-----------iraq

Iraq to Allow IAEA Nuclear Inspection

Reuters
January 12, 2000 Filed at 8:20 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-in.html

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq has agreed to allow a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency to carry out a routine inspection inside the country, a senior Iraqi official said Wednesday.

Deputy foreign minister Nizar Hamdoon told Reuters the inspection came under the terms of the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iraq is a signatory, and had nothing to do with the now-suspended U.N. arms verification program in Iraq.

Hamdoon also said his country was not concerned with efforts by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to choose a new chairman for an arms inspections body that was set up by a Security Council resolution on December 17.

``The IAEA submitted a request to send a team to Iraq in accordance with an accord we signed with the agency in 1972 and we have accepted the request,'' Hamdoon said.

He said the team from the Vienna-based IAEA would arrive in Iraq on January 21 and consist of four or five experts. It would stay in Iraq for a week, he added.

IAEA director general Mohammad el-Baradei said last month the annual inspection -- to check on materials Iraq holds which could be used to produce nuclear weapons-grade elements -- was overdue and Iraq had yet to respond to IAEA requests.

He said the IAEA had been due to visit Iraq by December 14, as the previous inspection took place on December 15, 1998.

Iraq, which says it has long been rid of any weapons of mass destruction, has not allowed U.N. arms inspectors back into the country since December 1998, when the United States and Britain launched air strikes against Iraq for not cooperating with the inspectors.

The U.N. Security Council issued a resolution last month which could lead to the inspectors being sent back to Iraq and an easing of sanctions if Baghdad cooperates with a new U.N. disarmament agency. Iraq rejected the resolution.

The resolution set up a new arms inspection body -- the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) -- to replace the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) charged with dismantling Iraq's prohibited weapons.

Annan has floated the names of a Hungarian and a Canadian to head UNMOVIC, Security Council diplomats said Monday.

``We are not concerned with the process of choosing a new chairman for the commission,'' Hamdoon said.

The U.N. attempt to destroy Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction stems from Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and subsequent defeat by a Western-led coalition in the 1991 Gulf War.

Under the resolution, UNMOVIC and the IAEA, concerned with Iraq's nuclear program, would draw up work schedules within 60 days after they begin operations. They would submit a list of key disarmament tasks to Iraq.

---

Iraq Says U.N. Inspectors Can Check Its Uranium Stockpiles

New York Times
January 12, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/12iraq.html

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 12 -- Iraq said today that it would allow a team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the country next week to check its uranium stockpiles, ending a month-long standoff between the agency and the government of President Saddam Hussein.

The inspections will be the first by any outside agency concerned with clandestine weapons programs to take place in Iraq since December 1998, when I.A.E.A. inspectors were withdrawn in advance of American and British bombing raids, along with the inspectors of Unscom, who monitored biological, chemical and missile programs.

The new inspections are not related, however, to the monitoring systems imposed on Iraq after the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf. Next week's inspections are related solely to the 1968 nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which Iraq signed and which demands annual inspections of materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Iraq has 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium and 13 tons of natural uranium. Both could be transformed into bomb-grade material with the right equipment.

By refusing visas to the I.A.E.A. team, Iraq had put itself in violation of the treaty.

But Iraq's decision today to give a green light to the I.A.E.A. team is not totally unrelated to efforts here to resume other United Nations arms inspections.

This week, Secretary General Kofi Annan is expected to name a chief arms inspector for the new monitoring commission created in December by the Security Council to replace Unscom -- the United Nations Special Commission -- which had been unable to return to Iraq after the American-led bombing. Its executive chairman, Richard Butler, resigned last year.

As the new inspection system begins to take shape, Iraq is finding little diplomatic support in its threats to defy monitoring. Although Russia, China, France and Malaysia abstained in the voting for the new surveillance and disarmament panel, to be known as the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, neither Russia nor China was prepared to veto the plan, as the Iraqis had hoped.

In recent weeks, the Russians have been very active in persuading the Iraqis to end their defiance of the I.A.E.A., a senior European diplomat said. Furthermore, on a visit to China this week, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, apparently did not receive much encouragement as a long diplomatic battle to force Iraqi compliance with new inspections begins.

Today in Malaysia, a nonpermanent Security Council member with a reputation for voting against the United States, Mr. Aziz was more or less told to get in line with the program, although the government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said it understood some of Iraq's grievances.

The Security Council has yet to agree on the choice of a new chief arms inspector, a process on which members are consulted by Mr. Annan as he makes his decision. Several lists of candidates have come and gone, and sometimes come again.

There has been some speculation this week that Mr. Annan may try to recall Rolf Ekeus, the Swedish diplomat and arms control expert who created Unscom in 1991 and led it until 1996. Mr. Ekeus is now Sweden's ambassador to the United States.

Mr. Annan is likely to name his candidate on Friday, officials and diplomats say. The deadline set by the Security Council is Sunday.

---

Iraq OKs Atomic Energy Inspectors

Associated Press
January 12, 2000 Filed at 8:48 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Iraq-Nuclear.html http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=MIDEAST&STORYID=APIS71U8C5G0

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iraq will issue visas next week to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, permitting them to perform regular checks of whether nuclear material is being diverted to make weapons, an IAEA spokesman said Wednesday.

The spokesman, David Kyd, stressed the inspectors are not part of the supervision regime imposed on Iraq by the United Nations in wake of Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, but part of the routine to which all signatories to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty are subject to. Iraq signed the treaty 1968.

``It's a limited objective, driven by the old traditional safeguards system,'' said Kyd. ``These are safeguards inspectors, conducting an annual check.''

He said the inspectors were unlikely to find anything irregular.

The broader and more stringent inspections for weapons of mass destruction imposed after the Kuwait invasion have been suspended since December 1998, when the last U.N. team left. The U.S. and Britain launched airstrikes soon after in retaliation for Baghdad's alleged obstruction of inspectors.

The U.N. Security Council passed a measure last month creating a new international inspections agency. Iraq vehemently condemned the move, but recently has indicated that it might cooperate with the United Nations if it lifts economic sanctions and if the new inspectors are less aggressive in doing their jobs.

The resolution creating the new organization merely promises to consider suspending sanctions for renewable four-month periods if Iraq is deemed cooperative.

---

Annan Seeks Return of Arms Agency Head

Washington Post
Wednesday, January 12, 2000; Page A20
By Colum Lynch
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/12/109l-011200-idx.html

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 11-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked key Security Council members to consider appointing Rolf Ekeus, the Swedish diplomat who oversaw the destruction of Iraqi weapons from 1991 through 1997, to head a new commission that would resume the disarming of Iraq.

Ekeus's candidacy was put before the council's five permanent members--China, France, Britain, Russia and the United States--for the first time today along with a list of other candidates. The introduction of Ekeus, now Swedish ambassador to the United States, is aimed at breaking a deadlock in the Security Council.

Annan said last month that he would like to have Ekeus back, and diplomatic sources say Ekeus would consider returning.

He was unavailable for comment tonight.

When he headed the U.N. Special Commission, Ekeus oversaw the effort to root out Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and remained on good terms with key Security Council members. Iraq has said it would not cooperate with the new commission.

-----------japan

Moderate Quake Jolts Eastern Japan

Associated Press
January 12, 2000 Filed at 3:55 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-Earthquake.html
http://www.canoe.com/TopStories/quake_jan12.html

TOKYO (AP) -- A moderate earthquake jolted eastern Japan on Wednesday, causing the shutdown of an experimental nuclear reactor.

The magnitude 4.3 temblor took the plant off-line at the Japan Atomic Research Institute in Tokaimura, about 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, spokeswoman Tsuka Kanai said. The reactor is designed to automatically stop operating when an earthquake strikes, she said.

Kanai said the reactor suffered no damage and resumed operating about 80 minutes after the quake hit.

No damage or injuries were reported elsewhere from the quake centered about 31 miles underground in Ibaraki Prefecture, or state, the Meteorological Agency said.

Tokaimura is the site of Japan's worst nuclear accident, at a uranium processing plant. One worker died and scores of people were exposed to radiation after employees set off an uncontrolled nuclear reaction by pouring too much uranium into a mixture to make fuel.

---

Reports: Bomb Suspect Planted Others

Associated Press
January 12, 2000 Filed at 4:01 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-Explosions.html

TOKYO (AP) -- The man suspected of planting a bomb at the site of Japan's worst nuclear accident has told police he was involved in two other explosions last December, Japanese media reported Wednesday.

Police refused to comment on the reports. Tatsufumi Oshiba, 39, was arrested Tuesday on charges of making and planting a bomb on a side street in Tokaimura, 70 miles northeast of Tokyo. The bomb was found Thursday, and there was no explosion.

Tokaimura is the town where workers at a uranium-reprocessing plant accidentally set off an atomic reaction Sept. 30. One worker eventually died from massive doses of radiation, and more than 90 other people were exposed to radiation.

Oshiba told police he wanted to blow up the Tokaimura plant and then kill himself, they said.

Oshiba, who is still in police custody, said he made two other explosive devices by following directions in books, then planted one in a locker at Urawa train station, just north of Tokyo, and the other in a train in Osaka in central Japan, the Asahi newspaper and NHK TV said.

The first explosion injured one man. The second device was hidden in a garbage bag aboard a bullet train stopped at a depot. Nobody was injured in that explosion.

The Japanese public has been nervous recently about possible terrorist attacks. The explosions had initially been suspected of being linked to fires that broke out last month on three trains. Leftist extremists have claimed responsibility for those fires, police said.

---

JAPAN: DESTROYING MINES

New York Times
January 12, 2000
World Briefings
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/world-briefs.html

Japan will destroy almost all of its anti-personnel land mines in the next three years in compliance with a treaty banning them, the defense agency said. Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi will announce a plan next week to destroy 220,000 mines this year and most of the rest of its million mines by March 2003, said a defense agency spokesman. (AP)

---------- russia

Russian Security Concept Changing

JANUARY 12, 20:17 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS71UIFB80

MOSCOW (AP) - Acting President Vladimir Putin has shifted the focus of Russia's national security doctrine so it focuses more on the fight against terrorism and the notion of a multipolar world, his press service said Wednesday.

Putin signed the decree altering Russia's National Security Concept last week, but the actual alterations were not made public.

The new document says that Russia will promote a multipolar world by strengthening the economic and political positions of various countries.

The formula first took shape during the later years of former President Boris Yeltsin's tenure, when Russia wanted to counter what it has described as U.S. domination of global affairs and attempts to build a ``unipolar world.''

It has tried to develop close cooperation with such regional powers as China and India to serve as an example of local power centers not dependent on the United States.

The new doctrine stresses the need to improve multinational oversight of international political developments, primarily under U.N. sponsorship.

In recent years, Russia's relations with the United States and other Western nations have been strained by controversy over NATO's expansion, the bombing of Yugoslavia, Russia's war in breakaway Chechnya and other disputes.

The revised document also sets out the role of nuclear weapons to defend Russia's national security.

Russia ``must possess nuclear forces that can guarantee the infliction of intended damage to an aggressor state or coalition,'' the document says. Still, it stresses that nuclear arms can be used only if all other means of resolving a crisis are exhausted.

The doctrine describes terrorism and especially international terrorism as a serious threat to Russia's security.

``An open (terrorist) campaign has been unleashed to destabilize the situation in Russia,'' it said in reference to Chechen separatists, who have been blamed for a recent series of apartment bombings in Russia.

----------korea

Missile base underwhelms

New York Times
Date: 12/01/00
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0001/12/text/world7.html

New York: The first detailed public images of a secretive North Korean missile base, taken by a private spy satellite and quietly released last week, show a small rural site that analysts argue is either perilously menacing or surprisingly primitive.

The most noteworthy features, said the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, were those missing: the rail links, paved roads, fuel tanks and staff housing needed to support a major program for long-range missiles.

"It's the mouse that roared," said Mr John Pike, director of the group's space program and author of the analysis. "It's a singularly unimpressive facility, and we've looked at all the main ones in the world."

But other experts see the base, from which a missile was test-fired over Japan in August 1998, as a potentially deadly example of how little technological infrastructure is needed for a nation to have missiles that could threaten the United States.

"I'd be surprised if the base were anything but modest," said Mr Frank Gaffney, a former Pentagon official who directs the Centre for Security Policy, a conservative private Washington group.

"North Korea can't feed its own people. But if crude will do, then we're fools to ignore capabilities that have the potential to do us grave harm."

He said of all missile threats now facing the US, "this is probably the highest".

The site, known as Rodong, is North Korean's only base for launching long-range missiles, and is used for test flights and potentially for mounting limited missile attacks. It has become an international flashpoint in recent years.

The scientists' federation said the photos showed that the North Korean installation was roughly triangular, consisting of a single launch pad, a control facility and a building for assembling missiles.


----------- turkey

As agreed some time ago, I have prepared a short piece on the Renewable Energy Option for Turkey. Please feel free to disseminate the piece as you see fit.

I am sending it to the Canadian Prime Minister, US Congressmen, the US Secretary of Energy, and the Washington Post.

Achilleas G. Adamantiades
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Renewable Energy for Turkey - A Better Alternative
(Why the decision to proceed with the nuclear power plant at Akkuyu is wrong!)

Einstein, selected by Time magazine, for good reason, as the Man of the Century, offered the axiom that "the world is more likely to be destroyed by bad politics than bad physics". It seems to be borne out in the case of Akkuyu. The selection of the winning bid for the nuclear plant at Akkuyu, on the Southern coast of Turkey has been postponed again, entangled once more in the quagmire of Turkish politics. It is a clear indication that a fierce internal debate is going on and the Turkish authorities are having a great deal of difficulty in taking a decision on the matter. Turkey has much better alternatives for its power needs than the nuclear plant.

In this brief note, I will try to explain why and to point to one of the better alternatives, namely renewable energy sources. There is no question that Turkey has an urgent need for additional sources of electricity to support a growing economy. It is presently obliged to import electric power from neighboring Georgia, Bulgaria, and Iran to make up for the electricity deficit. At the same time, it is looking at all possible alternatives for its future mix if electricity, gas, coal, heavy fuel oil, hydro, and nuclear. Economic, technical, and environmental considerations must enter in this planning strategy. Nuclear power has been at the focus of Turkish efforts for a good many years, culminating in the invitation for bids in 19970, to which three consortia have made offers, now under evaluation by the authorities, with a decision pending at the end of January.

Looking objectively at the nuclear option, one cannot avoid confronting the serious concerns that have stopped its development worldwide: (i) safety concerns have been raised since the Three Mile island accident in the US and, more acutely, since the disastrous accident at Chernobyl, the effects of which are still being felt in the region; the safety risks are heightened in the case of Akkuyu because of the high vulnerability of Turkey to strong earthquakes, as experienced very recently, and the existence of a geological fault line nearby; (ii) management of the radioactive wastes from the nuclear plant remains a problem, which even advanced societies like the ones of Germany and the US have been unable to resolve; (iii) the issue of the proliferation of nuclear weapons remains a source of anxiety, although Turkey has signed and ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This is so because of the inherent instability of the region, where strong antagonisms are at play and the temptation to acquire nuclear weapons is strong, while the emergence of radical, fundamentalist regimes in the future cannot be ruled out. The example of Pakistan and India is instructive -- and alarming -- in this respect; finally, (iv) the economic argument must weigh in very heavily in a country that can ill afford electricity at high cost, which is likely to result from the huge capital investment, judging from other nuclear plants.

The investment is definitely going to be quite higher than estimated if the plant is designed an constructed to withstand the severe earthquakes in the region. For all these reasons, strong opposition has emerged within Turkey from civil groups as well as from technical specialists. Public acceptance of the nuclear plant at Akkuyu is low or absent, a fact that will certainly affect its future viability, as shown in many similar cases worldwide and that should be seriously considered by Turkish authorities.

As a Principal Engineer of the World Bank and having the chance to take a leading role in the development of renewable energy (RE) sources in developing countries, under the Solar Initiative program, I would like to suggest that this option holds much better promise for Turkey and will benefit its people and economy, as well as the global environment.

The renewable energy resources that hold the most promise are the following: solar in its various forms, wind, biomass, geothermal, and small hydro (large hydro is not considered in this list because it is thought to have potentially serious environmental problems).

Solar energy, which is quite abundant in Turkey, can first be used to provide hot water for domestic and commercial use at competitive prices as shown in the rapid development of this technology in other countries in the region. Acceleration of this development through a more intensive investment program can substitute much of the electricity load and reduce the need for imported fossil fuels. Solar photo-voltaic and solar thermal power are still in the demonstration stage and not quite competitive as yet, but they could make a substantial contribution to the electricity grid if implemented, especially if financial support is given by the Commission of the European Union and incentives by the State.

Wind power should be quite feasible and attractive to Turkey because of its near-competitive price, probable good wind resources in the country and the existence of hydro dams and water reservoirs, which provide a natural means of energy storage. In 1999, the world has seen an unprecedented surge in wind power installations of more than 3,600 MW, bringing the total world installed capacity to 13,400 MW! I am sure that a more detailed study would yield many sites with excellent wind regimes that would ensure economic performance of wind installations. Use of biomass is a very sensitive matter because of the potential environmental impact but, I would guess that many sites exist in Turkey where forest wastes or wood wastes from wood-processing industries, such as furniture factories, could be used profitably in local boilers. In then longer term, biomass could yield valuable substitutes to liquid fuels. Geothermal should be available in Turkey, since it lies astride deep geologic faults, and could be utilized to cover a share of electricity demand.

Finally, small hydro potential should be very large in Turkey and could offer an opportunity for quick installation of many small hydro plants under regional control, to cover local needs. This resource should be particularly attractive to Turkey given its large territory, which would necessitate large investments to bring the high-voltage electric grid to all remote areas of the country.

There are added incentives for Turkey to look into renewable energy resources now that the European Union has accepted the country as a candidate for accession. The European Union, which has set for itself ambitious goals in terms of reduction of green-house gas emissions (especially carbon dioxide, which is produced in the use of fossil fuels) would appreciate any contributions that Turkey could make toward meeting this goal and would be eager to support Turkey in this endeavor. Although nuclear power is also free of green-house gas emissions, renewable energy resources would be far preferable because they do not carry the safety and other concerns outlined above.

The shift toward renewable energy resources would bring additional benefits to Turkey: independence from the importation of fuel (fossil or nuclear), increased local employment, and the introduction of advanced technologies to the country, which could become entirely indigenous, as opposed to the nuclear technology, much of which would continue indefinitely to be imported from the suppliers. In summary, while nuclear technology carries large risks for Turkey and for neighboring countries, and lacks the public acceptance that is required for successful introduction and use of a technology, a shift to renewable energy would have economic and environmental and social benefits for Turkey. Choosing to go the renewable energy route, would be good politics also.

Achilles G. Adamantiades
________________________________________________

Dr. Achilles G. Adamantiades is a Consultant in Energy and the Environment. He holds a Ph. D., Nuclear Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has spent most of his career in teaching, research and consulting on nuclear safety and energy matters.

-----------ukraine

Chernobyl Zone May Be Resettled

Associated Press
January 11, 2000 Filed at 4:26 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Ukraine-Chernobyl.html

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's government has drafted a development plan for contaminated land around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, calling for resettling part of the area, a civil defense official said Tuesday.

The plan suggests a partial revival of the so-called zone of alienation, an area about 20 miles around Chernobyl that was evacuated after the 1986 fire and explosion at the plant, the world's worst nuclear accident.

Scientists have discovered mutant plants and animals in the zone, and only a few people now risk living in the area.

But, citing scientific work sponsored in part by the European Union, the plan suggests some areas may be resettled and are suitable for growing potatoes, said Volodymyr Kholosha, deputy emergency situations minister.

The draft document also has provisions for health care and radiation safety for people living outside the zone.

The program, estimated to cost around $1.3 million for 2000, replaces a previous five-year plan that will expire this year. A detailed version is due in July.

-----------uranium

Contamination at Uranium Mill Traced to Lab

Salt Lake Tribune
Wednesday, January 12, 2000
BY JIM WOOLF
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.sltrib.com/2000/jan/01122000/utah/17110.htm

Groundwater contamination at the White Mesa uranium mill near Blanding has been traced to an old laboratory where incoming ore was tested.

The finding, if confirmed by the state, would mean the problem is unrelated to current operations and probably restricted to a relatively small area.

High levels of chloroform, an industrial solvent, were detected in August in a monitoring well about 1,000 feet west of the mill's tailings pond. Monitoring wells were installed to detect leaks of contaminated water from the tailing pond, so the discovery of the chloroform raised concerns that the facility could have serious problems.

But Michelle Rehmann, director of environmental and regulatory affairs for Denver-based International Uranium Corp. (IUC), owner of the White Mesa mill, said a groundwater sampling operation has traced the chloroform to the site of a laboratory used in the late 1970s and early 1980s to analyze incoming ore. Small amounts of chloroform were used in that chemical analysis.

The design of that laboratory, approved by the state in 1979, allowed waste chemicals to be poured into the same drain that handled human wastes from a bathroom.

That material flowed into a "sanitary leach field" in the soil outside the laboratory where the wastes were supposed to break down and disappear.

It apparently didn't work. Rehmann says the chloroform found its way into the groundwater about 150 feet below the laboratory and then was carried about 1,000 feet due south, where it was picked up in the monitoring well.

Chloroform levels in that well were 47 times higher than allowed by state rules.

IUC's test results suggest that the chloroform followed a fairly narrow path and that the monitoring well may be near the area of highest contamination.

The company has not proposed a solution yet, but at least two alternatives are being considered. One would be to do nothing. Rehmann said chloroform eventually will break down and the problem will take care of itself.

Another alternative would be to pump the contaminated water from the ground and use it in the plant's operations.

The chloroform was found only in a relatively shallow groundwater deposit. If confined to this layer, there should be little immediate risk to neighbors because most of the drinking water wells in the area dip into a higher quality groundwater deposit about 1,200 feet below the surface.

Bill Sinclair, director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control, said he has not seen IUC's reports on the chloroform testing. "We've heard them say that it came from the old leach field, but we're not in any position to confirm that finding. They will have to submit their information to us, and we'll come to our own conclusions."

-----------us nuc weapons

Clinton to seek $2.2B for missile defense

USA Today
01/12/00- Updated 07:01 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncswed01.htm
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/bork12.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton intends to ask Congress to increase spending on national missile defense by $2.2 billion, starting with the 2001 budget he will submit in early February, defense officials say.

About $1.9 billion of the extra money is for an expanded arsenal of interceptor rockets to be based in Alaska or North Dakota.

The rest is for increased testing, more spare parts and construction of a second test launch facility at the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Pacific, according to officials who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity.

One year ago the Clinton administration added $6.6 billion to the Pentagon's missile defense budget, and officials now estimate the cost of building such a system will be at least $12.7 billion in the next five years.

For years, missile defense has been a highly partisan issue, with Republicans generally in favor and Democrats against.

But in recent years the Clinton administration has slowly conceded Republican arguments that the United States faces a growing threat from missile attack by countries hostile to the United States, such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

''The threat is real, (and) it will, in all likelihood, intensify in the coming years as countries continue to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities,'' Defense Secretary William Cohen said last month.

Kenneth Bacon, a spokesman for Cohen, said that although recently released private satellite photos of a North Korean missile launch site showed relatively primitive conditions, that does not change the fact that North Korea managed to launch a surprisingly sophisticated three-stage rocket over Japan in August 1998.

''We've always known that North Korea has primitive facilities, that it is far behind us technologically, but that it devotes an enormous amount of money, energy and manpower to developing weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them,'' Bacon said Tuesday.

Clinton is to decide as early as July whether to go ahead with deployment of a national missile defense, although some believe he will leave the decision to his successor.

Among the leading presidential candidates, Republican front-runners George W. Bush and John McCain say they would deploy a national missile defense as soon as the technology is available.

Democrat Bill Bradley says the United States should continue to rely mainly on the threat of nuclear retaliation to deter attack, while Al Gore says he would review the level of threat, the cost and other factors before deciding.

Critics say the system is unlikely to provide a reliable defense against ballistic missiles and that it will require the United States to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which many consider the bedrock of arms control.

Clinton is to submit his budget to Congress on Feb. 7.

Bacon said Tuesday he could not discuss details of the budget in advance, but he mentioned that the Pentagon's overall weapons procurement account would increase to ''within a whisper'' of $60 billion, compared to $56 billion in the budget year ending Sept. 30.

---

FOCUS-Energy Dept. halts contaminated nickel sale

Excite News
Updated 4:10 PM ET January 12, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000112/16/environment-nickel-richardson2

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Wednesday halted plans to sell radioactive nickel that would be melted into scrap metal and could find its way into a range of consumer products.

The department was hoping to sell to recycler British Nuclear Fuels Inc. 6,000 tons of nickel used to develop nuclear weapons at the government's Oak Ridge facilities in Tennessee.

The plan was killed after scrap metal dealers, consumer groups and members of Congress protested that the public would not buy products that could contain radioactive material, a department official said.

"The department will modify its contract with British Nuclear Fuels Inc. to prohibit release of the Oak Ridge nickel into the marketplace," Richardson said.

The decision also affects 10,000 tons of contaminated metal at other department facilities nationwide.

No contaminated metal sales will take place until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission develops national treatment standards for radioactive metal, Richardson said.

Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, praised the Energy Department's decision. "The American public is not clamoring for hot spots in their hot plates or braces that make your gums glow," he said, referring to products that could have been made from the radioactive metal.

But the consumer group Public Citizen criticized the department's policy, saying it fell short of protecting consumers.

The group claims that while the sale of nickel and other metal contaminated throughout with radioactive particles, much like sugar is distributed throughout a cake, was stopped, surface-contaminated metals would still be recycled.

Public Citizen pointed out that the department will permit 121,000 tons of metal contaminated on the surface to be recycled into common household products such as baby carriages, frying pans, cutlery and belt buckles.

If the NRC determines that metal contaminated throughout should not be used in consumer products, then the material could be stored or used for industrial purposes, such as manufacturing machinery or metal roofs, according to the Energy Department official.

An NRC spokeswoman said it is unclear when, and if, the agency would develop the recycling standards. She said if such guidelines were established, they would only apply to facilities under the NRC's jurisdiction, but the Energy Department could adopt them for its own labs and plants.

The NRC has been considering whether to develop treatment standards for radioactive metal, and held several public workshops on the issue. That agency ran into a problem several weeks ago when it discovered that the firm it hired to help conduct the research had a conflict of interest.

The company, Science Application International Corp., reportedly acted as a consultant at the same time for British Nuclear Fuels on its work at Oak Ridge. That was a a violation of NRC policies, and the agency stopped working with the firm pending a further investigation of the matter.

British Nuclear Fuels, the U.S. subsidiary of U.K.-based British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., is the Energy Department contractor that is in the process of cleaning up several buildings at the former Oak Ridge uranium enrichment plant, including removing equipment containing large amounts of nickel.

Under its original 1997 contract with the department, the company had the option of melting and decontaminating the nickel.

---

Nuclear Fears Kill U.S. Plan to Sell Nickel

New York Times
January 12, 2000
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/00/01/12/news/washpol/nuclear-nickel.html
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/nuclear-nickel.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 -- The Energy Department is backing away from a plan to sell its huge stock of surplus nickel, a metal used in stainless steel and other alloys, because the material, left over from nuclear weapons manufacture, may be too radioactive to sell on the open market, officials said today.

The department had announced a plan in August 1997 to sell 6,000 tons of nickel later this year, for $41 million, in a program to sell materials left over from manufacturing weapons. Another 10,000 tons would be sold later. The material was radioactive, but there was no standard measure of how much radioactivity in such material is unsafe, so the plan did not violate any rules.

But the idea horrified scrap dealers and steel industry leaders, who feared having to explain to their customers that their product was even mildly radioactive.

"It would hurt our workers and our facilities, if it isn't in fact safe, and the people won't ever believe it's safe," said Thomas Sneeringer, senior vice president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, a trade group here.

The Energy Department has been seeking a ruling from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent agency that has jurisdiction over most uses of radioactive materials. But the commission recently had a setback, concluding three weeks ago that a contractor it had hired to research the issue had a conflict of interest, because the contractor was also in the radioactive waste recycling business.

And Congressional critics said the radioactive metal could end up in things like stainless steel tableware and braces for children's teeth. Three Democrats on the House Commerce Committee, Representatives John D. Dingell of Michigan, Ron Klink of Pennsylvania and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, have been hammering the commission for failing to develop a standard of radioactivity for materials like the nickel in which the radioactivity permeates the material, as opposed to sitting on its surface. The question is becoming more pressing as the energy agency and electric companies take apart old nuclear plants. The 6,000 tons are at the former K-25 plant near Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Materials that are surface-contaminated can be cleaned, but it is unclear whether those in which the radioactivity permeates can be.

The regulatory commission regulates consumer products to which radiation has been intentionally added. But the commission has maintained, until recently, if the metal includes radioactive material that was not added for "beneficial effect," the decision was up to the state, in this case Tennessee.

And in Nashville, the director of the state's Division of Radiological Health approved the release of the nickel.

---

Fearing Radioactivity, U.S. Kills Plan to See Surplus Nickel

New York Times
January 12, 2000
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/00/01/12/news/washpol/radioactive-nickel.html

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is backing away from a plan to sell its huge stock of surplus nickel, a metal used in stainless steel and other alloys, because the material, left over from nuclear weapons manufacture, may be too radioactive to sell on the open market, officials said Tuesday.

The department had announced a plan in August 1997 to sell 6,000 tons of nickel later this year, for $41 million, in a program to sell materials left over from manufacturing weapons. Another 10,000 tons would be sold later. The material was radioactive, but there is no standard measure of how much radioactivity in such material is unsafe, so the plan does not violate any rules.

But the idea horrified scrap dealers and steel industry leaders, who feared having to explain to their customers that their product was even mildly radioactive.

"It would hurt our workers and our facilities, if it isn't in fact safe, and the people won't ever believe it's safe," said Thomas Sneeringer, senior vice president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, a trade group here.

The Energy Department has been seeking a ruling from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent agency that has jurisdiction over most uses of radioactive materials. But the commission recently had a setback, concluding three weeks ago that a contractor it had hired to research the issue had a conflict of interest, because the contractor was also in the radioactive waste recycling business.

And congressional critics said the radioactive metal could end up in everything from stainless steel tableware to braces for children's teeth. Three Democrats on the House Commerce Committee, Reps. John D. Dingell of Michigan, Ron Klink of Pennsylvania and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, have been hammering the commission for failing to develop a standard of radioactivity for materials like the nickel in which the radioactivity permeates the material, as opposed to sitting on its surface. The question is becoming more pressing as the energy agency and electric companies take apart old nuclear plants. The 6,000 tons are at the former K-25 plant near Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Materials that are surface-contaminated can be cleaned, but it is unclear whether those in which the radioactivity permeates can be.

The regulatory commission regulates consumer products to which radiation has been intentionally added. But the commission has maintained, until recently, if the metal includes radioactive material that was not added for "beneficial effect," the decision is up to the state, in this case Tennessee.

And in Nashville, the director of the state's Division of Radiological Health approved the release of the nickel.

-----------us nuc facilities

LIPA Wins Court Case and Settles With Suffolk

New York Times
January 12, 2000
By JOHN T. McQUISTON
http://www.nytimes.com/00/01/12/news/national/regional/ny-lipa-settle.html

UNIONDALE, N.Y., Jan. 11 -- The Long Island Power Authority announced today that the major issues in its dispute with Suffolk County over the repayment of more than $1 billion in overassessed taxes for the decommissioned Shoreham nuclear power plant had been resolved.

The announcement of the "settlement in principle" came within hours of a ruling by the State Court of Appeals in Albany upholding LIPA's claim that Suffolk County, the Town of Brookhaven and the Shoreham-Wading River School District owed the utility $1 billion, plus interest.

Although details of the agreement were not immediately disclosed, the final figure is expected to be about half that amount and closer to the $625 million offer that LIPA had made a year ago, but was resisted by the Suffolk County Legislature in a series of legal challenges. Those challenges ended today with the latest in a series of rulings by the state's highest court, all of which were in favor of the power authority.

While Suffolk and the authority settled their differences, LIPA said, however, that it was still trying to work out an agreement with Brookhaven and Shoreham-Wading River.

Richard M. Kessel, the chairman of LIPA, said the Court of Appeals ruling came just as the power authority and the county were "in the final stages of negotiating a settlement that will benefit everyone."

"The major issues of the dispute have been resolved and are now being discussed with the other political subdivisions," Mr. Kessel said in a brief statement late this afternoon.

The Suffolk County executive, Robert J. Gaffney, who took on the difficult task of negotiating a settlement with LIPA in early November, said in a similarly brief statement that the ruling "came just days after negotiations on the proposed settlement had been completed."

He would not talk about the details of the agreement.

Paul Sabatino, who as chief legal counsel to the Suffolk County Legislature helped lead its legal battle against the LIPA tax claim, said today that he was very disappointed by the ruling, which denied any further motion for appeal.

"The ruling only serves to confirm that the court is totally politically compromised," Mr. Sabatino said. "This is the final act in terms of the actual appeals process, and the only thing that is left is working out the terms and conditions of making the payments."

Mr. Sabatino said the County Legislature had no further role in the matter, because it voted in early November on a resolution granting Mr. Gaffney the power to negotiate a settlement. That same resolution insisted, however, that any final deal be less that the initial $625 million offer made by LIPA over a year ago.

The dispute began in 1976, when improper tax assessments on the Shoreham nuclear power plant inflated the amount of taxes paid by the Long Island Lighting Company not only to Suffolk, but also to the Town of Brookhaven and the Shoreham-Wading River School District.

LILCO passed the cost on in the form of higher rates to its customers in both Suffolk and Nassau. At the same time, LILCO took the matter to court, sued and won. The initial judgment, with interest, grew to $1.4 billion.

After LIPA's partial takeover of LILCO a little over a year ago, it offered to settle for $625 million. It then cut rates in both Nassau and Suffolk, but began collecting on its debt by adding a 2 percent surcharge on its Suffolk bills.

---

Perpetual Motion: Still Going Around

Washington Post
Wednesday, January 12, 2000; Page H03
By Robert L. Park
Special to The Washington Post
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/12/028l-011200-idx.html

"Every one of you can be disconnected from the central power grid and never pay another electric bill as long as you live!" That's what Dennis Lee promised an audience of several hundred in the gymnasium of a rural high school near Columbus, Ohio, earlier this year.

They were there, and I was there, because of a full-page ad in USA Today. In letters two inches tall, its headline asked:

Tired of High Electric Bills . . . How About NO Electric Bills?

Columbus was just one stop on a tour of 45 cities across the nation to demonstrate the revolutionary new technology that Lee says can provide infinite free electricity. The centerpiece of his three-hour presentation was an odd-looking contraption of belts and pulleys that he calls "counter-rotation technology."

He says it makes use of something called the "Fourth Law of Motion." Presumably, that allows his gizmo to evade the limitations of Newton's Third Law of Motion -- for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

According to Lee, counter-rotation technology, combined with "permanent magnet motors that are more than 200 percent efficient," can produce infinite free electricity.

But there is no Fourth Law of Motion. And a machine that produces more energy than it is required to run it would violate the most fundamental law of physics, the conservation of energy.

Lee is something of a throwback in the free energy game. The various schemes that his company, Better World Technologies, Inc., has promoted over the years are classical perpetual motion devices from a bygone era.

They rely not on exotic new physics but on a misunderstanding of centuries-old physics -- Isaac Newton's laws of motion and Michael Faraday's laws of electromagnetism, among others. Nonetheless, despite centuries of evidence to the contrary, such claims still have the power to bamboozle and have been doing so for a long time.

An Old Dream

In 1618, a London physician named Robert Fludd thought that he had a way to turn a water wheel without depending on nature to provide a millstream. He would use the wheel's rotation to drive a water pump. The water that had turned the wheel would be pumped back to the top, where it could fall again. A mill powered by this device would run indefinitely.

Alas, the amount of energy supplied by a water wheel cannot exceed the weight of the water that hits its paddles multiplied by the distance the water descends in turning the wheel. It would take the same amount of energy to raise the water back to the top of the wheel as the falling water produced in the first place. No energy would be left to grind flour.

Of course, the concept of energy or "work" as a measurable quantity did not exist in the 17th century. Fludd's idea failed, but his failure led others to one of history's greatest scientific insights and helped to pave the way for the industrial revolution.

It would be another 200 years before the flaw in Fludd's machine would be stated in the form of a fundamental law of nature: Energy is neither created nor destroyed. But it is conserved. That is, there is always exactly the same amount of total energy around after something happens than there was before it happened.

Written as a mathematical equation, that is known as the First Law of Thermodynamics. There is no firmer pillar of modern science. It explains why a ball, no matter what it's made of, can never bounce higher than the point from which it's dropped. That's consistent with our everyday experience: You can't get something for nothing.

But Wait, There's More

Even if it ground no flour, Fludd's water wheel still could not be kept turning. Energy losses, including the heat generated by friction in the machinery, are inevitable. That's embodied in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Our bouncing ball can never bounce quite as high as the point from which it was dropped.

The first law says you can't win; the second law says you can't even break even.

In the 400 years since Fludd's failure, thousands of inventors have tried to beat the laws of thermodynamics. The laws always won. In frustration, and perhaps embarrassment, many inventors have resorted to fraud, constructing complex devices with cleverly concealed sources of energy. Each failure, each fraud exposed, established the laws of thermodynamics more firmly.

In 1911, the U.S. patent commissioner, exasperated by the time wasted on these impossible ideas, ruled that patent applications for perpetual motion machines could not be submitted until one year after an operating model was filed with the patent office.

If the machine was still running at the end of the year, the application would be accepted. The new ruling seemed to bring an end to patent applications for perpetual motion machines.

In 1983, however, Joseph Newman, a mechanic from Lucedale, Miss., sought to patent an "energy machine" that he said produced more energy than was needed to run it. Newman insisted that his invention was not a perpetual motion machine and asserted that the energy came from conversion of mass into energy according to Einstein's famous equation E = mc2. Nuclear power comes from this conversion, but Newman's was not nuclear power.

Slowly, Newman said, his machine was devouring its own copper wires and iron magnets. Because c2 (the speed of light squared) is such a huge number, his machine would, for all practical purposes, last forever.

Unimpressed, the patent examiner rejected Newman's application. Not a man to be pushed around, Newman filed suit in federal court to force the Patent and Trademark Office to grant a patent for "an unlimited source of energy."

Could Joe Newman, a simple mechanic, have discovered a way to convert copper and iron into electrical energy? A federal judge ordered Newman to turn his energy machine over to what then was called the National Bureau of Standards for testing. Properly measured, the output power was found to be much less than the input power. Newman lost his suit.

But his failure, like that of Fludd, made a contribution. His suit, Newman v. Quigg now is cited as the legal justification for rejecting all patent applications involving perpetual motion. The conservation of energy thus became the law of the land as well as a law of nature.

Beating the System

Nonetheless, plenty of people still claim to have discovered infinite sources of free energy. Indeed, a worldwide network of passionate free energy believers resides just beyond the fringes of the scientific community.

These people generally shun old-fashioned terms such as "perpetual motion." Instead, they speak a language laced with words and symbols drawn from modern cosmology and atomic physics. They may even believe it to be science, just as witches and faith healers may truly believe that they can summon supernatural powers.

Ignored or even ridiculed by other scientists, they dream of redemption when the world finally realizes to the truth. They even have their own magazine, Infinite Energy, which fills its pages with rosy stories about progress in the quest for free energy, particularly cold fusion. The progress is hard for a nonbeliever to see. Nevertheless, these claims attract investors.

For example, BlackLight Power of Princeton, N.J., raised $10 million from power companies on the word of its founder, Randall Mills, that he had discovered a way to produce inexhaustible, low-cost, non-polluting energy from ordinary water. The method: shrinking the hydrogen atoms into an energy state below their ground state. He calls these shrunken hydrogen atoms "hydrinos."

Atoms can absorb energy, much as energy is stored in the spring of an alarm clock when you wind it. As the clock ticks, the energy is released bit by bit in sound waves, friction and the motion of the clockworks. When the clock is fully wound down, a physicist would say it's in its "ground state" -- the state of lowest energy. A state below the ground state is a contradiction of terms.

Mills, whose degree is in medicine and who has no record of accomplishment in physics, describes this as "the most important discovery of all time . . . up there with fire." Could he be right? Could there be a state of hydrogen that other scientists had missed?

No.

The energy states of atoms are studied through their atomic spectra -- light emitted at very specific wavelengths when electrons make a jump from one energy level to another. The exact prediction of the hydrogen spectrum was one of the first great triumphs of quantum theory; it is the platform on which our entire understanding of atomic physics is built. The theory accounts perfectly for every spectral line.

There is no line corresponding to a "hydrino" state. Indeed, there is no credible evidence at all to support Mills' claim.

Weighty Matters

So many companies are claiming to have discovered free energy that additional claims are needed to set one apart from the competition.

James Patterson, an avuncular, white-haired 75-year-old who complains that his wonderful discoveries take time from fishing, says he also can produce unlimited, non-polluting energy from ordinary water with a device similar to the electrolytic cells of BlackLight Power. But he says the Patterson Power Cell also neutralizes radioactivity.

It would be difficult to find a nuclear physicist who would take such a claim seriously. The only way to neutralize radioactivity, to the extent that it can be done at all, is with a nuclear reactor or a powerful nuclear accelerator. Still, Patterson's company, Clean Energy Technologies, Inc., did well for a time after he appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" in 1996 and again in 1997.

The problem is that we all want to see miracles. Perhaps scientists do more than others. Many of them were drawn to science by its promise of miracles. Miracles do occur, more all the time, or at least scientific advances that would have seemed like miracles a few years ago. Besides, who could blame venture capitalists for investing in hydrinos when NASA scientists are investing in gravity shields?

NASA has invested about $1 million to test the 1992 claim of a Russian physicist, Eugene Podkletnov, that objects placed above a spinning superconductive disk showed a decrease in weight of about 2 percent.

Superconductors are materals, in this case a ceramic, that lose all resistance to electric currents when cooled below a critical temperature. Could the Podkletnov gravity shield be another miracle?

"Let your imagination run wild," a NASA spokesman advised in an interview this year with The Columbus Dispatch. "What could you do if you could cut gravity by 50 percent or negate gravity altogether?"

Well, for one thing, you could build a perpetual motion machine. If Robert Fludd had had had a gravity shield, he could have raised the water back to the top of the wheel with less energy than the wheel would generate. All that was missing was the shield.

It's still missing.

NASA has tested one Podkletnov shield. Researchers measured a weight change of only 2 parts per million. Any weight reduction would be a revolutionary discovery, but the researchers noted that such a minuscule effect is at the limit of their measurement accuracy.

Podkletnov was brought to the United States to see whether he could help. He said he was puzzled, that it worked for him. But maybe NASA needed a bigger disk. That's what's happening now; they are building a bigger shield.

You can view this two ways: Either you accept the First Law of Thermodynamics, in which case the fact that a gravity shield would let you build a perpetual motion machine becomes proof that such a shield is impossible, or you figure that the First Law might be wrong and begin searching for a gravity shield.

NASA scientists chose the second option. They are betting against the laws of thermodynamics. No one wins that wager.

The gravity shield motor is the simplest example of an unbalanced-wheel perpetual motion machine. There have been hundreds of attempts to build perpetual motion machines that would run off the force of gravity, relying on complicated schemes for shifting weight from one side of a wheel to the other as it turns.

But shifting the weight always costs more energy than the wheel supplies. That was the problem with Fludd's water wheel.

It's also the problem with another another class of perpetual motion machines that supposedly extract energy from their surroundings. These usually involve a fluid that vaporizes readily at room temperature. The pressure exerted by the expanding vapor is used to drive a piston.

Such machines violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It also takes energy to cool the vapor back into the liquid state so it can power a second stroke of the piston. And that takes more energy than the piston can supply.

Dennis Lee was featuring such a machine two years ago when I saw his show in Hackensack, N.J. He called it the "Fisher engine" and described it as the "most important discovery in mechanical history."

Actually, it was an old idea. A remarkably similar machine was sold to the Navy in 1880 by John Gamgee, a professor who called it the "zeromotor." It didn't work then either.

Another popular notion involves devices that somehow can rearrange and condense energy from a wide area to a smaller one, where it can be put to use. This is a hugely appealing idea. After all, there's enough heat energy in the average snowbank to heat your home for quite a while; it just happens to be distributed in inconveniently tiny amounts throughout billions of snowflakes and air pockets.

Even if it could all be gathered, it would take a great deal of energy to do so -- more than you could ever extract from the snow.

Still, an ambient-heat engine recently was described in a full page ad in Physics Today, the monthly magazine of the physics community, by a company called Entropy Systems Inc. Physicists who took time to read the ad were either outraged or incapacitated with laughter.

If the authors of the ad had any intention of bamboozling readers, they chose an unlikely publication in which to make their pitch.

It never pays to underestimate the human capacity for self-deception, but at some point, those who claim to have discovered a source of free energy must begin to realize that things aren't working as they expected.

They are faced with a choice. In one direction lies acknowledgment that perhaps they've made a mistake. The more publicly and forcefully they have pressed their claim, the more difficult it will be to take that road.

In the other direction is denial. The farther they travel that road, the less likely it becomes that they will ever turn back. This is the road to fraud because no matter how many laws they've broken by that time, they cannot break the laws of physics.

Robert L. Park, professor of physics at the University of Maryland, is the author of the forthcoming book, Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press).

-----------us nuc waste

Nuclear Waste Protested in Rockies

Associated Press
January 12, 2000 Filed at 12:55 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Nuclear-Incinerator.html
http://www.nando.net/24hour/adn/nation/story/0,1972,500153275-500188420-500797582-0,00.html
http://www2.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,500153275-500188421-500797582-0,00.html

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) -- Tatiana Maxwell was once taken by stroller to protest missile silos growing like mushrooms across the prairie.

``We were a fringe family,'' she recalled. ``We were thought of as communists and kooks.''

With her own kids now in strollers, Mrs. Maxwell has a new target: a proposed nuclear waste incinerator that would be built 100 miles upwind from Jackson, the 13,000-foot Tetons and Yellowstone National Park, the nation's oldest.

Mrs. Maxwell and others fear that toxic particles from the eastern Idaho incinerator will waft into Wyoming and lace the land and water with toxic PCBs and radiation.

``It's mostly mother's instinct that it's not good for children or other living things,'' said Mrs. Maxwell, who is pregnant with her fourth child.

Mrs. Maxwell, along with Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free, the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and the Sierra Club, have sought an injunction that would block the project near Idaho Falls, Idaho. The project cost is estimated at $876 million to $1.2 billion.

In some respects, this is a tale of two cities: Jackson, a mountain enclave of wealthy transplants and second-home owners that thrives on tourism, and middle-class Idaho Falls, which has lived with radioactive waste nearby for decades.

``I've lived here all my life, I've never seen anything different than anyone else with industry like this,'' said Ralph Steele, a commissioner for Idaho's Bonneville County. ``There've been some accidents, but that's to be expected.''

Cal Ozaki, the project's deputy general manager, and many of the plant's supporters who live on its doorstep, say fears like Mrs. Maxwell's are overblown.

``I have a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old, and if I thought that there was anything that could harm their health or the environment, I wouldn't be doing this,'' he said.

At the core of the controversy is 130,000 cubic yards of waste -- equivalent to about 31 football fields 3 feet deep -- being housed at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

Half of the waste is supposed to go to the underground facility outside Carlsbad, N.M., the nation's only long-term storage site for radioactive waste.

The Department of Energy has contracted with British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. to build a facility at the site that will compact up to 90 percent of the storage-bound waste and burn the rest. Burning will be used for waste too laden with PCBs for storage in New Mexico or containing materials too dangerous to ship.

Opponents say the government plans to allow the burning of waste that contains about one metric ton of plutonium -- ``approximately 166 times the amount of plutonium contained in the atomic bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II,'' according to the lawsuit.

``The plutonium incinerator threatens to dump airborne radioactive and hazardous wastes over Jackson, Wyo., and such national treasures as Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park and Jedediah Smith Wilderness Area,'' the lawsuit states.

For the most part, Idaho residents have been conspicuously quiet on the issue, except to lash out at warnings that the incinerator could contaminate the potato crop.

``I am confident in technology,'' said Fred Sica, Idaho Falls Chamber of Commerce director. ``What we're really talking about here is that we're providing a service to the rest of the country in a very safe and manageable way.''

The anti-incinerator movement was born last summer in the scenic Jackson Hole region of northwest Wyoming, where celebrities like Harrison Ford have built second homes.

Opponents have the legal services of Jackson attorney Gerry Spence, a charismatic Wyoming native famous for his victory over nuclear giant Kerr-McGee in the Karen Silkwood whistleblower case.

Spence said Idaho residents have made a deal that could cost them their health.

``It's a sad exchange, to exchange jobs and money and profit for the potential danger involved in the case, for lives and sickness and cancer and the loss of property,'' he said.

While some of the plaintiffs have suggested changing the laws on transporting nuclear waste and burning PCBs, British Nuclear spokeswoman Ann Reidesel said it's not that simple.

``It's important to look at the whole picture and make sure we are not changing laws to make things more lax to solve a current situation, and to keep in mind that the laws were put in place to make things safer,'' she said.

The opponents claim the government broke several laws in approving the project and failed to adequately notify Wyoming residents who live downwind.

``If in fact this incinerator were to go ahead and people were to realize that there were particles in the air that are extremely hazardous, why would they choose to come here?'' asked Berte Hirschfield, president of Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free. ``I think there would be a mass exodus.''

According to a 1995 court settlement, the government must complete the processing plant by December 2002. Construction could begin in March if Idaho issues the final permits on time.

Mrs. Maxwell hopes the burning never begins.

``As a society, we did make all this waste and we do have to do something with it,'' she said. ``But there is no indication from any sources outside the DOE that incineration is an intelligent thing to do.''

Related Information From Hoover's Inc. Kerr McGee Corp

http://www.nytimes.com/partners/quote/hoovers.cgi?ticker=KMG

-----------us nuc weapons facilities

Workers reportedly discouraged from cooperating with federal probe

Akron Beacon Journal
Wednesday, January 12, 2000
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/004180.htm

PIKETON, Ohio (AP) -- Some workers at a uranium-enrichment plant here said they were unsure how to respond to a federal investigation of radiation exposure after their bosses told them to keep their mouths shut.

Dan Minter, president of the Paper-Allied Chemical and Energy Workers union, said about 150 workers attending meetings last week were told by Bechtel Jacobs officials to look busy and keep quiet while Department of Energy investigators were there.

Bechtel Jacobs called more meetings Friday to assure employees that they should cooperate with the investigation, and company officials told The Columbus Dispatch on Tuesday that the earlier comments were misinterpreted.

The company is cleaning up contamination at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

Energy Department investigators are looking into whether Cold War-era plant conditions endangered workers and if cleanup efforts are being run safely. Department officials hope to interview nearly 200 current or former employees.

The investigation will help determine whether workers exposed to radioactive contaminants such as plutonium and highly toxic chemicals such as hydrofluoric acid will be compensated for any cancers or other diseases.

Minter said employees were told to discuss with investigators only matters they could document or of which they had firsthand knowledge.

Joseph Nemec, Bechtel Jacobs' president, acknowledged the concerns raised by Energy Department officials and Piketon workers, but denied any attempt to obstruct the investigation.

``Clearly, there appears to be some people involved in the first meeting that came away from it with the impression we were trying to dictate what they could do and not do,'' Nemec said. ``That was not our intent. It was not intended to stifle employees from cooperating fully.''

The Dispatch reported today that Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson heard about Bechtel's alleged conduct and fired off a letter to Nemec on Monday.

``I am writing to express my deep concern that ... Bechtel Jacobs management may have discouraged workers' full and free participation in an investigation by the department's oversight team,'' the letter said.

``It is the department's policy, and my belief, that the independence and credibility of a comprehensive investigation are essential to the safe conduct of operations and to the protection of workers, the public and the environment.''

Ohio News Story Index

---

UK Firm Caught In US Nuclear Waste Dispute

Excite News
Updated 8:19 AM ET January 12, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/dj/000112/20000112-003819

JACKSON, Wyoming (AP)--Some people in Jackson, Wyoming have gone to court to try to stop plans for building a nuclear waste incinerator 100 miles away in Idaho.

The U.S. Department of Energy has contracted with British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (U.BNF) to build a facility near Idaho Falls, Idaho at a cost estimated between $876 million and $1.2 billion. The plan calls for compacting much of the nuclear waste being stored at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, so it can be shipped elsewhere. But some of the waste would be burned and that's what has upset a group of residents of Jackson.

They fear toxic particles from the incinerator will be blown into Wyoming and lace the land and water with toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs, and radiation. One of those involved, Tatiana Maxwell, along with local conservation groups, have sought an injunction that would block the facility.

"It's mostly mother's instinct that it's not good for children or other living things," said Mrs. Maxwell, who is pregnant with her fourth child.

Others welcome the project.

Cal Ozaki, the project's deputy general manager, and many of the plant's supporters who live on its doorstep, say fears like Mrs. Maxwell's are overblown.

"I have a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old, and if I thought that there was anything that could harm their health or the environment, I wouldn't be doing this," Ozaki said.

Half of the waste is supposed to go to an underground facility outside Carlsbad, New Mexico, the only long-term storage site in the U.S. for radioactive waste. But burning is considered necessary because some waste is too dangerous to ship or too laden with toxic PCBs to be stored in Carlsbad.

The opponents say the government plans to allow the burning of waste that contains about one metric ton of plutonium which, according to their lawsuit, is "approximately 166 times the amount of plutonium contained in the atomic bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II."

While some of the plaintiffs have suggested changing the laws on transporting nuclear waste and burning PCBs, British Nuclear spokeswoman Ann Reidesel said it isn't that simple.

"It's important to look at the whole picture and make sure we aren't changing laws to make things more lax to solve a current situation, and to keep in mind that the laws were put in place to make things safer," she said.

According to a 1995 court settlement, the U.S. government must complete the processing plant by December 2002.

(In an item timed around 11:47 a.m. EST, the estimated cost of the facility was misstated. The earlier item also didn't make clear that the plutonium to be burned would be contained in waste.)

-----------terrorism

Prosecutors Allege More Links Between Canadian Woman, Algerian

New York Times
January 12, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/12border-arrests.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndswed03.htm

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- Prosecutors said today that a Canadian woman arrested at a remote Vermont border crossing last month telephoned associates of a suspected terrorist arrested in Washington state days earlier.

In court documents filed in advance of a bail hearing for Lucia Garofalo, prosecutors claimed they had found more evidence of her activities in an Algerian terrorist organization.

"Telephone toll records establish an additional recent link between Garofalo and associates of Ahmed Ressam," the prosecutors said, referring to the Algerian man arrested with explosives in Washington state.

They also for the first time drew links between Garofalo and Abdel Ghani, a man arrested in New York last month on charges that he was involved in a possible bomb plot in the Seattle area.

Today's hearing was called by the federal magistrate, who had said last week he needed more direct evidence to terrorist ties to continue to hold Garofalo without bail. She is charged only with minor immigration violations, and attorney Maryanne Kampmann had said last week that she could prove false many of the allegations made against Garofalo.

The alleged telephone links are circuitous, prosecutors said. But they alleged that was how the terrorist organization Armed Islamic Group, known by its French initials GIA, operated.

"It is not surprising that there is a chain of calls between the participants as is disclosed in the complaint against Ghani," Assistant U.S. Attorney David Kirby wrote.

There were a series of telephone calls between people who have ties to Ressam and Garofalo last month around the time of both her arrest and Ressam's, Kirby said in court documents.

"The timing of the link is remarkable in that it occurs during the December period when the defendant and Ressam were committing their crimes," Kirby wrote.

The alleged links are through a man named Raja Aslam, who had telephone numbers on New York's Long Island, prosecutors said.

Garofalo allegedly had the telephone number registered to Aslam in her pocket when she was arrested at Beecher Falls, Vt., on Dec. 19.

"Records show that on Dec. 14, 1999, the date Ressam tried to bring explosives into the United States, Garofalo called this cell phone," according to court records.

Additional calls were placed from a number assigned to Aslam to one that prosecutors said was assigned to Ghani and to another cell phone. Prosecutors did not explain the significance of the additional cell phone, but said it was involved repeatedly in communications among the players.

"Records disclose that over the period Dec. 11 to 19, this latter telephone called a number belonging to Abdel Ghani over 20 times, including six times on Dec. 19, the day that Garofalo was arrested," Kirby wrote.

Other telephone records showed contacts between a cell phone belonging to Aslam to a cell phone "somewhere in Vermont during the early morning hours of Dec. 15, 1999."

Prosecutors have alleged that Garofalo was turned back on that date when she tried to cross the border at Pittsburg, N.H. They allege that she later crossed the border successfully but illegally without detection. She was then arrested in a third attempt at crossing Dec. 19. At that time, authorities said, she was accompanied by another man, Bouabide Chamchi, a 20-year-old Algerian national who also faces immigration charges.

The arrests had stirred fears of terrorist attacks, perhaps timed to New Year's Eve. Ressam had a one-night reservation at a motel near Seattle's Space Needle, and the fears resulting from that link were cited as one reason for the cancellation of the New Year's bash there.

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Promoting economic growth from space

January 12, 2000
By James Hackett
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/comment1-01122000.htm

At the dawn of the third millennium man is on the threshold of what promises to be a great era in space.

Despite the recent loss of Mars probes, we can look with satisfaction on the things already achieved.

Communication satellites have changed the world by bringing mobile telephone, television, and data transmission to the most remote corners of the globe. Another accomplishment that touches all our lives, whether we realize it or not, is the development of global navigation with high accuracy through a constellation of satellites known as the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Conceived as a military use of space to provide accurate navigation and targeting, GPS became so popular that the civilian world claimed this military system as its own. The system itself has become a free global utility that drives economic growth.

The 24 satellites in the GPS constellation transmit signals continuously, in all kinds of weather, free for all users. With a simple, hand-held receiver you can tell from GPS signals where you are anywhere on Earth, within a matter of feet.

It is extremely important to the military for units, vehicles, ships, aircraft, and even individual soldiers to know exactly where they are, especially at night or in unfamiliar terrain.

It also is invaluable to small boat owners, trucking and transportation companies, and police and emergency services that want to know where their units are at all times or where an accident has occurred. A GPS security system in your car enables the security company to track and find it if it is stolen. The "Future Air Navigation" system will allow aircraft to keep track of their exact location and fly the most direct route, while GPS Local Area Augmentation makes possible precise landings in zero visibility.

The Federal Reserve transfers some $9 billion a day. Banks and other institutions using high-speed data networks keep their transmissions synchronized with the time signal from GPS, the most accurate ever known. Surveyers and mapmakers are among the most enthusiastic users. Through differential navigation, they can define locations to within a fraction of an inch. GPS signals show the Capitol in Washington is 246 feet from where it was believed to be. Property lines can be drawn with unprecedented accuracy. Use is growing in public transportation, farming, commercial fishing, and hundreds of other economic activities.

GPS is a high-technology engine driving the economy. But the signals need to be more robust, with greater accuracy for such purposes as aircraft navigation and landing, and precise maritime navigation in restricted waterways. Total reliability also is needed for time signals for global communications and data transfers. U.S. military receivers now get the most accurate GPS signals, which make possible precise navigation and pinpoint accuracy for smart bombs.

The signals for civilian use are degraded in an effort to prevent hostile forces from using GPS accuracies for their weapons. While the degraded signal is fine for some purposes, it is not good enough for others.

The failure of the United States, which pioneered GPS, to provide the most accurate signals for civilian users, combined with user concern that the military might cut off civilian signals at any time, has led to a move in Europe to build a better and more reliable system for civilian use, and charge for it. In a report from Paris, Space News says the French space agency estimates a global market for satellite navigation that soon will be worth $16 billion a year.

The European Union is planning Galileo, a civilian constellation of 30 satellites that will provide navigation and time signals better than the current U.S. military system.

Last year, the House of Representatives deleted a modest amount from the budget of the Federal Aviation Administration to start work on two new GPS civilian signals. GPS activities now come under various federal agencies and congressional committees, but as a small office in the Pentagon, GPS lacks advocates for improving civilian signals.

It is time to stop treating GPS as just another military support system and recognize it as an economic engine that improves efficiency and creates wealth. It should be under the direction of a new Global Positioning and Timing office which, like the old Atomic Energy Commission, would consider the national interest in overseeing this national asset.

It is not too late to prevent the loss of U.S. leadership in this cutting-edge technology. The potential for both business and safety of life is so great GPS signals cannot remain the exclusive property of the military. The administration and Congress should consider how best to organize the oversight of GPS in the interest of both national security and economic growth. If nothing is done, American business will be buying GPS signals from Europe, while U.S. taxpayers pay for a comparable system for the Defense Department.

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Nuclear Waste Protested in Rockies

JANUARY 12, 12:55 EST
By MEAD GRUVER
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS71UC0280

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) - Tatiana Maxwell was once taken by stroller to protest missile silos growing like mushrooms across the prairie.

``We were a fringe family,'' she recalled. ``We were thought of as communists and kooks.''

With her own kids now in strollers, Mrs. Maxwell has a new target: a proposed nuclear waste incinerator that would be built 100 miles upwind from Jackson, the 13,000-foot Tetons and Yellowstone National Park, the nation's oldest.

Mrs. Maxwell and others fear that toxic particles from the eastern Idaho incinerator will waft into Wyoming and lace the land and water with toxic PCBs and radiation.

``It's mostly mother's instinct that it's not good for children or other living things,'' said Mrs. Maxwell, who is pregnant with her fourth child.

Mrs. Maxwell, along with Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free, the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and the Sierra Club, have sought an injunction that would block the project near Idaho Falls, Idaho. The project cost is estimated at $876 million to $1.2 billion.

In some respects, this is a tale of two cities: Jackson, a mountain enclave of wealthy transplants and second-home owners that thrives on tourism, and middle-class Idaho Falls, which has lived with radioactive waste nearby for decades.

``I've lived here all my life, I've never seen anything different than anyone else with industry like this,'' said Ralph Steele, a commissioner for Idaho's Bonneville County. ``There've been some accidents, but that's to be expected.''

Cal Ozaki, the project's deputy general manager, and many of the plant's supporters who live on its doorstep, say fears like Mrs. Maxwell's are overblown.

``I have a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old, and if I thought that there was anything that could harm their health or the environment, I wouldn't be doing this,'' he said.

At the core of the controversy is 130,000 cubic yards of waste - equivalent to about 31 football fields 3 feet deep - being housed at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

Half of the waste is supposed to go to the underground facility outside Carlsbad, N.M., the nation's only long-term storage site for radioactive waste.

The Department of Energy has contracted with British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. to build a facility at the site that will compact up to 90 percent of the storage-bound waste and burn the rest. Burning will be used for waste too laden with PCBs for storage in New Mexico or containing materials too dangerous to ship.

Opponents say the government plans to allow the burning of waste that contains about one metric ton of plutonium - ``approximately 166 times the amount of plutonium contained in the atomic bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II,'' according to the lawsuit.

``The plutonium incinerator threatens to dump airborne radioactive and hazardous wastes over Jackson, Wyo., and such national treasures as Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park and Jedediah Smith Wilderness Area,'' the lawsuit states.

For the most part, Idaho residents have been conspicuously quiet on the issue, except to lash out at warnings that the incinerator could contaminate the potato crop.

``I am confident in technology,'' said Fred Sica, Idaho Falls Chamber of Commerce director. ``What we're really talking about here is that we're providing a service to the rest of the country in a very safe and manageable way.''

The anti-incinerator movement was born last summer in the scenic Jackson Hole region of northwest Wyoming, where celebrities like Harrison Ford have built second homes.

Opponents have the legal services of Jackson attorney Gerry Spence, a charismatic Wyoming native famous for his victory over nuclear giant Kerr-McGee in the Karen Silkwood whistleblower case.

Spence said Idaho residents have made a deal that could cost them their health.

``It's a sad exchange, to exchange jobs and money and profit for the potential danger involved in the case, for lives and sickness and cancer and the loss of property,'' he said.

While some of the plaintiffs have suggested changing the laws on transporting nuclear waste and burning PCBs, British Nuclear spokeswoman Ann Reidesel said it's not that simple.

``It's important to look at the whole picture and make sure we are not changing laws to make things more lax to solve a current situation, and to keep in mind that the laws were put in place to make things safer,'' she said.

The opponents claim the government broke several laws in approving the project and failed to adequately notify Wyoming residents who live downwind.

``If in fact this incinerator were to go ahead and people were to realize that there were particles in the air that are extremely hazardous, why would they choose to come here?'' asked Berte Hirschfield, president of Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free. ``I think there would be a mass exodus.''

According to a 1995 court settlement, the government must complete the processing plant by December 2002. Construction could begin in March if Idaho issues the final permits on time.

Mrs. Maxwell hopes the burning never begins.

``As a society, we did make all this waste and we do have to do something with it,'' she said. ``But there is no indication from any sources outside the DOE that incineration is an intelligent thing to do.''