. Senate voted last month to reject the treaty, saying it would undermine strategic stability. Russia has strongly criticized the move.
---
New Life for 'Star Wars' Response
Russians Could Revive Soviet Strategy if U.S. Decides to Deploy Missile Defense
Washington Post, November 22, 1999; Page A18 By David http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/22/056l-112299-idx.html
MOSCOW-When the United States raises the prospect that it will build a missile defense system, Russian strategic planners don't have far to go for a response.
They can reach for a drawer marked "Star Wars" and take out some of the Soviet-era blueprints drawn up more than 15 years ago in response to President Reagan's grand hopes for the Strategic Defense Initiative, a missile defense shield.
There, gathering dust until recently, are some choice ideas and gadgets that the Soviet designers thought could be used to confuse, evade, saturate and overwhelm a missile defense system.
Reagan never realized his vision of a global shield against ballistic missiles, and the Soviet ideas were mostly laid to rest, in some cases by subsequent arms control treaties. But in recent weeks, Russia's top military strategists have begun to trot them out again, and they are openly promising to reanimate these schemes if necessary to frustrate an American missile defense system.
These include the use of decoy warheads, space-based "chaff" to simulate warheads, maneuverable warheads to steer away from interceptor rockets and prolonging the deployment of huge land-based, multiple-warhead missiles.
The Clinton administration has said it will not decide until June whether to go ahead with a limited missile defense, requiring changes in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Russia, which opposes treaty modifications, has already ratcheted up a noisy campaign against changes, saying they would destroy all arms control efforts of the last 20 years and wreck such cooperative efforts as reciprocal inspections.
The result has been a back-to-the-future scenario in which Russia is reviving gambits dreamed up in the Soviet era to fend off a missile defense system like that dreamed up in 1983 by the Reagan administration.
An antimissile system uses a combination of detectors like radar and satellites to spot incoming missiles and warheads and then deploys fast-flying interceptor rockets to try to destroy them before they land or explode. At the center of the old Soviet ideas now being refloated is to defeat the missile defense system by fooling it.
The pride of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces is the relatively new Topol-M, a solid-fuel missile, now carrying a single warhead, which was designed to replace older, multiple-warhead missiles being retired under arms control treaties. Russia put a regiment of 10 Topol-M missiles on duty last year, and is expected to deploy a second regiment by the end of next month.
But Russian officials have said they could convert the Topol-M into a three-warhead missile. Such multiple-warhead land-based missiles were outlawed by the START II treaty, which has never been ratified by the Russian parliament and may not be. Moreover, Russians have said the START I treaty could also be endangered.
"If this [antimissile] treaty crashes, then there are no problems to increase the launched weight of the rockets," Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, director of the Defense Ministry's Central Research Institute and a leading strategist, said in a recent newspaper essay.
The added launch weight is to accommodate additional warheads or other equipment to defeat an antimissile system. Russian specialists said the Topol-M could carry at least three and perhaps as many as six warheads. Yuri Solomonov, director of the Moscow institute that designed the Topol-M, said earlier this year that it could "penetrate any country's antimissile system."
Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, and a top Russian arms control expert, said that Russia has numerous ways to try to defeat an antimissile system with "penetration aids," such as decoy warheads.
Moreover, Russia has the ability, developed in the Soviet era, to deploy a kind of chaff, or deceptive particles, in the nose cone of the Topol-M. When released, the chaff "will look like thousands of warheads" to the missile defense system, he said, and it will be difficult to distinguish the real from the fake.
Yet another attribute of the Topol-M, specialists said, is that it has a maneuverable warhead, which can change direction after being released from the missile to try to evade interceptor rockets. The maneuverable warhead was tested in Russia last summer. The Topol-M also has a shorter engine-burn time to minimize satellite detection on launch.
Russia also recently announced it intends to resume production of its most modern submarine-based multiple-warhead missile, the SS-N-23. While deployed with four warheads each, Russian officials said it was originally tested with 10 warheads, and might be restored to that number. The warheads were scaled down for the START I treaty. Dvorkin suggested that some of these liquid-fuel missiles could be deployed on land, as well, if the treaties are torn up.
Dvorkin has also suggested Russia would again put its rail-mobile land-based missiles, which have been parked, back on patrol.
Rogov said there were other measures. "You can attack the defenses," he said, with such devices as nuclear explosions in space, or by targeting the brain center of the missile defense system.
Moreover, Dvorkin said, Russia could simply stretch out the multiple-warhead missiles now due for retirement under arms control treaties.
Dvorkin and others have insisted that Russia can afford these measures, despite its chronic financial troubles. But others have questioned how far Russia can really go to carry out its threats. The Topol-M has been underfunded and years behind the original schedule.
Alexander Pikayev of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted that until recently the Russian nuclear forces had received most funding for procurement. But, he said, the balance is changing and more money is being allocated for conventional weapons procurement.
Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, a former rocket forces chief, has long advocated special treatment for the nuclear forces, but Sergeyev's tenure may not outlast President Boris Yeltsin, who leaves office next year.
---
Chernobyl Plans To Restart Reactor By The Associated Press
New York Times November 22, 1999 Filed at 12:05 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Ukraine-Chernobyl.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Operators at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant carried out preliminary tests Monday for restarting the plant's only working reactor after months of repairs.
``The pre-launch work is being conducted now,'' said Oleh Holoskokov, a Chernobyl spokesman. ``Still, I don't know when exactly we would be allowed to bring the reactor back on line.''
The results of the tests will determine when the reactor is restarted. Holoskokov said the reactor could be restarted on Thursday if no problems are discovered.
The only operating reactor at the Chernobyl plant, site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986, was shut down for scheduled repairs on July 1. Defects were discovered and repair work lasted until this month.
Ukraine had pledged to fully close down Chernobyl by 2000, but later made it conditional on receiving international aid to complete two new reactors.
Ukraine is heavily dependent on nuclear power, and its five atomic plants produce more than 40 percent of the former Soviet republic's electricity.
Currently, nine out of Ukraine's 14 nuclear reactors are functioning. On Monday, reactor No. 3 at the Yuzhnaya plant was restarted after planned repairs and the only reactor at the Khmelnitsky plant resumed its operations after being shut down for several days following a water leak.
-------- vieques
Puerto Rico Can't Shut Navy's Water
November 22, 1999 Filed at 2:55 p.m. EST By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Puerto-Rico-US-Navy.html
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- A federal judge on Monday ordered the Puerto Rican government not to shut off the water to a U.S. Navy base while he considers a complaint that the military is using the water illegally.
The allegations are part of an escalating feud between the U.S. military and the Puerto Rican government, which is demanding the Navy abandon its bombing range on the outlying island of Vieques.
U.S. District Court Judge Hector Laffitte issued the order during a hearing on the dispute Monday.
The Navy asked the court to intervene after Puerto Rican officials presented the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, which runs the bombing range, with a $8.8 million water bill and fined it an additional $8 million.
The Natural and Environmental Resources Department alleges the Navy's permit to draw up to 3 million gallons of water daily from the Rio Blanco expired in 1985, and that it owes money for the water it has been drawing since.
Navy officials say they have been taking water from the river since 1942 and do not need a permit. They say the base applied for a permit in 1986 in order to cooperate with local officials but never received a response.
In October, protesters blocked the Navy's water intake for two days with sandbags and a wooden panel before police cleared them away.
Relations between the Navy and the Puerto Rican government have soured since April, when a jet practicing over Vieques dropped a bomb off target and killed a civilian security guard at the training ground.
A committee appointed by Gov. Pedro Rossello documented other accidents and environmental damage at the training ground, prompting the governor to demand the military leave the island.
-------- us nuc weapons
Conspiracy of Silence: THE PLUTONIUM FILES
America's Secret Medical Experiments In the Cold War
By Eileen Welsome, Dial. 580 pp. $26.95
Washington Post, November 21, 1999; Page X04 Review By Deborah Nelson
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/21/009l-112199-idx.html
An acquaintance of mine who designed high-tech weapons of destruction was once asked how he dealt with the daily stress of creating new ways to kill people. He didn't consider his job in those terms, he said. He simply enjoyed the engineering challenge each new device presented and never really thought beyond.
That stunning ability to compartmentalize must be what allowed scientists at Los Alamos, who helped build the first generation of atom bombs, to celebrate their devastating success in Hiroshima like rowdy college boys after a football victory, with honking cars, fireworks and parties. And perhaps it begins to explain how, in the name of science and national security, they could launch secret experiments on unwitting adults and children to measure the effects of radiation on the body.
In The Plutonium Files, journalist Eileen Welsome provides a disturbing look at what happens when scientists lose touch with their humanity in the single-minded pursuit of scientific advancement. The power of this book and her previous work derives from her relentless pursuit of the names, forms and personal histories of the victims of nuclear science. Six years ago, her Pulitzer Prize-winning series at the Albuquerque Tribune identified some of the real people behind the sterile code names used by the scientists who plunged plutonium-filled syringes into the bodies of 18 patients at hospitals around the country just to see what would happen. The existence of the experiments had been disclosed previously, but the victims remained anonymous until Welsome got curious and tracked some of them down. The emotional punch of her stories set off the public-relations equivalent of an atom bomb at the Pentagon and the Department of Energy.
Her work led to President Clinton's appointment of a special investigative commission and the release of many previously secret documents about other experiments, which helped her press on with her research. As a result, the book goes well beyond her initial focus on one experiment. Welsome marches readers through the killing fields of nuclear history, from the first chain reaction at the University of Chicago to the mass destruction at Hiroshima to the hospital bed of a trusting patient who doesn't know he's about to get a shot of plutonium.
Ebb Cade, "a soft-spoken man with powerful shoulders and callused hands," became the first patient after the bad luck of a car accident landed him in the Oak Ridge Army Hospital about the same time that scientists began patrolling the halls for a suitable subject. It's not clear how he became the chosen one, but Cade received his plutonium injection a couple weeks later on April 10, 1945, while still recovering from his injuries.
Thousands of human radiation experiments followed over the ensuing decades, according to the Clinton commission's count. They involved dying people and poor people, young boys at a state school and expectant mothers, all cast with little or no knowledge to play a role in federally funded experiments. "It's a little cocktail. It'll make you feel better," Helen Hutchison recalled the doctor telling her in July 1946, during a visit to the Vanderbilt University Hospital Prenatal Clinic.
It didn't make her feel better at all: It contained radioactive iron. According to Welsome, she was one of 829 women to receive various doses of the potion from the clinic over a two-year period. Both Hutchison and the daughter she carried went on to suffer a lifetime of strange ailments. Hutchison's hair fell out at one point, she suffers from pernicious anemia, and she is highly sensitive to sunlight. Her daughter, now grown, suffers from an immune system disorder and skin cancer.
Twenty theoretically more enlightened years later, according to Welsome, the women don't get much better treatment. Vanderbilt scientists decided to check in with the women, after new research suggested a link between prenatal radiation and childhood cancer. This provided an opportunity to come clean and maybe provide the study participants with important health information. Instead, Welsome reports, the scientists decided to extract information from the women under the guise of a diet and eating habit survey. The researchers published their findings in the American Journal of Epidemiology: four fatal cancers among children exposed to prenatal radiation and no cancers in the unexposed group. The authors apparently didn't bother to let the women know the results.
Another strength of this book is that Welsome doesn't save her nice narrative touch for the subjects of the experiments. She gives personalities and personal histories to the scientists and public officials as well. This is more than a good writing device. If you don't accept the notion that they were all patently evil human beings, then this sort of detail provides clues about how these men and women with hometowns and hopes and brilliant minds missed the ethical markers along the way -- sometimes even to their own detriment.
Welsome recounts the story of Louis Slotin, a Los Alamos scientist so caught up in the thrill of the science that he treated atomic physics like a parlor game. He invited colleagues to watch him "tickling the Dragon's tail," a precarious test designed to determine exactly how much fissionable material was needed to ignite a chain reaction. "Wearing a loose, open shirt and his trousers tucked into cowboy boots," Welsome writes, "Slotin stood in the middle of a large, sun-filled room and slowly lowered the upper half of a hollow beryllium hemisphere around a mass of fissionable material that was resting in a similar lower hemisphere," using a screwdriver to keep them from touching. "Suddenly the screw driver slipped and the tell-tale blue halo appeared." Everyone raced for the door to escape the deadly radiation, but it was too late for Slotin, who painfully wasted away in a hospital bed before succumbing several days later.
Throughout the book, Welsome weaves a pattern of denial, outright lies and cover-up by a succession of government officials and cooperative researchers -- starting with the testimony of Gen. Leslie Groves to Congress after the bombings of Japan that radiation exposure is "a very pleasant way to die" and continuing through the postwar era of the Atomic Energy Commission, created ostensibly to protect the public from radiation while promoting nuclear energy. Despite the heightened sensitivity about unethical research brought about by the Nuremberg Code, with its strong ethical stance and formalized notion of informed consent, highly questionable radiation experiments continued to be conducted. Welsome says there was a sense among American atomic researchers that the Code didn't apply to their experiments but rather to those carried out by "barbarians" in Germany.
Similarly, some may read this book and think it applies to a different time and an outmoded way of thinking. But a Pentagon study in recent weeks acknowledged the possibility that the military's mass use of an experimental drug on Gulf War soldiers is responsible for their mysterious illnesses. And the biotech boom of the past 20 years has turned up the heat on scientists everywhere to discover miracle cures. Tenure, grant funding, venture capital and product royalties all depend heavily on successful clinical studies.
While much scientific research today may be carried out ethically, the exceptions can still fly below the radar because the culture of secrecy seen in the Cold War era continues. Trade secrets have joined national secrets as an all-too-frequent excuse for keeping important medical research under wraps. Welsome's book is a well-written warning that it did happen here and could happen again.
Deborah Nelson, a staff reporter for The Washington Post's investigative unit, won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for the Seattle Times.
---
Road to Hiroshima: DOWNFALL
The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
By Richard B. Frank Random House. 484 pp. $35
Review By Ronald Spector Special to The Washington Post Sunday, November 21, 1999; Page X04
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/21/010l-112199-idx.html
By now few Americans can be unaware that the subject of the end of the war against Japan remains a matter of controversy. The 50th anniversary of World War II, the Enola Gay controversy at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and Japanese protests over a proposed U.S. postage stamp commemorating the atomic bombs have all helped to keep our attention focused. Many people have a lot more invested in this issue than historical curiosity. Aside from cosmic questions about the American conduct of World War II, whether the United States is a "good nation," how we regard our veterans, etc., the heart of the controversy involves the truth or falsity of the statement printed on the ill-fated postage stamp: "Atomic bombs help shorten the war."
For decades after V-J Day, most Americans' answer to this question was an emphatic "yes." Hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families firmly believed that they owed their lives to the atomic bomb, that it spared them from the awful necessity of assaulting the beaches of Kyushu and perhaps Honshu in the Japanese home islands. Postwar memoirs by President Harry S Truman and others appeared to confirm this conclusion.
Beginning in the 1960s, however, historians and other writers began to question these beliefs. Though they disagreed on certain matters, most of these scholars argued that Japan would have surrendered without the use of the atomic bombs and without an invasion. They argued that by the summer of 1945 Japan was a defeated nation desperately searching for a way to end the war. American leaders must have known this because their code-breakers were reading secret Japanese diplomatic and military messages. They must also have been aware that the one obstacle to a Japanese surrender was the lack of a guarantee that the emperor not be deposed. Instead American leaders chose to use the atomic bombs, perhaps to intimidate the Soviets, perhaps to justify the enormous atomic bomb project, perhaps simply out of racial animosity and desire for vengeance. (Not surprisingly, these arguments have been enthusiastically embraced by many Japanese educators and intellectuals.) During the 1980s scholars who held these views were delighted to discover what they considered authoritative evidence that Truman and his close advisers did not really expect huge casualties in an invasion of Japan.
Richard B. Frank's Downfall does not so much refute many of the reigning orthodoxies on both sides of the controversy as demonstrate their irrelevance and ahistorical nature. The author of a widely praised history of the Guadalcanal campaign, Frank exhibits the same breadth and depth of research in this new work, even arranging for the translation of four volumes of the official Japanese War History Series. In addition, he is the first scholar to fully integrate new and important research published during the last five years by Asada Sadao, Barton Bernstein, Herbert Bix, John Dower and Ed Drea
Although Frank properly devotes much attention to such subjects as the American firebomb attacks on Japanese cities, Japan's fruitless maneuvers to have Russia broker a favorable peace, American military planning, the Potsdam Conference, the Russian campaign in Manchuria and Japanese preparations for the defense of Kyushu, his principal theme is the centrality of the atomic bombs in bringing about the surrender of Japan at the time and under the conditions in which it actually occurred. This capitulation came about not only as a result of U.S. and Soviet actions but also because of a complex series of events in Japan ranging from the emperor's belated conversion from hawk to dove to his advisers' dread of social revolution and the Japanese elite's willingness to use the bomb as "an indispensable excuse" to end the war. As former prime minister Suzuki observed, "If military leaders could convince themselves that they were defeated by the power of science they could save face to a certain extent."
Frank's book holds surprises for both supporters and critics of Truman's decisions in the spring of 1945. Frank effectively demolishes the argument that the president's fear of high casualties was "a post-war myth." The Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military planners used at least four different methods of calculating casualties, at least two of which projected losses in the hundreds of thousands. Other military and civilian planners made their own calculations, which projected up to a million casualties or more.
The entire discussion was largely meaningless, however, because U.S. military planners had underestimated the strength of Japanese ground troops on Kyushu by about 200,000 men and the number of operational aircraft by a factor of four. This miscalculation was not completely corrected by intelligence analysts until early August. As B-29s on Tinian were preparing for their nuclear missions, American admirals and generals were considering abandoning the Kyushu invasion plan. As Frank makes clear, such a decision would have meant additional atomic and conventional air attacks and blockade and possibly a Soviet invasion of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. In addition to those killed by air attacks, hundreds of thousands of Japanese would have died of starvation brought on by severe food shortages. Thousands more of the Japanese Empire's unwilling subjects in China, Korea and Southeast Asia would also have perished.
It is probably too much to hope that Downfall will convert many true believers on either side of the atomic bomb debate, but it may give them food for thought.
Ronald Spector, professor of history and international relations at George Washington University, is completing a social history of naval warfare.
---
Wide Open Spaces
Washington Post, November 21, 1999; Page X10 By Rachel Hartigan
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/21/017l-112199-idx.html
IN NEVADA
The Land, the People, God, and Chance By David Thomson Knopf. 330 pp. $27.50
There's something for everyone in the great state of Nevada. Families come to romp in the Technicolor wonderland of Las Vegas. Hippies and Silicon Valley malcontents head north of Reno for the barren desert and bizarre ritual of the Burning Man festival. The government drops bombs in desolate valleys, and true believers spy alien ships in the skies. A mob lawyer is elected mayor of Las Vegas, while the government hopes to dump nuclear waste just 100 miles north of the city.
The noted film critic David Thomson tries to wrap his mind around this strange place in his new book, In Nevada. He can't seem to decide if Nevada is a region or a metaphor: Is it merely the large, empty state between California and Utah, or is it a symbol of all that is compulsive and alluring about America and the West? Is it a place where normal people are born in hospitals, shop at the Gap and die of natural causes, or is it a Bermuda Triangle for morality and compunction -- where both vanish once the state line is crossed? Thomson admits that, despite his affection for Nevada, he's "not sure the nature of the state is really a network of vital places so much as an intermittently and briefly interrupted nullity."
Thomson travels from the empty northwest corner of Nevada to garish Las Vegas in search of this elusive state, or state of mind. The odd, evocative book that results -- not quite a history, not really a travelogue -- chronicles his musings on Nevada, from the mineral prospecting so crucial to its 19th-century past to nuclear testing, from Frank Sinatra crooning at the Sands casino to the mobsters that made Vegas. He brings a cinematic sensibility to his quest, always on the look out for gangsters, the Rat Pack and the next best vista.
What he finds is that America needs Nevada. This has been true, he writes, ever since Lincoln forced it into statehood in order to co-opt the area's voters and its precious silver. Nevada is the country's testing ground. It's the place to find out whether you can make a community out of nothing but sagebrush and mines, the place to test impossibly fast planes and weapons of mass destruction, and the place to try out libertine social ideas. "What happens if you allow divorce, prostitution, gambling?" asks Thomson. "Can there be community and purpose if you encourage things deep in human nature yet supposedly alien to order and togetherness? Don't we need to find out?" America looked to Nevada and found that divorce and gambling aren't so bad, if there's money to be made. (The country has yet to be convinced of the benefits of legalized prostitution.)
Nevada's desolate spaces make it ripe for experimentation. Few people are around to snoop into moral, or military, matters. Thomson compares the state's size with his native Great Britain: Britain, with close to 60 million people, occupies 88,745 square miles: Nevada, shy of a mere 1.5 million, extends to 110,540 square miles. "Time and again in Nevada, you feel the human thing has hardly got a hold," he writes.
It's an eerie truth that Nevada's "failed cities outnumber those that are still going concerns." They boomed when the veins of ore in nearby mines coursed with mineral wealth and busted when they ran dry. And now some of its remote valleys, where those towns used to be, are so toxic with nuclear radioactivity that protective clothing must be worn by the very few people who venture in. For the military has certainly experimented with Nevada, at the nuclear test site in central Nevada, at the U.S. Naval Air Station with its bombing run, Bravo 20, to the north, and, of course, at the mysterious Area 51. Thomson tours the nuclear test site -- now labeled an "Environmental Research Park" and open to the public under restricted access -- and discovers what he believes is one of the most beautifully made objects around: the perfectly symmetrical Sedan crater, the product of an underground nuclear test. He bemoans the destructive force that created Sedan and yet, with post-Cold War pragmatism, concedes that "it's not too remote an argument to say . . . that the bombs, the testing, and the dogged strafing of Bravo 20 helped bring something like liberty (with all its scars, excesses, and errors) to Prague, to Budapest, to Warsaw, and even to Saint Petersburg."
The test site, like "the other great Nevadan theme park" to the south, Las Vegas, is a peculiar version of hell: toxic with moments of beauty, pleasure closely allied to danger. It's the Nevada version of hell, or maybe heaven, where a drive through the desert is stirringly beautiful, but you'd better make sure that your gas tank is full and that you are carrying enough water because you are the only one out there, the next gas station isn't for at least 100 miles, and what little water you find is likely to be poisoned with alkali.
Thomson does eloquent justice to these contradictions -- and insists on their place in the national psyche. "In far more ways than gaming could ever express, Nevada is the providential testing place for our recklessness," he writes. "So we should study the volatile mixture of its danger and beauty, then wonder which we deserve."
Rachel Hartigan, the assistant managing editor of Teacher magazine, is a native of Nevada.
-------- us nuc plants
BGE Still Seeking Renewal of Nuclear Plant License
Washington Post Nov. 14 to 20, 1999
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/21/117l-112199-idx.html
Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. will continue to seek renewal of licenses for its reactors at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant despite a federal appeals court ruling that could expand public comment and extend the process.
--------
Subject: IAEA report on Tokai criticality accident
"Report On The Preliminary Fact Finding Mission Following The Accident At The Nuclear Fuel Processing Facility In Tokaimura, Japan" International Atomic Energy Agency Vienna, 1999
http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Documents/japan_report.pdf
(6.7MB PDF format)
From: Peter Diehl <p.diehl@sik.de>